Month: December 2025

A Semi-Comprehensive Look at Semi-Autobiographical Novels

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In early 2016, I wrote about semi-autobiographical novels. Now that nearly 10 years have passed, I suppose it would be semi-okay to write about those books again — mentioning semi-autobiographical novels I’ve read since then or had read before then but didn’t mention in that previous post. So, with this semi-decent first paragraph nearly done, here goes:

As I wrote in ’16, semi-autobiographical novels “can be the best of both worlds for authors and their readers. That mix of memoir and fiction takes facts and embellishes them and/or dramatizes them and/or smooths them into more coherent form. A partly autobiographical approach also allows authors to potentially pen very heartfelt books — after all, they lived the emotions — and perhaps provides those writers with some mental therapy, too.” I also wrote that a semi-autobiographical novel is often, but of course not always, a debut novel — at least partly because that kind of book might be easier to write; the author can use aspects of her or his own past.

Back here in late 2025, I just read The Cat’s Table by Michael Ondaatje, whose 2011 coming-of-age novel was inspired to an extent by the author’s life and a ship voyage he took as a boy from his native Sri Lanka to rejoin his mother in England after his parents had separated several years earlier. A boy named…hmm…Michael. The Cat’s Table is another compelling book by The English Patient author, who went on to live in Canada.

Another semi-autobiographical/coming-of-age novel (those two things often go together) is Betty Smith’s 1943 bestseller A Tree Grows in Brooklyn — about a brainy girl (Francie) growing up in an impoverished urban family.

Then there’s Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, who loosely based her classic 1868-69 novel on herself and her three sisters.

A few decades earlier, Mary Shelley’s apocalyptic 1826 novel The Last Man featured three principal characters based on herself, her late husband Percy Bysshe Shelley, and their friend and fellow writer Lord Byron.

Aldous Huxley also used famous people as models for characters in his 1928 novel Point Counter Point — including himself, Nancy Cunard, D.H. Lawrence, and Katherine Mansfield.

The characters in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird (1960) are somewhat modeled on the author’s father (attorney Atticus Finch in the novel), herself (Scout in the book) and Lee’s childhood friend Truman Capote (fictionally named Dill).

Kurt Vonnegut’s horrific World War II experiences were fuel for his sci-fi-infused 1969 novel Slaughterhouse-Five, and Jack Kerouac’s travel experiences provided fodder for his On the Road (1957).

Some of the semi-autobiographical novels mentioned in my 2016 post include James Baldwin’s Go Tell It on the Mountain, Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine, Charlotte Bronte’s Villette, Rita Mae Brown’s Rubyfruit Jungle, Charles Bukowski’s Hollywood, Willa Cather’s My Antonia, Colette’s The Vagabond, Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield, E.L. Doctorow’s World’s Fair, Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The House of the Dead, George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Blithedale Romance, Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, Jack London’s Martin Eden, W. Somerset Maugham’s Of Human Bondage, Herman Melville’s Typee, L.M. Montgomery’s Emily trilogy, Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, John Steinbeck’s East of Eden, and Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club.

Your thoughts about, and examples of, this topic?

Misty the cat says: “When Christmas-tree lights reflect off the window, it’s a pane in the grass.”

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 Amazon reviews are welcome. 🙂 )

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

I’m also the author of a 2017 literary-trivia book…

…and a 2012 memoir that focuses on cartooning and more, including many encounters with celebrities.

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 — which contains a tale of two meetings — is here.

Duality Is Their Reality

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Today is the first day of winter in the Northern Hemisphere, but it was also still autumn for a few hours. So, a two-faced day.

As in real life, some fictional characters also have two faces — offering different personas at different times and in different situations. This can be among the many building blocks involved in making a character complex, nuanced, and three-dimensional.

Perhaps the most literal depiction of a Janus-like character is the star of Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The duality in Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1886 novel happens when Jekyll, a basically good man with some repressed dark tendencies, takes a potion that turns him into the evil Hyde.

But things are usually somewhat more subtle when it comes to characters with binary tendencies.

For instance, the villainous Count Fosco can also be quite charming in Wilkie Collins’ 1860 classic The Woman in White.

Much more recently, we have Percival Everett’s 2024 novel James, which reimagines Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the vantage point of escaped slave Jim — after Twain mostly focused on Huck in his 1884 book. The duality here is that James, in a recognizable self-preservation maneuver, speaks in a different way (intellectually) to his fellow Black people than to white people (with whom he plays dumb). James, which I read last week, won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction earlier this year.

Jim’s dual persona reminds me of female characters who are smarter and/or more strategic than they let on. Daisy Buchanan of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (1925) would be one example.

Returning to contemporary literature, we have Val McDermid’s crime series about cold-case detective Karen Pirie. She is mostly tough while on the job — both with suspects and with the people (including sexist men) she works with — while Pirie’s more vulnerable side emerges in her personal life.

Then there are the characters who are warrior-like in battle even as they can have more-tender aspects when not fighting. Jamie Fraser of Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series certainly has those two elements.

Sometimes, two parts of a personality exist more consecutively than simultaneously — as with young Neville Longbottom of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series. He starts off bumbling and insecure, but eventually becomes quite courageous. Perhaps that arc is more maturity than duality.

Any comments about and/or examples of this topic?

Misty the cat says: “It’s the first day of winter. Autumn must still be around here somewhere.”

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 Amazon reviews are welcome. 🙂 )

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

I’m also the author of a 2017 literary-trivia book…

…and a 2012 memoir that focuses on cartooning and more, including many encounters with celebrities.

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 — which has a dystopian novel theme as it discusses 19 school-district jobs saved and 84 not saved (evoking George Orwell’s 1984) — is here.

Observe the Learning Curve

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Sometimes, authors dazzle with their debut novels. Mary Shelley and Frankenstein. Emily Bronte and Wuthering Heights. Carson McCullers and The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. Ralph Ellison and Invisible Man. Arundhati Roy and The God of Small Things. Zadie Smith and White Teeth. Etc.

But more frequently there’s somewhat of a learning curve for authors, which is totally natural — and totally the topic of this post.

I came to this topic via the work of Stephenie Meyer, three of whose novels I recently read in reverse order: first The Chemist (2016), then The Host (2008), and then Twilight (2005). Twilight was of course Meyer’s mega-bestselling debut featuring a teen human and teen vampire who fall in love. An interesting take on the vampire genre that held my interest even as it was too often written in a pedestrian way. Published three years later, The Host turned out to be a fascinating sci-fi story — and more skillfully crafted. Finally, The Chemist thriller about a hunted female ex-government agent was full of superb prose and dialogue. Meyer’s wordsmithing arc was impressive.

It all reminded me a bit of J.K. Rowling’s progression. The first Harry Potter novel was compelling and tons of fun as the author did her world-building, even as the writing itself was not super-scintillating. But Rowling’s prose and dialogue got better and better as her next six wizard-realm books emerged, and continued in that direction with the skillfully written The Casual Vacancy and the riveting crime series starring private investigators Cormoran Strike and Robin Ellacott.

Both Rowling and Meyer can be rather long and wordy in their more recent offerings, but I’m here for it.

Going much further back in time, I liked the feminist idea of Jack London’s early novel A Daughter of the Snows, but the dialogue was laughable and the prose clunky. One year later, London’s pitch-perfect The Call of the Wild was released. I don’t know what writing elixir the author imbibed during those 12 months, but I want it. 🙂

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s college-set debut novel This Side of Paradise is quite uneven, only hinting at the greatness of The Great Gatsby published just five years later.

John Steinbeck’s debut novel Cup of Gold was an okay, rather conventional pirate novel before much of his later fiction became light years better — including, of course, his masterpiece The Grapes of Wrath.

Willa Cather’s first two novels — Alexander’s Bridge and O Pioneers! — exhibited some authorial growing pains before they were followed by her absorbing The Song of the Lark and then the masterful My Antonia.

Dan Brown’s early-career novel The Da Vinci Code was VERY popular and quite ingenious in its way but even more awkwardly written than Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight. I never read Brown again, but I assume his writing improved?

Any comments about, or examples of, this theme?

Misty the cat asks: “How am I supposed to shovel this stuff without opposable thumbs?”

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 Amazon reviews are welcome. 🙂 )

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

I’m also the author of a 2017 literary-trivia book…

…and a 2012 memoir that focuses on cartooning and more, including many encounters with celebrities.

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 — which has “no appeal” appeal — is here.

Feline Post Includes Mentions of Jane Austen and ‘The Host’

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I, Misty the cat, say: “Putting together a guest blog post is like putting together a puzzle.” (Photo of my kitty self taken by my adult female human Laurel.)

Misty the cat here, returning for my every-two-month takeover of Dave’s blog — which I do by gunpoint, minus the gun. This is a particularly memorable time for me to post because tomorrow is the 8th anniversary of my adoption into my forever family, from whom I’ve received everything I could desire except a bed the size and shape of Buckingham Palace. King Chuck III has some ‘splaining to do.

And in nine days — December 16 — there’ll be a milestone moment for literature: the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s 1775 birth! Rebecca Budd, who comments here every week, has already posted about that anniversary in one of her great blogs. The year 1775 was also significant for being the start of the American Revolutionary War and for Apple’s rollout of the iMusket 9.

Back to Austen. I’m often (well, never) asked how I rank her six novels, and here’s my kitty answer: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Oh, you want titles, too? 1) Persuasion. 2) Pride and Prejudice. 3) Sense and Sensibility. 4) Mansfield Park. 5) Emma. 6) Northanger Abbey. This is also Dave’s order of faves (rhyme alert!), which means we were both bribed by the same literary scholars. Austen’s early 19th-century books have aged well…partly because I keep them in my wine cellar. Actually, I don’t have a wine cellar. No cat does.

And today, December 7, is the 84th anniversary of the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, an event vividly depicted near the end of Herman Wouk’s compelling novel The Winds of War. If those winds had become strong enough, Wouk’s book would’ve been titled The Hurricanes of War — storms that fall alphabetically between Hurricane Violin and Hurricane Xylophone.

The Winds of War was followed by Wouk’s epic War and Remembrance — the title of which has the initials “WAR.” Coincidence? Well, Hurricane Coincidence falls alphabetically between Hurricane Bassoon and Hurricane Didgeridoo.

My current reading? I, Misty the cat, recently finished Twilight author Stephenie Meyer’s The Host, an excellent work of sci-fi that stars a being who lives inside a human body. So, no, the book is not a historical novel about Johnny Carson, who was not related to The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter author Carson McCullers, who was a top-notch writer but apparently didn’t know that a heart can’t hunt animals without a permit and that vegans prefer Fannie Flagg’s novel Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe. Also, American frontiersman Kit Carson was not a feline like me.

Natty Bumppo did the frontiersman thing, too, in James Fenimore Cooper’s five “Leatherstocking” novels that included The Last of the Mohicans. Cooper was an American contemporary of aforementioned Englishwoman Jane Austen, and there are even rumors that they collaborated on a novel called The Last of the Emmas. So I’m puzzled (see photo) that we later had people such as actresses Emma Thompson and Emma Watson.

The latter of course played Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter movies based on the J.K. Rowling novels. Seven books, eight movies, and nine lives (experienced by cats like me). Plus there are 10 characters in Agatha Christie’s famed mystery novel And Then There Were None, whose plot focuses on the number of dry-food pellets left in my bowl after I finish eating. No mystery where those pellets went.

Which books do I want for Christmas? Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, Fannie Flagg’s A Redbird Christmas, John Grisham’s Skipping Christmas, Betty Smith’s A Christmas Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Anthony Burgess’ A Christmas Orange, Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Christmas and Punishment, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New Christmas, Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Christmashead, E.M. Forster’s A Passage to Christmas, Chinua Achebe’s Christmas Falls Apart…

Dave will reply to comments as I either finish the puzzle I’m photographed with or swat every piece of that puzzle into January 2026.

I, Misty the cat, say: “There’s gotta be a sidewalk sale around here somewhere.”

Dave and 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 Amazon reviews are welcome. 🙂 )

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

Dave is also the author of a 2017 literary-trivia book…

…and a 2012 memoir that focuses on cartooning and more, including many encounters with celebrities.

In addition to this weekly blog, Dave writes the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column every Thursday for Montclair Local. The latest piece — from which Sir Walter Scott should remove himself from discussion of a referendum-halting court decision — is here.