Fiction: Truth be told DNA Tara Sahgal Wednesday, February 01, 2006 19:38 IST
We all look for writers in their books. Sniffing around for dirty laundry, judging their lives and choices or maybe comparing real-life others/husbands/children to their fictional ones. None of this 'readerly' behaviour is new, but really, we hardly have a choice with so many authors writing their lives for us. Over 100 years ago, Oscar Wilde was already doing it. A practicing bisexual married to a woman, Wilde scandalised Victorian society by presenting his life in his art - he was brave enough to broach the subject in his play 'An Ideal Husband', much to the delight/disgust of his eager audiences. Almost a 100 years on, readers and writers don't seem to have changed that much. For many writers, the biggest inspiration still seems to come from their personal lives, and readers are still lapping it up. Nicole Ritchie's novel 'The Truth about Diamonds' is about "a socialite with a rock star father who stars in a reality television series". Hmm, familiar! Lauren Weisberger, the author of 'The Devil Wears Prada', once worked for the powerful editor of Vogue magazine, Anna Wintour and in her novel, the protagonist works for Miranda Priestly, the satanic editor of Runway magazine. Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus, two former NYC nannies and the authors of 'The Nanny Diaries' claim that the characters in their novel are 'fictionalised' but the city's gossips are having a field day guessing who's who. The list is virtually inexhaustible and dishing the dirt is apparently as much a motivation to put pen to paper as social critique or self expression. But perhaps the most delicious reason is what gay Cuban poet and novelist Reinaldo Arenas said when asked why he writes. Quite simply he said, "Revenge." "I'm presently writing a novel about three young men growing up. Is it autobiographical? Yes and no - because it is about the horror of being young, but which is divided across my three characters," says Jerry Pinto. "Even though 'The Girl' is set in Goa, where I'm from, the story itself and the characters therein are fictional. I would write about Goa because the place and its people have contributed most strongly to the person that I have now become. It's common for a reader to want to understand the author through his or her characters. This is fair enough, because writers want their work to mirror themselves, they want their readers to know them better through their writing," says Sonia Faliero, author of the recently published novel, 'The Girl'.