I recently attended a conversation between A.S. Byatt and Stephen Rose at the Purcell Room. They were talking about memory, promoting the anthology Byatt co-edited.

They said many interesting things, but one stood out for me.

Asked to discuss the relationship between memory and the imagination, Byatt explained that she prefers to write solely using the latter; that she must abandon memory altogether before she can begin writing.

She then expressed her surprise at the number of people who take creative writing courses only to go on to write autobiographical works rather than fiction. She had a theory about this.

Perhaps, she suggested, the growing interest in autobiography corresponds to a declining interest in religion. As our society becomes less religious, we begin to worry about what everything means, and we turn to autobiography, our own life stories, for an explanation.

I like this theory. It ties in with an idea I have been playing with recently. I’ll tell you more about that tomorrow.