Paying Deference to Novelistic Self-Reference

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Was W. Somerset Maugham relaxing after appearing in his own book? Maybe. 🙂

Our attention is definitely captured when authors directly or indirectly refer to themselves and their own books in their novels.

This can give readers an additional sense of a writer’s personality, and provide other extra elements to a book — including humor. On the possibly negative side, “self-insertion” can puncture fiction’s illusory world and remind readers that there’s an authorial presence pulling the strings.

The example of “self-insertion” I noticed most recently was when Elin Hilderbrand had one of her fictional characters in The Five-Star Weekend buy a Hilderbrand novel while in a Nantucket bookstore. Some delightful authorial self-mocking was part of the scene as another character tried to ply the Hilderbrand-interested character with more “serious” literature.

In Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote novel, the title character has Cervantes’ debut book in his library. Also, another character in the classic 17th-century work says he’s a friend of Cervantes.

Then there’s John Steinbeck’s East of Eden, which was partly inspired by the author’s own family history. So it’s not a total surprise when Steinbeck himself pops up for a brief cameo in the novel.

W. Somerset Maugham put somewhat more of his actual self in his latter-career novel The Razor’s Edge when his searching-for-meaning-in-life protagonist — the fictional Larry Darnell — has a deep discussion about spirituality and more in a Paris cafe with…Maugham. (Of Human Bondage, the Maugham novel considered that author’s masterpiece, is actually more semi-autobiographical than The Razor’s Edge.)

And Emile Zola put a LOT of himself in his novel The Masterpiece; the book’s fictional author Pierre Sandoz is clearly based on Zola himself, who had a long real-life friendship with painter Paul Cezanne. The Masterpiece‘s protagonist — painter Claude Lantier — is partly based on Cezanne as well as Claude Monet and Edouard Manet.

In Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five, the narrator character is obviously Vonnegut himself. There are even these lines: “That was I. That was me. That was the author of this book.”

Herman Melville did a self-reference variation by having the title character in Pierre write a book that appalled its would-be publisher. This plot twist was a way for Melville to vent about the poor critical and commercial reception for Moby-Dick, released the previous year. Pierre — which, like Moby-Dick, was ahead of its time in various ways — would also sell badly, and cause lots of controversy with its implied-incest element.

Of course, as several early commenters rightly note below, most novelists put something of themselves in the books they write — even if subconsciously. My post mostly focused on when writers do this in a pretty overt way. 🙂

Your thoughts on, and examples of, this topic?

Misty the cat says: “I’m on the windswept moors of ‘Wuthering Heights.'”

My comedic 2024 book — the part-factual/part-fictional/not-a-children’s-work Misty the Cat…Unleashed — is described and can be purchased on Amazon in paperback or on Kindle. It’s feline-narrated! (And Misty says Amazon reviews are welcome. 🙂 )

This 90-second promo video for my book features a talking cat: 🙂

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…and a 2012 memoir that focuses on cartooning and more.


In addition to this weekly blog, I write the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column every Thursday for Montclair Local. The latest piece — about past-due school district bills, a township manager payout, diminished mass transit, and more — is here.

121 thoughts on “Paying Deference to Novelistic Self-Reference”

  2. Great discussion, Dave!
    I love the example of Slaughterhouse-Five, where Vonnegut seamlessly blends autobiography with fiction, making himself both an observer and participant. Stephen King takes it to another level in The Dark Tower series by making himself a literal character whose writing shapes the narrative’s reality.

    I’m learning, as you pointed out, authors inevitably leave traces of themselves in their work.😃

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    • Thank you, Carolyn! Excellent description of what Kurt Vonnegut did in “Slaughterhouse-Five”! Quite an innovative novel, really, and of course devastating to read. I have not gotten to Stephen King’s “The Dark Tower” series; maybe someday. 🙂

      “…authors inevitably leave traces of themselves in their work” — yes! Hard to avoid, even if a writer tried.

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      • Thanks, Dave. My late husband and I read this book together for a discussion group made up of many who had experienced the trauma of war.

        Honestly, I don’t think I would have picked it up on my own, but I’m so grateful I did. Hearing how deeply others in the group connected with it—and even found a strange sense of comfort in it—was an eye-opening experience. It really showed me the power of storytelling in making sense of difficult realities. 💕

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        • I can imagine how veterans — and civilians who also experienced the trauma of war — would react to “Slaughterhouse-Five,” Carolyn. Vonnegut being a veteran himself certainly helped him make the novel so powerful. And others lucky enough not to experience war could experience it, and be appalled by it, vicariously through the book.

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  4. Oh absolutely Stephen King! First of all, he often uses the same characters in completely unrelated books which is a bit of a reminder that the master of horror is behind all of the different creations. Secondly, he sometimes has his characters talk about other Stephen King books and movies. In one novel, there’s a discussion about the “Cujo” adaptation and some pretty big spoilers about the different endings! But the biggest example of Stephen King inserting himself into his own books is when there’s a character called Stephen King. In “The Dark Tower” there’s a fictional author who smokes and drinks too much, and is too lazy to give a crap about the world ending. I’d like to think he’s a bit different from the real Stephen King, but I feel that he must have got some sort of benefit from writing about some things he struggled with when he was younger. Whatever the reasons, I found it very entertaining reading.

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  5. I can understand why writers choose to embed themselves or their identities within their stories, creating a personal connection between their experiences and the narrative. This is not only the purview of writers. I have come across this in my exploration of art. These painters also positioned themselves in their artwork. Vincent van Gogh, Rembrandt van Rijn, Pablo Picasso, Frida Kahlo, Gustav Klimt, Diego Rivera, Henri Matisse and Edward Munch.

    I think that creatives like artists, painters, and poets often immerse themselves in their work as a means of expressing their innermost thoughts and emotions. This deep engagement allows them to explore their identities and connect with others on a profound level. Perhaps it is a way to achieve immortality; by leaving behind a body of work, which they hope will resonate with future generations.

    Your post and follow-up discussion, Dave, has prompted me to consider whether we, as bloggers, are doing much the same. We create and, in so doing, I believe that we build a bridge to others, past, present and into the future. I believe that we are writing the history of our generation. It is an exciting thought, is it not?

    As Pericles wrote many centuries ago, “What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others.”

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  7. Ha! What a great topic Dave! I’ve never even really thought about it! But then when you mentioned all the examples here, I was like “oh yeah they sure did do that! How sneaky!” LOL. As most of my own books take place in the distant past, I don’t foresee popping up in my own novels, but maybe someday haha! 🙂 So glad you’re enjoying Elin Hilderbrand! 🙂

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    • Thank you, M.B.! Ha — 😂 — well, there’s always time travel to get yourself into one of your novels. 🙂 Or perhaps one of your ancestors could appear. 🙂

      And, yes, I’m enjoying Elin Hilderbrand very much as I run through a good chunk of her “canon” (I’ve read 20 or her 30 novels so far 🙂 ). I’m so glad you recommended her work!

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  8. I wasn’t aware of (or hadn’t thought of) most of these Dave. It’s interesting. When you mentioned Kurt Vonnegut, I also thought that he references his other characters in his novels, but not in a serial recurring kind of way. Kilgore Trout and Mr. Rosewater come to mind. He also reminds us that’s he’s writing Breakfast of Champions.

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    • Thank you, Dan! Definitely true that Kurt Vonnegut not only did the self-reference thing in multiple novels but also mentioned some of the same characters in more than one otherwise pretty much stand-alone novels. Something Balzac and Emile Zola did, too, quite a bit in the 19th century.

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  9. I have never noticed an author referring directly to himself/herself (or to his/her work) in a novel. I find it an interesting thing to do but also disconcerting. I have had my detective Giuliana Linder read crime novels by Michael Connelly and Lee Child, but I would find it unbearably “cute” to portray her reading one of mine. Ridiculous, too, since she’s in them.

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    • Thank you, Kim! Very true that quite a few authors mention other authors/other authors’ novels in their books (as you did) — much more so than mentioning their own work. But when they do mention themselves or their own work, I don’t mind, even if things get a bit cutesy — and unrealistic in terms of the actual world and the fictional world intersecting. 🙂

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  11. What an interesting article! The only example that springs to mind is “The Dear Green Place” by Archie Hind. The novel is set in Glasgow, and the protagonist’s experience and struggles mirror the author’s life. I do like it, too, when writers play a minor part in a film adaptation of the book. That always gets my attention! 😊

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    • Thank you, Ada! I appreciate the example of “The Dear Green Place”!

      I also greatly enjoy it when authors make cameos in screen adaptions of their novels. 🙂 One example that comes to mind is Lee Child appearing briefly during the first season of the current TV version of his Jack Reacher books.

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  12. I’m really thankful of your question of this week, Dave, because since I have been reading “David Copperhead” I have been asking myself, whether the writer Barbara Kingsolver didn’t have put many of her own experiences into her book. It really seems that she had been snubbed for a long time because she, too, was from the country and therefore backward. This absolutely made her tackle the opioid crisis in Appalachia, the exploited region!

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  13. I’m thinking Capote in his book In Cold Blood, in which he inserts himself in the whole of it re the trial of the killers, visiting with them in jail, even attending one of their executions *yikes*. Then there’s Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-aid Acid Test and Hunter Thompson’s Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas. Yet these are all examples of journalism, which most definitely includes the author’s perspective and is not fiction such as Maugham’s The Razor’s Edge or Vonnegut’s Slaughter House-Five. Nice theme Dave. Susi

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    • Thank you, Susi! Great mentions! Though, as you say, the books you cited are not fiction per se, they almost have a fiction feel to them because of the creative way they’re written. Examples of the “New Journalism” style of writing, I guess. And those authors indeed don’t hesitate to put the “I” in their work.

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  14. I have just finished reading DeWitt Henry’s secon novel, Top Cop Kills. DeWitt pops up in one of the scenes toward the end “looking fit and harmless,” wearing running shorts. The character (Mike) then goes on to say that the author (DeWitt) got the facts of the story 80% right and the rest he just made up. I got such a kick out of it.

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  15. I can’t think of any authors that make overt self-reference in the way that you mention, Dave, but give me time. Along with many other authors I insert my own life-experiences into my books, when they’re suitable to a situation, but I don’t think I’d ever go for the direct reference. Having said that, I had a character in one book win an award, and when asked how they felt about it they claimed it to be ‘A fairytale come true’ – an oblique reference to my debut novel and one that I couldn’t resist. That’s about as close as I’d ever get, however. 🙂

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  16. Interesting observation, Dave, about “self-insertion” in novels. In the rare cases where I’ve noticed this, I found it jarring. For this reason, it’s not a writing device that I favor in storytelling. However, I think that the author has the right to determine what best serves the story being told.

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  18. Dave…I loved your phrase: …”delightful authorial self-mocking”. And thank you for the reminder from Slaughterhouse Five, “That was I. That was me. That was the author of this book.”
    You shared several examples that are new to me…thanks for this post! 😊

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  19. It’s clever of an author to put themselves in their fiction. Perhaps I could have Amanda enter a bookstore in a country far from Canada and purchase a book written by Darlene Foster. Probably not, I think that would be just too weird.

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  20. Thanks a lot for this detailed discussion of authors referencing themselves and/or their books in their fiction.
    I think every author puts a greater or lesser amount of themselves into their writing, and not just in autobiography. … but I can’t think of any other instances of the (shameless) self-referentiality you mentioned in your post.
    Sending a caress to Misty ❤️

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