Biographies vs Novels: do novels really teach us something?

[lokariototal]

Which one do you think teaches you more about life? I sincerely think biographies are BETTER cause they deal with REAL lifes, real problems, real victories. They are more relevant. On the other hand, novels are fiction, they are not reality, they are a story that someone made up in their minds. Do you think we can REALLY learn something from a novel?

[neilgee]

It depends what you mean by "life", for me. Is life something that can only be confirmed by provable facts about what somebody did with their life or can life be seen as meaning more than that?

George Eliot wrote novels yet she's incredibly informative about the feel of the times she wrote about - explaining how society functioned in the days when only landowners had votes, for example - and she entertains me in a way that biographies and history books generally don't.

[mal4mac]

Great novels teach you more about life because they concentrate on the real issues and don't get bogged down in too many extraneous, unimportant facts & details. Great novels are not just 'made up', they are based on the total life experience of the greatest geniuses. I wouldn't dismiss biographies completely though, they can help throw light on some novels. An example is Ellmann's biography of Joyce. Try reading it at the same time as Joyce's "Portrait". Ask yourself which is teaching you more about life? Which is more entertaining? Which is better? Ellmann provides some useful background material, but Joyce is far superior in 'teaching you about life', and in all aesthetic considerations. (And I have no doubt Ellmann would agree with me!)

[virginiawang]

I don't like to read biographies. In fact I've read none except one, which is not really a biography. It was Confession of an English Opium Eater. It was wonderful.
I don't want to think of my life as being mundane and prosaic, and I always wish to invest it with the nature of a novel. I think life deserves more meaning than just provable facts.

[Apathy]

Great novels teach you more about life because they concentrate on the real issues and don't get bogged down in too many extraneous, unimportant facts & details. Great novels are not just 'made up', they are based on the total life experience of the greatest geniuses. I wouldn't dismiss biographies completely though, they can help throw light on some novels. An example is Ellmann's biography of Joyce. Try reading it at the same time as Joyce's "Portrait". Ask yourself which is teaching you more about life? Which is more entertaining? Which is better? Ellmann provides some useful background material, but Joyce is far superior in 'teaching you about life', and in all aesthetic considerations. (And I have no doubt Ellmann would agree with me!)

Another great example is Piers Anthony's 'Biography of an Ogre' and try reading his 'Incarnations of Immortality' series at the same time.

[mystery_spell]

Novels can deal with real life situations without being one hundred percent true. The author of the novel definitely puts in some of his/her own experience, making the novel a reflection of him- or herself in some way. Biographies can be boring, but it depends. Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar is considered to be autobiographical, but she does not use her own name and tell the story as if it is herself. We can learn both from novels and biographies, though learning from a novel is much more enjoyable (to me, at least).

[Apathy]

:santasmilWhile biographies give the facts, they can only give the facts. A novel can delve into the darkest corners of someones sebconcious or bring you face to face with horribly real subjects. I myself have learned more about life from science fiction such as 'Mimsy were the Borogroves' and 'Feed' than from any biography. A biography will tell you one story from one perspective and a novel can tell you several stories from hundreds of perspectives. 'To kill a mockingbird' changed millions of peoples lifes while history books about the civil war are a chore. Novels can bring you back or forward in time so you can feel 'what was' like you were there and explore the 'What if'. you can see things through the eyes of someone who you would hate in real life or from the eyes of one who you would never meet because they live on the opposite side of the world or speak a different language.
"poloticians use lies to cover up the truth, artists use them to tell the truth that otherwise wouldn't be heard"

[DWolfman]

I almost didn't post because Apathy pretty well sums up what I intend to say.

The key to me is "what happened" as opposed to "what could happen"

No one will ever live the same lives of the biographies. We will all be faced with our own dilemmas, opporunities, problems, and choices. We will all have decisions to make as to whether things can be improved both in our lives and our societies. Creative expressions such as novels, poetry, fictional drama, etc. allow us to explore those options.

And in a vast majority of biographies, doesn't the subject become noteworthy because they chose a different path to follow than the norm?

[neilgee]

Another thing I dislike is the similarity of format in biographies. You always have to plough through alot of childhood and family facts that arn't particularly relevant or interesting but the biographer seems to be obliged to include.

The best autobiography I ever read was by the Victorian novelist Anthony Trollope. It's probably only as revealing as a Victorian novelist wants such a book to me but it's always readable.

[stlukesguild]

The initial question presumes that the "purpose" or "goal" of literature (or of art as a whole) is to teach us something, where Oscar Wilde (who was never wrong about anything) knew that "All art is quite useless". To me the experience of art/reading IS the goal... just like the experience of life... and not some vague concept of an unknown ending or reward is the goal. One of my favorite expressions of this idea is to be found in the Conclusion from Walter Pater's The Renaissance:

The service of philosophy, of speculative culture, towards the human spirit, is to rouse, to startle it to a life of constant and eager observation. Every moment some form grows perfect in hand or face; some tone on the hills or the sea is choicer than the rest; some mood of passion or insight or intellectual excitement is irresistibly real and attractive to us, --for that moment only. Not the fruit of experience, but experience itself, is the end. A counted number of pulses only is given to us of a variegated, dramatic life. How may we see in them all that is to seen in them by the finest senses? How shall we pass most swiftly from point to point, and be present always at the focus where the greatest number of vital forces unite in their purest energy?

To burn always with this hard, gem-like flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life. In a sense it might even be said that our failure is to form habits: While all melts under our feet, we may well grasp at any exquisite passion, or any contribution to knowledge that seems by a lifted horizon to set the spirit free for a moment, or any stirring of the sense, strange dyes, strange colours, and curious odours, or work of the artist's hands, or the face of one's friend. Not to discriminate every moment some passionate attitude in those about us, and in the very brilliancy of their gifts some tragic dividing on their ways, is, on this short day of frost and sun, to sleep before evening. With this sense of the splendour of our experience and of its awful brevity, gathering all we are into one desperate effort to see and touch, we shall hardly have time to make theories about the things we see and touch...

One of the most beautiful passages of Rousseau is that in the sixth book of Confessions, where he describes the awakening in him of the literary sense. An undefinable taint of death had clung always about him, and now in early manhood he believed himself smitten by mortal disease. He asked himself how he might make as much as possible of the interval that remained; and he was not biased by anything in his previous life when he decided that it must be by intellectual excitement, which he found just then in the clear, fresh writings of Voltaire. Well! we are all condamnés, as Victor Hugo says: we are all under sentence of death but with a sort of indefinite reprieve --les hommes sont tous condamnés à mort avec des sursis indéfinis: we have an interval, and then our place knows no more. Some spend this interval in listlessness, some in high passion, the wisest, at least among "the children of the world", in art and song. For our one chance lies in expanding that interval, in getting as many pulsations as possible into the given time. Great passions may give us a quickened sense of life, ecstasy and sorrow of love, the various forms of enthusiastic activity, disinterested or otherwise, which comes naturally to many of us. Only be sure it is passion --that it does yield you this fruit of a quickened, multiplied consciousness. Of such wisdom, the poetic passion, the desire of beauty, the love of art for its own sake, has most. For art comes to you proposing frankly to give nothing but the highest quality to your moments as they pass, and simply for those moments' sake.

Far more briefly Anna Quindlen writes:

Books are the means to immortality: Plato lives forever, as do Dickens, and Dr. Seuss, Soames Forsyte, Jo March, Scrooge, Anna Karenina, and Vronsky. Over and over again Heathcliffe wanders the moor searching for his Cathy. Over and over again Ahab fights the whale.Through them we experience other times, other places, other lives. We manage to become much more than our own selves. The only dead are those who grow sere and shriveled within, unable to step outside their own lives and into those of others. Ignorance is death. A closed mind is a catafalque.

My only interest at this point are those biographies that attain to the level of art (Boswell's Life of Johnson, Rousseau's Confessions, DeQuincy's Confessions of an English Opium Eater, etc...) although admittedly I have read my share of the usual collections of hard, dry facts that give you a certain grounding with regard to the achievements of various historical figures.

[mortalterror]

My only interest at this point are those biographies that attain to the level of art (Boswell's Life of Johnson, Rousseau's Confessions, DeQuincy's Confessions of an English Opium Eater, etc...) although admittedly I have read my share of the usual collections of hard, dry facts that give you a certain grounding with regard to the achievements of various historical figures.
I read Confessions of an English Opium Eater back in October. It didn't strike me as being as interesting as other autobiographical drug narratives I've read before. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Naked Lunch were better. While I enjoyed De Quincey's Opium Eater, I liked his Vision of Sudden Death more.

Oh! It just occurred to me that since you show such fondness for Rousseau you might like knowing that he's a character in Shelley's Triumph of Life. He plays Virgil's role in the Divine Comedy. What do you think of that?

[PeterL]

If biographies were written honestly, then they might show more about life, but nearly all biographies are slanted, so I don't hold biographies in high regard. Novels are more variable. They are all slanted, but the slants go in every way, rather the way that actual events are. Of course, the question of whether one or the other can teach a reader depends more on whether a reader is capable of learning.

[PeterL]

I read Confessions of an English Opium Eater back in October. It didn't strike me as being as interesting as other autobiographical drug narratives I've read before. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Naked Lunch were better. While I enjoyed De Quincey's Opium Eater, I liked his Vision of Sudden Death more.


Naked Lunch is not an autobiography (although there are some elements of memoir to it), and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is a work of fiction.

[Pryderi Agni]

While biographies give the facts, they can only give the facts. A novel can delve into the darkest corners of someones subconscious or bring you face to face with horribly real subjects.

Appropriate enough. Sometimes what we need is false consolation, not true acceptance. In that regard, novels are invaluable.


If biographies were written honestly, then they might show more about life, but nearly all biographies are slanted, so I don't hold biographies in high regard. Novels are more variable. They are all slanted, but the slants go in every way, rather the way that actual events are. Of course, the question of whether one or the other can teach a reader depends more on whether a reader is capable of learning.

Precisely!

[mortalterror]

Naked Lunch is not an autobiography (although there are some elements of memoir to it), and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is a work of fiction.
I know that, but they are heavily autobiographical, to the point that it barely makes a difference. They're at least as factual as Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, and that is shelved in Biography.

[PeterL]

I know that, but they are heavily autobiographical, to the point that it barely makes a difference. They're at least as factual as Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, and that is shelved in Biography.

That comment is more about the difference between fiction and non-fiction. I have thought about that and came to the conclusion that the difference is the attitude of the author, rather than the veracity of the content. Even some scientific papers are complete fabrications, but they are treated as factual until someone exposes the lies.

But in the cases of those two works, I don't think that there was enough factul content to fill a gnat's navel autobiographical content.

Naked Lunch was derived from delirious ravings of Burroughs that Ginsberg wrote down. Burroughs wasn't even aware that Ginsberg wrote that stuff down at all, and Burroughs was not actually conscious when he was raving.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is autobiographical in that it was based on Dr Thompson going to Las Vegas to attend a conference with a lawyer friend, and that's about it for factual content.

[mortalterror]

That comment is more about the difference between fiction and non-fiction. I have thought about that and came to the conclusion that the difference is the attitude of the author, rather than the veracity of the content. Even some scientific papers are complete fabrications, but they are treated as factual until someone exposes the lies.
Good point. I'll have to think on that.


Naked Lunch was derived from delirious ravings of Burroughs that Ginsberg wrote down. Burroughs wasn't even aware that Ginsberg wrote that stuff down at all, and Burroughs was not actually conscious when he was raving.
There are some rather sizable passages in The Confessions where De Quincey writes about his opium nightmares. It also happens that De Quincey composed the work in question from his sick bed while dictating to an amanuensis.

"Under the connecting feeling of tropical heat and vertical sunlights I brought together all creatures, birds, beasts, reptiles, all trees and plants, usages and appearances, that are found in all tropical regions, and assembled them together in China or Indostan. From kindred feelings, I soon brought Egypt and all her gods under the same law. I was stared at, hooted at, grinned at, chattered at, by monkeys, by parroquets, by cockatoos. I ran into pagodas, and was fixed for centuries at the summit or in secret rooms: I was the idol; I was the priest; I was worshipped; I was sacrificed. I fled from the wrath of Brama through all the forests of Asia: Vishnu hated me: Seeva laid wait for me. I came suddenly upon Isis and Osiris: I had done a deed, they said, which the ibis and the crocodile trembled at. I was buried for a thousand years in stone coffins, with mummies and sphynxes, in narrow chambers at the heart of eternal pyramids. I was kissed, with cancerous kisses, by crocodiles; and laid, confounded with all unutterable slimy things, amongst reeds and Nilotic mud."

What chiefly caught my attention about the work were the stylistic elements, particularly the skewed and exaggerated first person perspective, which obviously influenced Thompson and Burroughs. You can see it on even greater display in his essays.

[PeterL]

Good point. I'll have to think on that.


There are some rather sizable passages in The Confessions where De Quincey writes about his opium nightmares. It also happens that De Quincey composed the work in question from his sick bed while dictating to an amanuensis.

The difference is that de Quincey was conscious.


What chiefly caught my attention about the work were the stylistic elements, particularly the skewed and exaggerated first person perspective, which obviously influenced Thompson and Burroughs. You can see it on even greater display in his essays.

I haven't read much of de Quincey's work, but the pieces that I can remember at all, "One the English Mailcoach" and "On the Knocking at the Door in MacBeth" the Pov was omniscient third person, because those were objective views. That said, de Quincey was an excellent writer who wrote well on a wide range of matters.

[mortalterror]

I haven't read much of de Quincey's work, but the pieces that I can remember at all, "One the English Mailcoach" and "On the Knocking at the Door in MacBeth" the Pov was omniscient third person, because those were objective views. That said, de Quincey was an excellent writer who wrote well on a wide range of matters.
I took a look back at his essays again and for the most part he does use the third person, but where he relates his personal experiences and puts himself into the story he does lapse into the first person. But more than that, there's this sort of sublime sense of horror and decay throughout his stuff which I think bears a certain kinship with Poe, with Conrad, and the other authors I've mentioned previously, like links in a chain or the evolution of an aesthetic. De Quincey for all his objectivity and rationality is fairly well seated in the dark side of the Romantic movement. He's not a happy go lightly flower and song romantic. He's got more in common with Goethe's sturm und drang movement, or Lermontov and what was happening in Russia about that time. The recurring themes of madness and decomposition, make me think he was a forerunner of the French Decadent movement with Baudelaire and Lautréamont, except instead of celebrating sickness he is repulsed by it. As it stands, De Quincey's nightmare visions stand as a sort of midway point in British literature between Coleridge's Kubla Khan and Browning's Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Which one do you think teaches you more about life?

Novels.


I sincerely think biographies are BETTER cause they deal with REAL lifes, real problems, real victories.

No.


They are more relevant.

No.


On the other hand, novels are fiction, they are not reality, they are a story that someone made up in their minds.

And creative expression is bad how?


Do you think we can REALLY learn something from a novel?

Yes. A million times yes. I'm astounded anyone can even think this is a relevant question.

[Modest Proposal]

Has anyone read "How to Write a True War Story" by Tim O'Brien?

He deals with this concept so perfectly--not to mention succinctly and beautifully--that I cannot even try to summarize it. Read the essay. It will change the way you think about writting--or reading--'fact'.

[PeterL]

I took a look back at his essays again and for the most part he does use the third person, but where he relates his personal experiences and puts himself into the story he does lapse into the first person. But more than that, there's this sort of sublime sense of horror and decay throughout his stuff which I think bears a certain kinship with Poe, with Conrad, and the other authors I've mentioned previously, like links in a chain or the evolution of an aesthetic. De Quincey for all his objectivity and rationality is fairly well seated in the dark side of the Romantic movement. He's not a happy go lightly flower and song romantic. He's got more in common with Goethe's sturm und drang movement, or Lermontov and what was happening in Russia about that time. The recurring themes of madness and decomposition, make me think he was a forerunner of the French Decadent movement with Baudelaire and Lautréamont, except instead of celebrating sickness he is repulsed by it. As it stands, De Quincey's nightmare visions stand as a sort of midway point in British literature between Coleridge's Kubla Khan and Browning's Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came.

You may be right, but I think that de Quincey was more of a journalist than were the others that you mentioned. In his works that I have read, I don't recall more skill in communication than imagination. Perhps I should read more of his works.

[keilj]

the only important and lasting things in life can be found in novels.

schoolbooks, universities, TV news, all offer us temporal and fleeting "knowledge".

fiction writers give us the greatest gift of human learning that can be found. period

[Katy North]

I would say that nothing can surpass the lessons learned in novels, because in my opinion, novels teach the reader something about him or herself.

I do enjoy a good dose of non-fiction in addition to novels, but I mainly read books on psychology, philosophy, or history. I believe a certain amount of non-fiction is necessary to be a good scholar, but personally I have never found anything really important in biographies, and frankly, have found any that I've read quite dull. Most anything about another person that is necessary for me to know I find that I can read on the "about the author" page.

The only exception are auto-biographies by comedians, because they're hilarious, and sometimes poignant, because most comedians don't feel like they have to put themselves up on a pedestal.

[African_Love]

Which one do you think teaches you more about life? I sincerely think biographies are BETTER cause they deal with REAL lifes, real problems, real victories. They are more relevant. On the other hand, novels are fiction, they are not reality, they are a story that someone made up in their minds. Do you think we can REALLY learn something from a novel?

I think that both are equally good at forcing you to excercise your empathy skills. I don't really see a difference. I don't see how the fact that a novel happens to be fictitious is relevant.

I only found out years after I read The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man that it was fictititious and if I didn't know better and you told me that Finding Fish (Antwone Fisher) was fictititious, I wouldn't be surprised.

[aquarium444]

Which one do you think teaches you more about life? I sincerely think biographies are BETTER cause they deal with REAL lifes, real problems, real victories. They are more relevant. On the other hand, novels are fiction, they are not reality, they are a story that someone made up in their minds. Do you think we can REALLY learn something from a novel?

Is there a conflict between the two forms of writing? I would have thought that a comparison between history and literature might contain some form of rivalry such as what you are suggesting, but only because books might become a substitute for the more objective analysis found in non fiction. I watched the biography of Edgar Allen Poe recently on iTunes and it seems to be a supplement rather than anything that might detract from reading his short stories.

Anyway, one type is fiction and the other is non fiction. You need to separate them.

[spookymulder93]

Lots are biographies are probably more fictitious than actual fiction.

[Stendhal]

Novels/poems, etc. are important not despite the fact that they are not true. In fact, they are important because they are true. I was reading Thomas C. Foster's How to read literature like a professor, and he summed it up by saying that there is only one story, and it is all around us.

Take Pride and Predjudice, for example. The novel's characters are people we all meet in our everyday lives. Not only that, it helps us to understand what makes a good marriage and what makes a bad one. I could go on and on detailing the layers of meaning in the work. Such complexity and such truth is difficult to find in other types of work such as biography.

[minstrelbard]

The original question is kind of silly. It implies that novels and biographies are written for the same purpose, and they are not. Generally, biographies are written to provide factual information on the life of their subjects; if the biographer is a good one, he provides sufficient understanding of his subject's mind and personality that the reader understands why the subject behaved in the way he did and made the important decisions he did.

But novels are different. It's probably impossible to say, generally, what the purpose of novels is. Novels are written for a very large variety of purposes. Joyce, in Ulysses, was not trying to do the same thing that Margaret Mitchell was doing in Gone With The Wind. Nabokov, in Lolita, was doing something very different from what Melville did in Moby Dick. Novels have a virtually infinite range or purpose and effect. A great novel can affect the reader with an emotional power that maybe no other form of art can match.

Most of us here have probably had the experience of reading a novel that "blew our minds"; what biography has blown your mind? I've read biographies, but none have hit me THAT hard.

Fiction has a power biography doesn't have. Or, let me put that another way. I don't think there's anything about the genre of biography that limits it, but if a writer wants to blow the reader's mind (so to speak), he's not likely to choose the biography form to do it - he'll write a novel. The novel provides unrestricted opportunity to blow minds without the responsibility of being factual.