Topical Guide 206
Mark Dorset
Autobiography and Fiction
Reality: Real and Fictional
I am often asked whether the Larry Peters books that I have written are autobiographical. They are and they are not. It’s not surprising, I suppose, that the characters in my version of Larry Peters have acquired some of the habits, expressions, and physical characteristics of people that I have actually known. Larry’s friend Rocky King has become more and more like my friend Raskol. Lucinda and Marie exhibit aspects of most of the girls and women I ever had any interest in. Larry’s father and mother seem to be composed of equal parts derived from the depictions of them in the earlier Larry Peters books, my own parents, and both sets of my grandparents. I have also included details and props from my life in Larry’s: the kittens that live beneath the Peterses’ front porch are the very kittens I pursued on my grandparents’ lawn the day that Mr. Beaker introduced Eliza Foote to us, the day that my mother fell out of her lawn chair. The alabaster busts of Peterses that reside in lighted niches in the wall along the staircase are derived from the coconuts my great-grandmother carved to represent Leroys. In that capacious summer during which all the adventures occur, there is room for everything, and nothing changes much once it has been admitted into Larry’s world. So, at the top of the Peterses’ house, my great-grandmother lives forever, unchanging, still strong, playing the part of the matriarch of the Peters bunch, offering the guidance that so often holds the key to the solution of the mystery in each book. …
Larry’s adventures are more likely to be little adventures of his growing-up, which turn out to resemble the little adventures of my own.Little Follies, “Call Me Larry”
It will not, I trust, be supposed by any reader that I have intended in this so-called autobiography to give a record of my inner life. No man ever did so truly,—and no man ever will. Rousseau probably attempted it, but who doubts but that Rousseau has confessed in much the thoughts and convictions rather than the facts of his life? If the rustle of a woman’s petticoat has ever stirred my blood; if a cup of wine has been a joy to me; if I have thought tobacco at midnight in pleasant company to be one of the elements of an earthly Paradise; if now and again I have somewhat recklessly fluttered a £5 note over a card-table; of what matter is that to any reader?
A writer, for purposes of future collecting of material, needs personal privacy and disguises. Since telling the truth is merely a version of events anyway and nobody else’s “truth,” the essential thing is to convey similar effects, similar emotions and in my own case arrive at artistic truth by artistic means, instead of handicapping myself by withholding some facts and enlarging or distorting others. Better to fictionalize all—more pleasure and more freedom. Deciding this, I believe I can achieve much more interesting and worthwhile effects. Dance Night was completely fiction as I was working on it. Yet it is more autobiographical (with facts translated into their own value emotionally and structurally) than any autobiography I can imagine.
Form and Content
Making everything snap together at the end is what makes the writing of each Larry Peters book an adventure for me; it provides the small part of writing them that is play. I’ve tried, most of the time, to make an object or an idea control the book, like a cotter pin, say, that appears and reappears unexpectedly—at the bottom of a drawer, in someone’s pocket, hanging improbably on a gold chain—and snapping into place at the end as the pin that holds the whole gadget together. Not everyone likes that sort of thing, of course, and many of my readers have written quite persuasive letters asking for fewer cotter pins and more laughs.
Little Follies, “Call Me Larry”
What I want to show in my work is the idea that hides itself behind so-called reality. I am seeking the bridge from the visible to the invisible. . . . It may sound paradoxical, but it is, in fact, reality which forms the mystery of our existence. . . . One of my problems is to find the self, which has only one form and is immortal. . . . Art is creative for the sake of realization, not for amusement; for transfiguration, not for the sense of play. It is the quest of our self that drives us along the eternal and never-ending journey we must all make.
Max Beckman, in remarks delivered before an English audience in 1938
If you want to reproduce an object, two elements are required: first, the identification with the object must be perfect; and second, it should contain, in addition, something quite different. This second element is difficult to explain. Almost as difficult as to discover one’s self. In fact, it is just this element of your own self that we are all in search of.
Max Beckman, in remarks delivered to his first art class in the US in 1947
[Note: Both of the preceding passages are from Self-Portrait in Words: Collected Writings and Statements, 1903–1950, by Max Beckman, quoted by John Updike in “Bridges to the Invisible” in The New York Review of Books, November 28, 1996.]
Four months later, Flaubert already has a clear idea of the real worth of the first Tentation; half a year of work on Madame Bovary has brought him round to condemning improvisation and defending the “planning” of a novel. He writes as much [in his letter of February 1, 1852] to Louise [Colet], who has read the manuscript of the Tentation and praised it: “It’s a failure. You talk of pearls. But it’s not pearls that make the necklace; it’s the thread. I myself was the St. Antoine in Sainte Antoine and I forgot that. He is a character that remains to be created . . . Everything depends on the plan. Sainte Antoine lacks one.”
Mario Vargas Llosa, The Perpetual Orgy: Flaubert and Madame Bovary
I would say that the moment an object appears in a narrative, it is charged with a special force and becomes like the pole of a magnetic field, a knot in the network of invisible relationships. The symbolism of an object may be more or less explicit, but it is always there. We might even say that in a narrative any object is always magic.
Italo Calvino, Six Memos for the Next Millennium: “Quickness”
Discovered yesterday at the Irish Arts Center:
Katie Holten’s Irish Tree Alphabet allows us to write with Irish Trees. The project explores language ecosystems and the importance of our words and the stories that we tell. The artist has made drawings of trees, existing natives as well as non-native trees that now call Ireland home due to the changing climate. Each tree replaces a letter in the Latin alphabet; A = Ailm (Scots Pine), B = Beith (Birch), C = Coll (Hazel), etc. The result is a new Irish Tree Alphabet and a typeface called Irish Trees. The project finds roots and inspiration in Ogham, a medieval alphabet used primarily to write the early Irish language, in which the characters or letters were called feda “trees,” or nin “forking branches” due to their shape.
From Katie Holten’s website, where you can download the Irish Tree Alphabet as a font (free of charge) and “translate” a text into Irish Tree (also free of charge).
Holten has also created a New York City Tree alphabet and font.
[more to come on Wednesday, March 2, 2022]
Have you missed an episode or two or several?
You can begin reading at the beginning or you can catch up by visiting the archive or consulting the index to the Topical Guide.
You can listen to the episodes on the Personal History podcast. Begin at the beginning or scroll through the episodes to find what you’ve missed.
You can ensure that you never miss a future issue by getting a free subscription. (You can help support the work by choosing a paid subscription instead.)
At Apple Books you can download free eBooks of “My Mother Takes a Tumble,” “Do Clams Bite?,” “Life on the Bolotomy,” “The Static of the Spheres,” “The Fox and the Clam,” “The Girl with the White Fur Muff,” and “Take the Long Way Home,” the first seven novellas in Little Follies.
You’ll find an overview of the entire work in An Introduction to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy. It’s a pdf document.