It’s a fairly standard view that fiction is a way of conveying truth.
Similarly, I hope people are now waking up to the inherently fictional nature of biography and autobiography.
The merging of these forms, though, is nevertheless problematic. The moments of magical realism in Self; the use of animals to portray humans in Maus; the inevitable artifice of verse in The Prelude – all complicate our understanding of auto/biography’s claim to truth.
For me, the fictionalising of an autobiographical narrative is one way of acknowledging that you will never reach the truth – that the closer you look at your own memory, the further you get from the reality of a moment.
Here are two of my attempts at autobiographical fiction.
- Bear tells his story, originally published in Keystone Magazine 5, July 2004
- Narrow, unpublished, written 2003
I’m still quite proud of one of these, and don’t particularly like the other. Nevertheless, I wanted to show both to you, as I’m interested in the process behind autobiographies as much as the finished products.
Let me know what you think.