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Real-life Authors As Characters

That is what I thought but I was, and still am, amazed that "one of his worshippers" wouldn't know of his existence. Fandom these days is a tenuous thing I suppose. At the same time I'm very excited for him. Can you imagine what a kid would go through if he found out Santa did in fact exist? Ecstasy like you and I will never know.
 
I think I feel a list taking shape.

Now let me see, what were all those reasons we shouldn't be doing this useless foolishness? I must be able to find them around here someplace. Sorry guys, couldn't resist.
:flowers:
 
Indeed. What is that expression?, if it walks like a list, sounds like a list, and above all smells like a list, by jove, it must be a l-i-s-t. [spelling for the toddlers in the audience]
;)
 
Heteronym, when I can think of some more examples, I'll be sure to post them. I still reeling from the characters in Move Under Ground.
Peder said:
Now let me see, what were all those reasons we shouldn't be doing this useless foolishness? I must be able to find them around here someplace. Sorry guys, couldn't resist.
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I'm sure I can find a link or three about that somewhere. :D
 
saliotthomas said:
And Pinocchio,was he real too?Joe,come on was he?
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Thomas your belief is akin to me thinking Ira Hayes didn't exist because he was a character in a Johnny Cash song. I hate to be the one to break what must be so shocking a revelation to you but he was not merely a fictional character. Or are encyclopedias around the world misinformed or playing a trick on the rest of us?
 
Heteronym said:
I'm trying to build a list of novels about real-life writers. So far I've come up with:

The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis, José Saramago (Fernando Pessoa)
Immortality, Milan Kundera (Goethe)
The Master of St. Petersburg, J.M. Coetzee (Dostoevsky)
Lotte in Weimar, Thomas Mann (Goethe)
Casanova In Bolzano, Sándor Márai (Giacomo Casanova)
Henry and June, Anaïs Nin (Henry Miller, Anaïs Nin)
The Hours, Michael Cunningham (Virginia Woolf)

But I'd like some help in finding more titles. It interests me to see how writers today portray their predecessors. Recommend me any titles you know, so long as it involves real-life authors.
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Virgil is in The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri
 
Occlith said:
Heteronym, when I can think of some more examples, I'll be sure to post them. I still reeling from the characters in Move Under Ground.
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It's available for free online - Mamatas is one of those weird "art should be free" people - here. :)

I'm sure Thomas Pynchon must have a few authors in his books, considering how many historical characters show up in them, but I can't think of any right now (well, apart from historical characters who wrote books as well - Benjamin Franklin in Mason & Dixon, for instance).

Arthur Miller plays a significant part in Joyce Carol Oates' Blonde, for obvious reasons, even if his name doesn't actually get mentioned.
 
Byron, Keats & Shelley in "The Stress of Her Regard" by Tim Powers

Byron again (sort of ) in "Lord Byron's Novel: The Evening Land" by John Crowley

Giordano Bruno (although he's more of a scientist / philosopher) in John Crowley's Aegypt series.
 
I forgot to mention that The Dante Club features Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Oliver Wendell Holmes as main characters. They try to solve a mystery, no less. Another mystery novel featuring a writer as one of its characters is Stephanie Barron's Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor. The premise? Jane Austen as detective.
 
Interesting that a lot of authors get written as detectives: Poe, Austen, Wendell Holmes, Longfellow. Why do you think that happens?
 
Heteronym said:
Interesting that a lot of authors get written as detectives: Poe, Austen, Wendell Holmes, Longfellow. Why do you think that happens?
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Presumably for the same reason a lot of original characters are written as detectives:

a) readers like mysteries.
b) detective stories have a pretty easily defined framework and plot.

ETA: And speaking of which, Plato plays a part in José Carlos Somoza's The Athenian Murders.
 
David Lodge's Author, author is about Henry James,it's a novel about Henry James' struggle as a playwright, he wasn't very successful with contemporary audience.Other writers appear in the novel as I remember, including Oscar Wilde.

And Fowles-The French Leutenant's Woman, the author himself appears in a final chapter, he even describes himself, interacts with the main character and says something like "That was I, that was me, that was the author of this book."This is usually quoted as an example of postmodernist writing.
 
I just got My Uncle Oswald by Roald Dahl and according to wikipedia the book has several authors as characters. Joyce, Proust, and Conrad to name a few.
 
Two from Dan Simmons-Crook Factory with Hemingway in Cuba and the recent Drood with Dickens
Also in The Exile by Patrick Rambaud there is a mercyless description of Chateaubrian
 
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