Autobiographies or almost Autobiographies

When thinking about what influenced me to write Storytelling there are a number of books that I have read. I loved Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne. I loved the sense of humour and the fact that when he had finished writing a rather large book it had only given an account of the first couple of years of Tristram's life. This is something to think about when writing a memoir - what to include and what not to include and how your material is linked together.
I also loved Nabokov's Speak Memory because it spoke to me so beautifully of a landscape and a class I'd never been part of. It was also wonderful in the way it had a dark river of loss running through every beautiful and clever line. It spoke to me of Nabokov's intelligence and the acuteness of his observation.
And while I'm listing, I don't want to forget the autobiography of Elias Canetti which took up nearly as much space as his actual life. There was The Tongue Set Free, and on and on. Where did he get time to write Crowds and Power or Auto da Fe? The nostalgia of his early childhood made this a world I loved to be in.
I can't say the memoirs or autobiographies of the rich and famous have ever had any appeal for me. I tried to read Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates but even though I admire the author's writing style I can't get close to the icky life of Marilyn Monroe. I tried to read a biography of Beckett but found it as boring as he was. I would much rather pay to see Waiting for Godot. And while I am in admiration of Einstein I did feel his life and the type of facts the writer had accreted were predictable and boring and gave me nothing of him. Maybe I think that is important, a sense of the essence of the writer or subject.
I read Roald Dahl's Boy and I do feel there was a sense of his essence but the British thing of hiding your light under a Bushel got in the way.
I also read David Copperfield by Charles Dickens which is a novel and not an autobiography but it is written as if it was an autobiography. It was a joy to read out loud to a friend and I think they laughed a lot. I could go on, Jack Keroac, Henry Miller, Ernest Hemingway, Agnes Smedley, Gertrude Stein.
What I find is the telling detail in whatever I am reading gives me a closeness to the author whether it is meant to be autobiography or not. As my husband is often quoting "It may not be the truth, but it's the facts.'

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