M & D Group Read (cont)

[Jochen Stremmel]

Apropos including biography in work:

The fiction I’m most interested in has lines of reference to the real
world. None of my stories really *happened*, of course. But there’s always
something, some element, something said to me or that I witnessed, that may
be the starting place. Here’s an example: “That’s the last Christmas you’ll
ever ruin for us!” I was drunk when I heard that, but I remembered it. And
later, much later, when I was sober, using only that one line and other
things I imagined, imagined so accurately that they *could* have happened,
I made a story—“A Serious Talk.” But the fiction I’m most interested in,
whether it’s Tolstoy’s fiction, Chekhov, Barry Hannah, Richard Ford,
Hemingway, Isaac Babel, Ann Beattie, or Anne Tyler, strikes me as
autobiographical to some extent. At the very least it’s referential.
Stories long or short don’t just come out of thin air. I’m reminded of a
conversation involving John Cheever. We were sitting around a table in Iowa
City with some people and he happened to remark that after a family fracas
at his home one night, he got up the next morning and went into the
bathroom to find something his daughter had written in lipstick on the
bathroom mirror: “D-e-r-e daddy, don’t leave us.” Someone at the table
spoke up and said, “I recognize that from one of your stories.” Cheever
said, “Probably so. Everything I write is autobiographical.” Now of course
that’s not literally true. But everything we write is, in some way,
autobiographical. I’m not in the least bothered by “autobiographical”
fiction. To the contrary. *On the Road*. Céline. Roth. Lawrence Durrell in *The
Alexandria Quartet*. So much of Hemingway in the Nick Adams stories.
Updike, too, you bet. Jim McConkey. Clark Blaise is a contemporary writer
whose fiction is out-and-out autobiography. Of course, you have to know
what you’re doing when you turn your life’s stories into fiction. You have
to be immensely daring, very skilled and imaginative and willing to tell
everything on yourself. You’re told time and again when you’re young to
write about what you know, and what do you know better than your own
secrets? But unless you’re a special kind of writer, and a very talented
one, it’s dangerous to try and write volume after volume on The Story of My
Life. A great danger, or at least a great temptation, for many writers is
to become too autobiographical in their approach to their fiction. A little
autobiography and a lot of imagination are best.



2018-01-11 11:27 GMT+01:00 matthew cissell <mccissell at gmail.com>:

> Hi,
>
> DePugh is rarely a first name; this character gets the double French
> touch: DePugh LeSpark. It is mentioned he is good with numbers after which
> the Rev bids the Lord watch over the young man in from Cambridge.
>
> Doesn't seem to fit an allusion to Robert DePugh of Minutemen infamy. So
> then what?
>
> Might seem a stretch, but the most famous name in US pop culture that is
> close is... Pepe Le Pew. I believe TP was really influenced by Loony Tunes,
> a-and not just Porky, ok? But does it fit? Not sure. Then again the
> character is fairly minor so there isn't a lot of weight hanging on the
> name. Is it that his math talent is a "debut of the Spark"? Maybe. Smart
> kid off to school far from home... sound familiar? Remember TP himself once
> indicated that he includes his biography in his work (not a verbatim quote).
>
> ciao
> mc
>
> On Wed, Jan 10, 2018 at 5:26 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> DePugh is not "common" in the US, but it isn't unheard of.  The second
>> sylable is pronounced "pew."
>>
>>
>> <http://www.avg.com/email-signature?utm_medium=email&utm_source=link&utm_campaign=sig-email&utm_content=webmail> Virus-free.
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>>
>> On Wed, Jan 10, 2018 at 10:14 AM, Thomas Eckhardt <
>> thomas.eckhardt at uni-bonn.de> wrote:
>>
>>> I don't believe it is of much significance, but has it been mentioned
>>> that "DePugh" is also the surname of the founder of the Minutemen?
>>>
>>> Is DePugh a common name in the US? Do US-Americans think of Robert
>>> DePugh when they read "DePugh"? Is the second syllable pronounced "pew"?
>>> -
>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>>>
>>
>>
>
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