Can an author show too much about themselves in a book?

'A good novel tells us the truth about it's hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.' Gilbert Keith Chesterton.

Do you agree or disagree?

I'm on the fence. I hold it true that good art should seperate itself completely from its creator, but then again many of the greatest novels have a great deal of autobiographical material (Hemingway-A Farewell to Arms, Joyce-A Portrait/Ulysses, and Proust-In Search of Lost Time).

There is no line between good and bad, personal and impersonal. Though it is the mark of the bad writer to generally give too much of himself.

Regardless though, the text always must transcend the writer, and transcend the subject. Sentimentality generally is only good if it can invoke sentimentality in the reader. If it can't, well then, there may be a problem.

I think that every good author should write one piece that is practically autobiographical but gushy bleeding hearts can get in the way sometimes. There has to be some sort of a distance.

I think Wilde phrased it well (as usual) when he said "To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim." There is also the thought expressed by Keats which goes along the lines of distrusting the art that has political designs upon the reader. Both I think are fairly good representations of where I would stand upon the subject.

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Originally Posted by kelby_lake

'A good novel tells us the truth about it's hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.' Gilbert Keith Chesterton.

Do you agree or disagree?

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I agree .i also think a good novel tells the truth about the author because it shows how talented among other things the author is. Great topic kelby!:D

In a way, no matter what an artist does, he puts too much of himself in what he does, he needs to balance something inside; otherwise he wouldn't do it.

it was chateaubriand who said that the best writing is autobiographic.

what he meant was that there is nothing or no one the writer knows as well as he knows himself.

ergo any writing is ultimately an expression of one's acuity, integrity, personality or the lack thereof.

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Originally Posted by chasestalling

it was chateaubriand who said that the best writing is autobiographic.

what he meant was that there is nothing or no one the writer knows as well as he knows himself.

ergo any writing is ultimately an expression of one's acuity, integrity, personality or the lack thereof.

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right on

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Originally Posted by chasestalling

it was chateaubriand who said that the best writing is autobiographic.

what he meant was that there is nothing or no one the writer knows as well as he knows himself.

ergo any writing is ultimately an expression of one's acuity, integrity, personality or the lack thereof.

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"Tell the truth but tell it slant" - Emily Dickinson. You may use autobiographical material, but there needs to be some corruption if it is going to be good literature. The goal is to distort things in order to make the work appealing, as the ordinary, conventional writings of modern day life don't seem to be too appealing to audiences. There needs to be a transcendent quality.

There is, for instance, a dreaded genre known as nostalgia poetry, which involves the poet giving descriptions of past events or places that they have visited. This sort of thing never works, and always fails, since it has no interesting spark, and merely acts as a sentimental reflection on something which no one else can relate to.

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Originally Posted by JBI

"Tell the truth but tell it slant" - Emily Dickinson. You may use autobiographical material, but there needs to be some corruption if it is going to be good literature. The goal is to distort things in order to make the work appealing, as the ordinary, conventional writings of modern day life don't seem to be too appealing to audiences. There needs to be a transcendent quality.

There is, for instance, a dreaded genre known as nostalgia poetry, which involves the poet giving descriptions of past events or places that they have visited. This sort of thing never works, and always fails, since it has no interesting spark, and merely acts as a sentimental reflection on something which no one else can relate to.

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i think one should keep it s natural as possible if that includes personal experiences then thats ok.

there's a scene in proust's epic when the narrator chafes at the sight of albertine kissing and touching another girl.

artistically the scene would've fared infinitely better had proust made the narrator feel something else than rage and jealousy.

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Originally Posted by chasestalling

there's a scene in proust's epic when the narrator chafes at the sight of albertine kissing and touching another girl.

artistically the scene would've fared infinitely better had proust made the narrator feel something else than rage and jealousy.

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.I read a lot of books where I:crash: think the author should have portrayed something different.e.eg. In Ethan Frome when Mattie discovered zenobias dislike instead of trying to solidify her posistion she seemed instead to to recede nd become suppliant.

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Originally Posted by chasestalling

there's a scene in proust's epic when the narrator chafes at the sight of albertine kissing and touching another girl.

artistically the scene would've fared infinitely better had proust made the narrator feel something else than rage and jealousy.

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Proust isn't an autobiography though. As critics have pointed out, it isn't an autobiography posing as a novel, but a novel posing as an autobiography. There is a huge difference. The event of the Albertine kissing another girl most likely didn't happen in his life.

what i meant is that a heterosexual male, generally speaking, would not have reacted the way proust had his male heterosexual narrator react when he witnessed his girlfriend, carrying on with another girl. the illusion is undermined in other words. artifice without verisimilitude.

There has to be a bit of a distance, otherwise it just becomes a messy labour of love, self-indulgence.