Fiction as Autobiography

Earlier this year, the New York Times Sunday Book Review ran a piece by Jami Attenberg entitled "It's My Fiction, Not My Life." I clipped it out when it ran and then lost it in a pile of papers.

Authors, Attenberg noted, are very frequently asked by readers how much of a story they have written is autobiographical. Some smile are willing to answer in one fashion or another, no matter how frequently they are asked. But many others are not so accommodating.