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Thread: Question about Authors "writing themselves into literature"

  1. #16
    Registered User prendrelemick's Avatar
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    John Fowles appears as himself in The French Lieutenant's Woman.

  2. #17
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    Holden Caulfield is pretty much J. D. Sallinger in Catcher in the Rye. Stephen King also writes himself into his . . .



    SPOILER



    . . . Dark Tower series.

  3. #18
    Prefers to read Amoxcalli's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by JCamilo View Post
    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.
    Without literature my life would be miserable - Naguib Mahfouz

  4. #19
    Registered User herzog's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Travis_R View Post
    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.

  5. #20
    Jethro BienvenuJDC's Avatar
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    Clive Cussler writes himself into every one of his books...even calls himself by name.
    Les Miserables,
    Volume 1, Fifth Book, Chapter 3
    Remember this, my friends: there are no such things as bad plants or bad men. There are only bad cultivators.

  6. #21
    O dark dark dark Barbarous's Avatar
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    The priest and the barber characters in Don Quixote find a book by Cervantes in the Don's library
    If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise.
    -W.Blake

  7. #22
    Registered User Heid's Avatar
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    Pretty much any novel by Charles Bukowski (with the possible exception of "Pulp"). His protagonist Henry Chinaski is his literary alter-ego.

  8. #23
    Registered User King Mob's Avatar
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    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.
    All aboard. All souls at half-mast. Aye-Aye. -Samuel Beckett, More Pricks Than Kicks

  9. #24
    Registered User King Mob's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Barbarous View Post
    The priest and the barber characters in Don Quixote find a book by Cervantes in the Don's library
    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))
    All aboard. All souls at half-mast. Aye-Aye. -Samuel Beckett, More Pricks Than Kicks

  10. #25
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    All four of Thomas Wolfe's novels

  11. #26
    Registered User mona amon's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Barbarous View Post
    The priest and the barber characters in Don Quixote find a book by Cervantes in the Don's library
    Wow! 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.
    Exit, pursued by a bear.

  12. #27
    Registered User k.brignell's Avatar
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    Jack Kerouac's 'On the Road.' Sal Paradise is Kerouac
    currently reading: A Tale of Two Cities by Dickens

    “I’m with you in Rockland/where we are great writers on the same dreadful typewriter...”
    -allen ginsburg-

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    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.

  14. #29
    Registered User Ashbe Maeur's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Travis_R View Post
    Kurt Vonnegut as a soldier in Slaughterhouse-5.
    He's also literally writes himself into Breakfast of Champions .

  15. #30
    Registered User kelby_lake's Avatar
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    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.

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