Question about Authors "writing themselves into literature"

[BromSquared]

I am currently writing a paper for a college course and I am trying to think of few authors who wrote characters into their literature who are believed to be allegorical references to the author themself. Can anyone think of any? I'm trying to argue that Dashiell Hammett's parable character Flitcraft is an allegorical reference to himself in the Maltese Falcon

[Lumiere]

To point out a more obvious example, Charles Dickens writes himself into the character of David in David Copperfield.

[Modest Proposal]

I don't know that you want to use the term "allegorical" for this, but there are some great examples and some less than great.

Zuckerman in Roth's novels is assumed to be a surrogate of the author.
Levin in "Anna Karenina" is thought to be Count Tolsoy trying to hash out an understanding of a moral man's relationship with serfs.
Martin Amis writes himself, name and all, into the novel "Money" which is on the Time 100 books since 1920.

There are many, many examples that I'm sure you'll enjoy reading.

[mayneverhave]

Couple off the top of my head.

Dante Alighieri as poet/pilgrim in The Divine Comedy.
Proust in In Search of Lost Time (be careful with this one).
Pushkin as a character himself in Eugene Onegin.

[sixsmith]

Two that spring immediately to mind:

'Operation Shylock' - Philip Roth

'Suttree' - Cormac McCarthy

[kelby_lake]

I am currently writing a paper for a college course and I am trying to think of few authors who wrote characters into their literature who are believed to be allegorical references to the author themself. Can anyone think of any? I'm trying to argue that Dashiell Hammett's parable character Flitcraft is an allegorical reference to himself in the Maltese Falcon

You could argue that most characters are manifestations of the author.

But Quartet is basically Jean Rhys and the male character is Ford Madox Ford.

[Amoxcalli]

Dutch author W.F. Hermans in Au Pair and several other novels.

I'd have said Dante in the Divine Comedy, but mayneverhave beat me to it.

[Lokasenna]

The principle character of Elwin Ransom in C. S. Lewis' Space Trilogy is essentially Lewis himself, both in terms of character and biography. It's even suggested in one book that Elwin Ransom is a pseudonym for a 'noted Oxford professor' who wouldn't want his identity know.

They're damn good fun too!

[wessexgirl]

Somerset Maugham, is in a lot of his literature I think, but I'm thinking of The Razor's Edge mainly, as I've re-read that recently.

[JCamilo]

Couple off the top of my head.

Dante Alighieri as poet/pilgrim in The Divine Comedy.
Proust in In Search of Lost Time (be careful with this one).
Pushkin as a character himself in Eugene Onegin.

But then Dante as Dante, just like Borges as Borges would not be allegorical... And isnt Pushkin mentioned by him, and old member of his family (or it is in Boris Gudonov...)

Anyways,
Considering we know nothing about him, some people believe that blind aedo who show up and tell to Ulysses his own story is Homer talking about him.
There is some arguments that Faust is somehow Goethe.
Joyce could be Daedelus. Henry Wotton could be Wilde.
Voltaire places himself in many forms in Candide (his ideas can be seen the dervish, the critic they meet in europe watching a drama, Martin and even Pangloss.)

[Drkshadow03]

Philip Roth's Operation Shylock. Philip Roth actually writes himself into the book.

[PeterL]

It is not allegorical. Nearly all authors use themselves as a model for characters. Hemingway put himself, in some form, into almost all of his novels. Faulkner used his family for the model of the family in The SOund and the Fury andother novels. Umberto Eco used himself as a partial model for character in the Name of the Rose and for parts of the three main characters in Foucault's Pendulum.

I could also bring up novels that were fictionalized autobiography, but that gets even broader.

Even when an author does npt use himself as the model for a character, the haracters all come from the experiences of the author and are colored by that experience.

[Modest Proposal]

The principle character of Elwin Ransom in C. S. Lewis' Space Trilogy is essentially Lewis himself, both in terms of character and biography. It's even suggested in one book that Elwin Ransom is a pseudonym for a 'noted Oxford professor' who wouldn't want his identity know.

They're damn good fun too!

I second The Spaced Trilogy. Great early SF.

[Travis_R]

Kurt Vonnegut as a soldier in Slaughterhouse-5.

[Il Penseroso]

Would post-modern authorial intervention work? Not a character but the author himself in Nabokov's Bend Sinister.

[prendrelemick]

John Fowles appears as himself in The French Lieutenant's Woman.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Holden Caulfield is pretty much J. D. Sallinger in Catcher in the Rye. Stephen King also writes himself into his . . .



SPOILER



. . . Dark Tower series.

[Amoxcalli]

Henry Wotton could be Wilde.


Actually, I believe I read somewhere that Wilde said the three main characters (Lord Henry, Dorian Gray and Basil) represented different aspects of him.

Basil represented himself as he saw himself.
Dorian Gray as he wished to be.
Lord Henry as how the world perceived him to be.

[herzog]

Kurt Vonnegut as a soldier in Slaughterhouse-5.

To expand on this, he also literally wrote himself into scenes in 'Breakfast Of Champions'.

He also uses a number of characters throughout his bibliography that mirror himself and his own life.

[BienvenuJDC]

Clive Cussler writes himself into every one of his books...even calls himself by name.

[Barbarous]

The priest and the barber characters in Don Quixote find a book by Cervantes in the Don's library :lol:

[Heid]

Pretty much any novel by Charles Bukowski (with the possible exception of "Pulp"). His protagonist Henry Chinaski is his literary alter-ego.

[King Mob]

James G. Ballard's Crash, he is the protagonist, also name and all.

And, almost famously, comic book writer Grant Morrison in Animal Man. He actually makes Animal Man confront him in one of the most memorable dialogues in comics history.

[King Mob]

The priest and the barber characters in Don Quixote find a book by Cervantes in the Don's library :lol:

Borges notes that that book may be the Don Quixote itself, thus making an ad infinitum series of fictions within fictions and reminding the reader he may also be a fiction, in his essay "Magias parciales del Quijote" (Parcial magics of the Quixote (some kind of translation))

[purplybob]

All four of Thomas Wolfe's novels

[mona amon]

The priest and the barber characters in Don Quixote find a book by Cervantes in the Don's library :lol:

Wow! :D can't remember that. Time for a re-read I think.

I think Italo Calvino writes himself into If on a Winter's Night a Traveller, but I'm not sure as I read it a long time ago.

[k.brignell]

Jack Kerouac's 'On the Road.' Sal Paradise is Kerouac

[jaredalynch]

More recently, Bret Easton Ellis is the main character in "Lunar Park" and the first part reads almost like an autobiography before morphing into something altogether different.

[Ashbe Maeur]

Kurt Vonnegut as a soldier in Slaughterhouse-5.

He's also literally writes himself into Breakfast of Champions .

[kelby_lake]

I'm not entirely sure what you want. Do you want the author actually being a character or characters which are based on the author?

The second is very speculative. I'm sure in any work of literature, the writer and characters will have similarities- plus writers don't always identify themselves with the most obvious characters.

If it's work heavily based on their life, you're a bit safer on that front.

[blp]

Paul Auster is referred to in a mysterious context on the first page of the first book in his New York Trilogy. He also turns up as a clearly autobiographical first person narrrator with the same initials, but not the same name, in Leviathan.

Dostoevsky was a gambler and wrote a short work called The Gambler.

[IceM]

I read somewhere that Charles Dickens split his personality into two different characters in A Tale of Two Cities; his morose self (as well as what he feared he may have been) in Sydney Carton while his other characteristics in Charles Darnay, a character bearing his initials.