Biofiction Introduction

a/b:Auto/Biography

New Literary History 24:3, 1993

New Literary History, vol.24, no.3, Summer 1993. 683-95. ISSN 0028-6087

African American Review, 2023

Louis Edwards has written a marvelous biographical novel about Oscar Wilde. In this interview, he clarifies how his novel, which focuses on Wilde's year-long journey through North America from the perspective of his Black valet, works through the logic of existential freedom.

Biofiction has become a dominant literary form in recent years. But why did it come into being and what is it uniquely capable of doing? Using the work of Walter Benjamin, I identify a couple major developments in intellectual history that necessitated the rise and legitimization of biofiction. My claim is that the biographical novel is both realist and surrealist, and as such, it can better picture major historical collisions than the classical historical novel. I examine biographical novels about Walter Benjamin and Friedrich Nietzsche to make my case. This paper is from the Modernist Studies Association conference in Pasadena 2016.

This is the introduction to my book of interviews with biographical novelists from across the globe. Unlike Truthful Fictions, which contained only my interviews, many other scholars interviewed prominent biographical novelists for this book. My plan is to submit the book to my editor by early February. If you spot any errors or have any suggestions for improvement, please let me know. I still need to write a conclusion. For your benefit, here is the table of contents: Conversations with Biographical Novelists: Truthful Fictions across the Globe Edited by Michael Lackey Table of Contents Kevin Barry, interviewed by Stuart Kane: Positive Contamination in the Biographical Novel Laurent Binet, interviewed by Monica Latham: Reflections on Truth, Veracity, Fictionalization, and Falsification Javier Cercas, interviewed by Virginia Rademacher: Resisting the “dictatorship of the present” in the Biographical Novel Barbara Chase-Riboud, interviewed by Melanie Masterton Sherazi: Sally Hemings’ Staircase: On Biofiction’s Afterlives Emma Donoghue, interviewed by Michael Lackey: Voicing the Nobodies in the Biographical Novel David Ebershoff, interviewed by Michael Lackey: The Biographical Novel as Life Art Hannah Kent, interviewed by Kelly Gardiner: Fictions of Women David Lodge, interviewed by Bethany Layne: The Bionovel as a Hybrid Genre Colum McCann, interviewed by Michael Lackey: Contested Realities in the Biographical Novel Anchee Min, interviewed by Michael Lackey: The Biographical Novelist as Cultural Diagnostician Rosa Montero, interviewed by Virginia Rademacher: Speculative Subjectivities and the Biofictional Surge Stephanus Muller, interviewed by Willemien Froneman: Stitching up the Auto/Biographical Seam Sabina Murray, interviewed by Michael Lackey: Complex Psychologies in the Biographical Novel Nuala O’Connor, interviewed by Julie A. Eckerle: The Slant Truth of the Biographical Novel Susan Sellers, interviewed by Bethany Layne: Postmodernism and the Biographical Novel Colm Tóibín, interviewed by Bethany Layne: The Anchored Imagination of the Biographical Novel Olga Tokarczuk, interviewed by Robert Kusek and Wojciech Szymański: I Believe in the Novel Chika Unigwe, interviewed by Michael Lackey: Biographical Fiction and the Creation of Possible Lives

Authorizing Early Modern European Women, 2022

Focusing attention upon early modern European women as creators and practitioners, the essays in this volume examine women from saints to midwives, visual artists to writers, who authored their own visions and who have in turn been authored and authorized by modern writers interested in telling their stories in biographies and through fictionalizations. This opening chapter introduces the contemporary scholars and creative writers who are grappling with the challenges of recreating early modern women from Spain, Flanders, Scotland, England, Italy, the Netherlands, and Mexico (then New Spain); and provides a framework for their assessments from the emerging field of biofiction, or fictionalizations of actual figures.

The 1990s witnessed the legitimization of what we now refer to as the biographical novel. Many prominent mid-twentieth century intellectuals critiqued and sometimes condemned this form of fiction, but by the 1990s, it had become so popular that it was no longer possible to ignore or disregard it. In this seminar, students will specifically read biographical novels from the nineteenth century until the present. There has been little scholarship about the nature of the biographical novel. This is a great opportunity for you, as you can be one of the first to create a system of knowledge to make sense of this aesthetic form, and that is what we will do during the course of this semester.

As far as I can tell, Oscar Wilde was the first person to make a comment about biofiction. In this paper, I examine what led Wilde to think about biofiction, and I demonstrate that many contemporary authors of biofiction have adopted his aesthetic approach, whether they know his work or not. I focus on William Styron's The Confessions of Nat Turner, Colm Toibin's The Master, Colum McCann's TransAtlantic, and Mario Vargas Llosa's The Dream of the Celt.

Authorizing Early Modern European Women: From Biography to Biofiction, 2022

Focusing attention upon early modern European women as creators and practitioners, the essays in this volume examine women from saints to midwives, visual artists to writers, who authored their own visions and who have in turn been "authored" and "authorized" by modern writers interested in telling their stories in biographies and through fictionalizations. This opening chapter introduces the contemporary scholars and creative writers who are grappling with the challenges of recreating early modern women from Spain, Flanders, Scotland, England, Italy, the Netherlands, and Mexico (then New Spain); and provides a framework for their assessments from the emerging field of biofiction, or fictionalizations of actual figures.

Biofiction and Writers' Afterlives, 2020

How can we explain the origins of biofiction? Scholars suggest that the history-of-science contributed significantly to the rise of the historical novel, which exposes the way historical forces shape and determine the human. Many scholars treat the biographical novel as a form of the historical novel. But by looking at some authors of biofiction who opposed the determinism and even fatalism implicit in the history-as-science approach and its concomitant aesthetic form, the historical novel, I show how biofiction came into being as an aesthetic reaction against the historical novel. Instead of picturing the historical forces that shape and determine the human, the biographical novel gives readers a model of a figure that defies or evades environmental conditioning or cultural determinism by shaping and determining the world around him or her. In this essay, I focus on Oscar Wilde, Friedrich Nietzsche, Henry James, and Colm Toibin.