Recently, I have been re-reading Munro’s book through a Gothic lens in relation to research for my portfolio project. It eerily reminds me of the really awful book I wrote fifteen years ago. There are so many similarities it’s almost creepy, but my story was very poorly written (I see now) whereas Munro’s is essentially perfect. Anyway, Munro’s book reminds me a lot of my own life growing up as well. So if her book reminds me of my life, and her book is like my own book, then I must have subconsciously been writing about my own life, in some way, those fifteen years ago.
Which brings me to a quote I recently found while doing research for my modernist essay. It is by a scholar named Aaron Jaffe, who writes: “writers frequently tell more about their true selves and convictions under the guise of fiction than they will confess publicly.” I didn’t mean for my book to be about me, but looking back on it now I can see where my true self was in there. A teacher friend of mine read it to her grade 6/7 class a few years ago and she said she could hear me in it. But I didn’t intend to present at all in my recent story about the “conversation house.” Yet, a friend of mine who read that story said that he could sense so much of me in it. That sort of disturbed me and I can’t exactly say why. But I think that’s why fiction resonates so well, because it is an expression of the author’s convictions and that makes it socially relevant. So when my husband asks why I want to read stories that aren’t even real, I guess it’s because all fiction, to some degree, has this element of ‘real’ to it, the real expression of the author’s take on the world.
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