Monday, January 2, 2017

Five times authors included themselves as characters...and it worked

At the B&N Reads blog Jeff Somers tagged "five times authors included themselves as characters and hit it out of the park." One entry on the list:
Bret Easton Ellis in Lunar Park

One of the little-discussed aspects of Ellis’s writing is the fact that over the course of his novels he’s created a very complex and inter-related universe. Characters and events appear in multiple books, meaning all of the horrible things Ellis has written have occurred in one single universe populated by a small number of misanthropes. He wins in Lunar Park because he begins the story based in reality: the early goings of the novel are a more or less accurate (and personal) retelling of Ellis’s actual experiences in the early years of his fame. In fact, if you’re unfamiliar with Ellis, you won’t even know when he begins to edge into fiction—which means, in the end, his whole life is part of the awful, amazing universe he’s created.
Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue