The biographical novel is a true and documented story of one human being's journey across the face of the years, transmuted from the raw material of life into the delight and purity of an authentic art form.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Of all the species of literary composition, perhaps biography is the most delightful. The attention concentrated on one individual gives a unity to the materials of which it is composed, which is wanting in general history.
In the biographical novel, there's only one person involved. I, the author, spend two to five years becoming the main character. I do that so by the time you get to the bottom of Page 2 or 3, you forget your name, where you live, your profession and the year it is. You become the main character of the book. You live the book.
For the serious biographer, history and the life story of a real individual are inseparably intertwined. Get the facts wrong, or distort them, and the life story gets distorted: becomes fiction.
I see myself as writing biographies, the complete story of someone's life.
I think a biography is only as interesting as the lives and times it illuminates.
An autobiography is a life story. It starts when you're born and continues until the end.
The biographical novel sets out to document this truth, for character is plot, character development is action, and character fulfillment is resolution.
Despite its challenges, the novel offers an opportunity to live in one story for years of your imaginative life. There's a tremendous richness to that.
The book is openly a kind of spiritual autobiography, but the trick is that on any other level it's a kind of insane collage of fragments of memory.
The biographer who writes the life of his subject's self-concept passes through a fade into the inner house of life.