Authors Who Write Fiction about Authors (and other real people)
Talk All Writers Considered
Join LibraryThing to post.
This topic is currently marked as "dormant"—the last message is more than 90 days old. You can revive it by posting a reply.
1Limelite
Scanned some of my LT book reviews looking for something -- I don't remember what -- and suddenly noticed I'd fairly recently read three very good novels by three very different writers on famous writers! What an excellent theme for a new reading goal in 2018, methought. Here they are:
Circling the Sun by Paula McLain, a biographical novel of Beryl Markham's Africa years.
Imperium: A Novel of Ancient Rome by Robert Harris (the author of Enigma), a biographical novel about Cicero's early career as observed through the eyes of his servant, Tivo.
The Woman on the Orient Express by Lindsay Jayne Ashford, Agatha Christie's "lost" years spent on an archaeological dig in Mesopotamia.
Now, I realize that this theme really interests me, judging by the three books I chose that deal with it. I wonder why I like reading about the lives of writers handled in fiction. Is it because all of the subjects in these novels are no longer living and we have no way of "talking" to them to find out what they're like, what their times meant to them, why they determined to write about their experiences and eras?
Actually, I don't really care why I enjoyed the three books so much (other than they definitely were not a waste of time reads) as I care about peeking into the private and secretive corners of writers' personalities as interpreted by the imaginations of other authors. Kind of a matryoshka doll experience, if you know what I mean. I guess it's about the tidbit insights into famous writers' characters presented on the pages of McLain's, Harris', and Ashford's work and filtered through their minds that fascinates me. Could it be imaginations about the imaginative?
Do you share my fascination? Please tell me who has written novels about other writers that you really enjoyed. (No nonfiction/biography titles, thank you.)
Circling the Sun by Paula McLain, a biographical novel of Beryl Markham's Africa years.
Imperium: A Novel of Ancient Rome by Robert Harris (the author of Enigma), a biographical novel about Cicero's early career as observed through the eyes of his servant, Tivo.
The Woman on the Orient Express by Lindsay Jayne Ashford, Agatha Christie's "lost" years spent on an archaeological dig in Mesopotamia.
Now, I realize that this theme really interests me, judging by the three books I chose that deal with it. I wonder why I like reading about the lives of writers handled in fiction. Is it because all of the subjects in these novels are no longer living and we have no way of "talking" to them to find out what they're like, what their times meant to them, why they determined to write about their experiences and eras?
Actually, I don't really care why I enjoyed the three books so much (other than they definitely were not a waste of time reads) as I care about peeking into the private and secretive corners of writers' personalities as interpreted by the imaginations of other authors. Kind of a matryoshka doll experience, if you know what I mean. I guess it's about the tidbit insights into famous writers' characters presented on the pages of McLain's, Harris', and Ashford's work and filtered through their minds that fascinates me. Could it be imaginations about the imaginative?
Do you share my fascination? Please tell me who has written novels about other writers that you really enjoyed. (No nonfiction/biography titles, thank you.)
2lilithcat
I don't know that I share your fascination, but one of my favorite novels about a writer is The Master, by Colm Tóibín, about Henry James. My review is here: http://www.librarything.com/work/10150/reviews/46231662
3Limelite
Thanks! I have that book packed away somewhere. I can tell from your review it's a book I would love. You've inspired me to dig it out. Read Brooklyn by Toibin, and while it was a good tale, I didn't judge it to be a really good book. "Master" sounds more like it.
I enjoyed reading a novel about G H Hardy and the Indian math genius Ramanujan, whose career in mathematics Hardy fostered. Not writers, the two of them, but publishers of mathematical treatises. The book is The Indian Clerk by David Leavitt.
I enjoyed reading a novel about G H Hardy and the Indian math genius Ramanujan, whose career in mathematics Hardy fostered. Not writers, the two of them, but publishers of mathematical treatises. The book is The Indian Clerk by David Leavitt.
