Tingle Alley is also reading Salvador Plascencia’s excellent People of Paper. Exciting hijinx on which to come but for now a query: In the novel, a character named Salvador Plascencia makes an appearance. Similarly, Lunar Park, Bret Easton Ellis’ new novel, is about a writer named Bret Easton Ellis; Everything Is Illuminated has a character named Jonathan Safran Foer; and so on.
I’ve been trying to think of books authored by women that use this device and can’t think of any. Can you?
I just read Kelly Link’s Stranger Things Happen and from what I gathered, the narrator of “Most of My Friends are Two-Thirds Water” might have been a tentative sort of Kelly Link proxy character. But I don’t think that’s the same thing (the narrator wasn’t explicitly named Kelly Link).
Another question I’d love to see answered: who did it first? I know Steve Erickson put a character named Erickson into (and then killed out of) Arc d’X in 1993, but I imagine he wasn’t the first.
Comment by Darby — 8/17/2005 @ 12:02 pm
Not quite the same thing, but what about Gertrude Stein’s Autobiography of Alice B Toklas, which isn’t about Toklas (Stein’s lover) at all but about Stein, who who is described in the novel as a ‘genius’. This is surely an even more disingenous way of shining a light on yourself than naming a character after you…
Comment by James Smart — 8/17/2005 @ 12:35 pm
Sheila Kohler – _Cracks_ by Sheila Kohler.
Comment by whit — 8/17/2005 @ 12:55 pm
Darby, I know Erickson wasn’t the first as I remember when the reviews for Everything Is Illuminated mentioned other books that used the device from ’50s and ’60s. But I can’t remember what they were! (This is the sort of thing I hate to admit.) Anyone?
Oh, just thought of one, Summer in Baden-Baden by Leonid Tsypkin, which has a character named Leonid Tsypkin as well as Dostoevsky and wife. Copyrighted 1981.
James and Whit, excellent! I’m not familiar at all with Cracks & am happy to be reminded of Stein’s great “genius.”
I should add that I don’t think the device is always disingenuous, though. It’s used to good effect in People of Paper, and I’m intrigued by how it’s been described as being used in Lunar Park (which I haven’t read yet).
Comment by caaf — 8/17/2005 @ 1:49 pm
Siri Hustvedt’s ‘What I Loved’ is not exactly an example of this, as the real names are not used, but it is fascinating (and not a little creepy) the way Bill and Violet are clearly based on Paul Auster and Hustvedt herself, right down to Hustvedt lifting from real life the whole ‘disco bloodbath’ scandal that Auster’s son was involved in.
Not a woman, I’m afraid, but Charles Baxter’s ‘The Feast of Love’ – a fabulous read, by the way – begins with Baxter himself waking up in bed, then going out into the world and meeting all the characters of the novel. It sounds a bit precious but it’s GREAT.
CAAF, is the Plascencia living up to its hype so far? I’m quite curious to read it.
Comment by Emma — 8/17/2005 @ 4:14 pm
Expect something extended on the Plascencia soon – but the short answer is: Yes, it’s a really exciting, original, kickass book. As far as living up to its hype? I dunno – I’m pleased for Plascencia that it’s gotten the hype, especially as the book is strange and unconventional, but I also worry that it creates this expectation that the book is going to ROCK YOUR UNDERPANTS OFF FROM PAGE 1, which you know, is tough for any book to do.
For me, the first part was hard going but, as I’ve continued, it’s built into something that’s amazing.
p.s. Have you read The Sea, The Sea yet, Emma? I am ecstatic over it, but Maud mentioned that she had many friends who found it overly … something (too introspective, too philosophical? boring? I can’t remember the word she used). Are you one of those friends?
Comment by caaf — 8/17/2005 @ 4:31 pm
‘The Sea, The Sea’: I have to confess I put it down after 30 or so pages – I think I was less than gripped by the pace. But I fully intend to have another more determined go, seeing as you and Maud both admire it so much. I’ll keep you posted.
Comment by Emma — 8/17/2005 @ 4:41 pm
Please do share thoughts once you resume. It doesn’t go on like that, if that’s any consolation. Though I sort of loved how discursive he is in that stretch (he’s narrating his solitude in a way that reminds me very much of how I think when I’ve been blogging too much, as if everyone will be fascinated with how & what I prepared for my lunch). But the ghosts start crowding in after a bit …
Comment by caaf — 8/17/2005 @ 4:53 pm
Philip Roth is the earliest one I’m sure about. But surely you could go back a lot further–does Andre Breton have a character called Andre Breton in NADJA, or is it more a strange hybrid thing? And what Calvino and Nabokov were doing in the 50s and early 60s is surely the most immediately r elevant precedent. My friend Bruno Maddox’s novel THE LITTLE BLUE DRESS also uses this conceit to good effect.
Comment by Jenny D — 8/17/2005 @ 6:57 pm
Colette! There are so many Colette stories that contain a character named Colette — somewhere in the mists of time I wrote a paper about it — back in graduate school, which I have mostly repressed, thank goodness …
Comment by Charlotte — 8/17/2005 @ 9:38 pm
Ah, C O L E T T E !! ! It’s been too long.
Jenny D., it’s been years since I read the early Roth; does he enter those novels as “Philip Roth”? I know he does, as a young boy, in The Plot Against America?
(Sorry to seem so forgetful and addled.)
Comment by caaf — 8/17/2005 @ 9:52 pm
Years for me too, also forgetful and addled, but I am sure he does in a couple of those–someone else will have to help us out here. (The Zuckerman novels, maybe?)
Comment by Jenny D — 8/17/2005 @ 9:59 pm
Sheila Kohler’s Cracks springs to mind. I’m sure I’ll think of others.
Comment by Maud — 8/18/2005 @ 8:17 am
Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried has a character named Tim O’Brien in several stories.
Comment by Dan Burt — 8/18/2005 @ 8:23 am
Jenny D, I think the only earlier novel of Roth’s where he comes forth as “Philip Roth” is the Operation Shylock book; the earlier ones has him playing around with various stand-ins (Zuckerman et al).
Milan Kundera has been doing the cameo since his second book, which would mean it was written in the late sixties…. But for the “first,” doesn’t Sterne do this in Tristram Shandy?
As for women, doesn’t Grace Paley do the same in a number of her stories?
Comment by Kirby — 8/18/2005 @ 12:59 pm
Ellen Miller’s Like Being Killed featured a main character named Ilyana Meyerovich who (I think, anyhow) is pretty clearly herself.
Comment by dana — 8/18/2005 @ 5:11 pm
To the best of my increasingly disintegrating memory (thanks for the Operation Shylock correction, that sounds right), Sterne’s stand-in is always called Parson Yorick, not Laurence Sterne. I guess you could count book 2 of Don Quixote in this category as well?
Comment by Jenny D — 8/20/2005 @ 7:12 pm