# Readers: 2 related questions about books **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [December 5, 2012, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/readers-2-related-questions-about-books/643102 "2012-12-05T18:33:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![chinchalinchin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b9bd4f/32.png) [@chinchalinchin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chinchalinchin)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2012, 2:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/readers-2-related-questions-about-books/643102/21 "2012-12-06T14:44:14Z")
> [@movingfinger](#): > > I don’t recall the title but Philip K. Dick put himself in one of his books as a thinly disguised “Horselover Fat”. Valis. Although, Horselover Fat wasn’t actually the author’s persona. The main character referred to himself as Philip. Horselover was the main character’s split personality where he stored all the crazy nonsense about the robotic satelitte god (Vast Active Living Intelligent Satelitte, hence VALIS) who transmitted directly into his brain via a pink laser beam the revelation that time stopped somewhere around 400 AD and the American Empire was a virtual overlay of the Roman Empire. Or something. It really only made sense if you dosed yourself into a coma with LSD. Another famous example would be Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2012, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/readers-2-related-questions-about-books/643102/22 "2012-12-06T15:01:39Z")
Cyril Kornbluth put himself in the a story twice in the first paragraph. He had a bunch of fantasy stories published under his pen name Cecil Corwin. Then, his short story “MS Found in a Chinese Fortune Cookie” had Cecil Corwin as the protagonist sending out the manuscript in the title, which was mailed to C. M. Kornbluth: > [@Cecil Corwin/Cyril Kornbluth](#): > > They say I am mad, but I am not mad—damn it, I’ve written and sold two million words of fiction and I know better than to start a story like that, but this isn’t a story and they do say I’m mad—catatonic schizophrenia with assaultive episodes—and I’m not. _[This is clearly the first of the Corwin Papers. Like all the others it is written on a Riz-La cigarette paper with a ball point pen. Like all the others it is headed: Urgent. Finder please send to C. M. Kornbluth, Wantagh, N.Y. Reward! I might comment that this is typical of Corwin’s generosity with his friends’ time and money, though his attitude is at least this once justified by his desperate plight. As his longtime friend and, indeed, literary executor, I was clearly the person to turn to. CMK_] Korbluth had given up the Corwin pen name ten years earlier; the story explains why Corwin hadn’t published in awhile. John Barth included himself as one of the characters of his tour de force, **LETTERS** (Not by name, but one of the characters is the author of **LETTERS** ). Most of the characters in the book were from his earlier novels. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2012, 3:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/readers-2-related-questions-about-books/643102/23 "2012-12-06T15:15:36Z")
_Warday_ was a novel set in an America that had survived a limited nuclear war. The two authors, James Kunetka and Whitley Strieber, wrote the book as if it was non-fiction, with the two of them writing in the first person about the experiences traveling around America. Robert Anton Wilson inserted himself as a minor character in his Schrodinger’s Cat Trilogy. Trevanian made a reference to his real identity in _The Eiger Sanction_. An unusual case was the _Badge of Honor_ series. William Butterworth is a prolific author who writes under a variety of pseudonyms. In the early eighties, he had become well known for his _Brotherhood of War_ series, which he wrote under the name W.E.B. Griffin. In 1988, _Men in Blue_ a novel by John Kevin Dugan was published. It was the first book in a new series, _Badge of Honor_. Like many books, _Men in Blue_ was publicized by a favorable blurb on its cover from an established author, in this case W.E.B. Griffin. What makes this blurb unusual is that John Kevin Dugan was another pseudonym being used by Butterworth - he was offering a recommendation for his own book. This type of self-reference really has no effect to my enjoyment of a novel. ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2012, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/readers-2-related-questions-about-books/643102/24 "2012-12-06T15:48:57Z")
> [@movingfinger](#): > > I don’t recall the title but Philip K. Dick put himself in one of his books as a thinly disguised “Horselover Fat”. “Horselover Fat” being a translation of his name into English “Philip” derives from the Greek words for lover of horses [Philip - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_(name)) “Dick” derives from the German word for “thick” or “fat” ---
**Author:** ![tanstaafl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ba8739/32.png) [@tanstaafl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tanstaafl)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2012, 4:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/readers-2-related-questions-about-books/643102/25 "2012-12-06T16:03:42Z")
> [@Andy\_L](#): > > Isaac Asimov has characters in his Black Widower series and his Azazel refer to Asimov by name (generally disparagingly). Philip Jose’ Farmer had a character named Peter Jairus Frigate (a fairly obvious pseudonym) in his Riverworld series. Farmer also had a character named Paul Janus Finnegan show up in the later _World of Tiers_ novels. ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2012, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/readers-2-related-questions-about-books/643102/26 "2012-12-06T20:42:32Z")
Kinky Friedman’s main character is Kinky Friedman. Ed McBain inserted many a reference to Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds in his books, the giggle being that Evan Hunter (McBain’s alter ego) wrote the movie screenplay. In one book, a couple go to see the movie and have a big argument over whether the guy that wrote it was the same one that wrote Blackboard Jungle. It was. ---
**Author:** ![FeAudrey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/7feea3/32.png) [@FeAudrey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FeAudrey)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2012, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/readers-2-related-questions-about-books/643102/27 "2012-12-07T00:38:33Z")
Agatha Christie based her character “Ariadne Oliver” on herself: > **[Ariadne Oliver](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariadne_Oliver)** > > Ariadne Oliver is a fictional character in the novels of Agatha Christie. She is a mystery novelist and a friend of Hercule Poirot. > Mrs Oliver often assists Poirot in his cases through her knowledge of the criminal mind. She often claims to be endowed with particular "feminine intuition", but it usually leads her astray. She is particularly fond of apples, which becomes a plot point in the novel Hallowe'en Party. > In the books, Oliver's most famous works are those featuring her vegetarian Finn... Zoe Wanamaker played the character in a few of the Suchet/Poirot adaptions. ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2012, 1:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/readers-2-related-questions-about-books/643102/28 "2012-12-07T01:30:06Z")
Martin Amis appears as a character in _Money_, a novel I finished about a week ago and then mentioned in this forum. The protagonist is planning a film and calls upon Amis to revise the script. It’s an outstanding novel, IMHO, though I’m not sure whether to describe it as tragedy or farce. :smack: ---
**Author:** ![Kaio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/c68b51/32.png) [@Kaio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kaio)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2012, 10:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/readers-2-related-questions-about-books/643102/29 "2012-12-07T22:26:27Z")
So, if you came across an author you were unfamiliar with, would it influence your enjoyment of the story to read that the main character had the same first name as the author? ---
**Author:** ![President\_Johnny\_Gentle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/5f9b8f/32.png) [@President\_Johnny\_Gentle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/President_Johnny_Gentle)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2012, 10:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/readers-2-related-questions-about-books/643102/30 "2012-12-07T22:52:27Z")
> [@Yllaria](#): > > Kurt Vonnegut not only appeared in Breakfast of Champions, according to wikipedia he was the book’s deus ex machina. It’s been too long since I read it, so I don’t remember how he saved the day. Vonnegut appeared in other books as well. I remember Slaughterhouse Five and Timequake off of the top of my head. Strangely enough, Kilgore Trout appears as a character in all three novels. Trout was widely considered to be Vonnegut himself, given another name. ---
**Author:** ![Tim\_R.Mortiss](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tim_r.mortiss/32/142_2.png) [@Tim\_R.Mortiss](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_R.Mortiss)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2012, 11:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/readers-2-related-questions-about-books/643102/31 "2012-12-07T23:42:33Z")
> [@SCAdian](#): > > “I had this story from one who had no business to tell it to me, or to any other.” One of my favourite opening lines… I believe he did pretty much the same thing with “A Princess of Mars.” ---
**Author:** ![Ethilrist](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ethilrist/32/4604_2.png) [@Ethilrist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ethilrist)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2012, 12:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/readers-2-related-questions-about-books/643102/32 "2012-12-08T00:09:25Z")
Mercedes Lackey inserted herself into her fantasy novels as Herald Myste (she is known to her friends as “Misty”). Didn’t bother me too much because I didn’t even figure it out until I read a Q&A for the series. Spider Robinson has developed an annoying tendency to include several of his favorite fans into his novels, and it’s one of several things that I find annoying about his work. “Hm, let’s see, I need another couple of characters who are, among other things, SF fans… There’s no reason for Bob & Mary to show up in this story, but what the hell, I’ll just use them again.” Clive Cussler also includes life-long friends of his in his stories, with their actual names. They tend not to survive the prologue. ---
**Author:** ![Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmer_j.fudd/32/1211_2.png) [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2012, 12:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/readers-2-related-questions-about-books/643102/33 "2012-12-08T00:25:17Z")
> [@President\_Johnny\_Gentle](#): > > Vonnegut appeared in other books as well. I remember Slaughterhouse Five and Timequake off of the top of my head. Strangely enough, Kilgore Trout appears as a character in all three novels. Trout was widely considered to be Vonnegut himself, given another name. I think there may have been elements of Vonnegut’s personality in Trout but they are definitely different characters, since the two actually meet each other in _Breakfast of Champions_. It’s been a while since I read that book, but I believe Vonnegut attempts to personally apologize to Kilgore Trout for putting him through so much shit. IIRC, this attempted atonement is rewarded with personal injury. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2012, 8:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/readers-2-related-questions-about-books/643102/34 "2012-12-11T08:21:35Z")
The only way it could affect my reading after the fact is if I thought the insert character seemed like a Mary Sue even before I knew it was written by the author. It would just make me dislike the author more. If I know about it while I’m reading, it makes me more on the lookout for that stuff. ---
**Author:** ![BellRungBookShut-CandleSnuffed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bcef8e/32.png) [@BellRungBookShut-CandleSnuffed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BellRungBookShut-CandleSnuffed)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2012, 12:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/readers-2-related-questions-about-books/643102/35 "2012-12-11T12:54:15Z")
If you’re asking about the exact name this wouldn’t count, but Kafka had tons of characters that shared his name’s letter pattern (KAFKA - ABCAB), most notably being Gregor Samsa from The Metamorphosis. Kafka had some issues, so trying to decide how much of himself he was putting in his stories made for an interesting class. ---
**Author:** ![GreasyJack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/df705f/32.png) [@GreasyJack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreasyJack)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2012, 1:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/readers-2-related-questions-about-books/643102/36 "2012-12-11T13:39:47Z")
In _East of Eden_, John Steinbeck not only inserted himself as a the mostly non-participatory narrator but used a lot of his mother’s family as major characters in the otherwise fictional story. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2012, 2:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/readers-2-related-questions-about-books/643102/37 "2012-12-11T14:23:45Z")
In Simon Hawke’s _The Inadequate Adept_ and sequels the main villain is an evil wizard who is so powerful that he can hear the author when he writes in the narrative voice during scenes including him. > [@Ethilrist](#): > > Mercedes Lackey inserted herself into her fantasy novels as Herald Myste (she is known to her friends as “Misty”). Didn’t bother me too much because I didn’t even figure it out until I read a Q&A for the series. She also had a little story on her website where she’s confronted by her characters who complain about the hell she puts them through (I did laugh when she apologized to Talia for “that foot thing”); Myste talked them down and after the rest left Myste commented that “I don’t think they’ve figured out that I’m you yet”. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2012, 2:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/readers-2-related-questions-about-books/643102/38 "2012-12-11T14:31:00Z")
A particularly complicated piece of metafiction is the movie _Adaptation_. The screenwriter Charlie Kaufman was given the book _The Orchid Thief_ by Susan Orlean, which is about a man named John Larouche who helps Seminole Indians to find and sell orchids in the Everglades and who was considered a thief by some people since he wasn’t a Seminole Indian himself, to adapt into a movie. Kaufman decided it was a hopeless job to adapt, so instead he wrote a movie about his problems in adapting the book for the screen. Charlie Kaufman is the main character in the movie _Adaptation_ and a secondary character is his identical twin brother Donald. (Kaufman doesn’t actually have a twin. Nicholas Cage plays both characters in _Adaptation_.) The movie _Adaptation_ not only shows Kaufman’s struggles to adapt the book, but it shows scenes in his mind which would be part of the movie of _The Orchid Thief_ that didn’t get made. Some of those scenes are completely imaginary events which (the character) Kaufman inserts into the script to try to make the plot of this never-made film more interesting. One such scene shows Orlean and Larouche having an affair, which didn’t happen in real life. ---
**Author:** ![Cliffy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/59ef9b/32.png) [@Cliffy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cliffy)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2012, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/readers-2-related-questions-about-books/643102/39 "2012-12-11T17:15:55Z")
Although the OP quotes Wikipedia that authors do this under their own name, it’s much more common for them to show up as unnamed characters, or pseudonymously. Off the top of my head I remember George Pelecanos writing himself in as a short, sort of nebbishy court reporter in Soul Circus, which is quick joke, and Tom Robbins making himself an important supporting character in Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, which I couldn’t stand, but I couldn’t stand the rest of the book either. As to the second part of the question (which is really too general) – it depends. When it’s a quick meta joke, and when (as is typical), the author portrays himself in an unflattering light, it can be funny, but mostly i don’t like it as it reminds me that this is a construct, not a series of real events. When they show up as a major character I don’t like it to an even greater extent, although this is quite rare, because it’s such an amateur trick. It rarely ends up in a published work. But like everything, it can be done well when it’s done by someone with the craft to do so. I do like the thing that used to be more common, with authors writing a preface in which they “explain” how the story (which they are merely reporting) came to them. (Edgar Rice Burroughs did this in his Mars books; I believe he claimed to be John Carter’s grand-nephew or something.) Even though it’s obviously a construct, I like it because it **enhances** the illusion that these were real events. Similarly, I like when an author/narrator takes a chapter or two to offer his own asides or discussion (Fielding does this in Tom Jones, and Douglas Adams in the Hitchhiker’s books, which might be the first time those two are mentions in the same sentence.) Because the author doesn’t purport to be part of the story, but is merely relating it, then this engenders a feeling of conversation, making the narrative seem more like something you’d hear from a friend and, therefore, strengthening the illusion of its reality. –Cliffy ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Ed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e19b73/32.png) [@Just\_Ed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Ed)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2012, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/readers-2-related-questions-about-books/643102/40 "2012-12-11T18:40:08Z")
Glen Duncan’s [_I, Lucifer_](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I,_Lucifer_%282003_novel%29) is a good example of this trope. The protagonist is a suicidal writer by the name of Declan Gunn (which is an anagram of Glen Duncan) whose suicide is interrupted by God in order to provide Lucifer a chance at redemption - Lucifer is given Gunn’s body for a month and tasked with living as a human and without sin for a month. Of course he does not, and his musings on biblical history are a running commentary throughout his fleshly revels. Some of it is funny, some thoughtful, but overall I don’t think it works particularly well - I didn’t like it as much as I liked Duncan’s other genre novel (_The Last Werewolf_). I’ve no idea if Glen Duncan himself is or was suicidal, or how much of Gunn’s life as described mirrors Duncan’s, so that bit of trivia just didn’t affect my outlook on the story. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/readers-2-related-questions-about-books/643102.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/readers-2-related-questions-about-books/643102.md?page=3)