Re: the literary life
Camille Scaysbrook (verona_beach@geocities.com)
Sun, 04 Oct 1998 01:12:10 +1000
> Akemi, I think what we really know of most authors is what they write,
but
> it's harder to know something from fiction than from memoirs and other
> forms of reporting...what we learn of salinger regarding love or the
> way many of us are vulgar from his writing says a lot more about the man
> than what has been reported...will
I find that straight autobiography also stands very much in the way of good
fiction. It rarely, in my experience, turns into anything totally
satisfying - Sylvia Plath's `The Bell Jar' is a case in point, which I had
leaped into (after reading several Plath biographies admittedly) after
hearing it described as the female Catcher in the Rye, and found very
mediocre. I think a good novelist knows where to draw the line; what of his
or her life to include in their fiction. Which is why, I suppose, people
like Salinger get so irritated when they are pushed by force over this
line.
Camille
verona_beach@geocities.com
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