When we first meet him, Paul is finishing a manuscript. But now Paul wants to be a “real” writer. He’s made his career with a series of bodice rippers about one “Misery Chastain” that Annie likes very much. Like L., Annie Wilkes feels strongly about what Paul should and shouldn’t be writing. In Misery, a middle-aged writer, Paul Sheldon, finds himself imprisoned by a reader. In that respect, Based on a True Story reminds me of nothing so much as Stephen King’s Misery. The book itself questions what such a statement could possibly mean.īut there is another aspect to the novel that interests me even more, and that is the way that de Vigan indulges in a fear, even a paranoia, that may be unique to writers: the fear that the writing will dry up, that the ability to write will disappear. Is Based on a True Story based on a true story? Its marketing insists that it is. Even the novel’s title nods, mockingly, to all those movies and books determinedly stamped “Based on a true story.” She speaks in the first person, inviting us to take her story as “truth” in a way we might not if, say, it’d been written in the third person. This argument recurs throughout the rest of the novel, but it is also reflected within the very structure of the book: The main character is a writer with the same name as her creator, with a life and a career very like her creator’s. “As soon as you elide, or prolong, or tighten up, or fill the gaps, you’re writing fiction.” But even a story based on real events is merely “a clumsy, incomplete attempt to get closer to something ungraspable,” Delphine says. “It’s important that it’s true.”ĭelphine tries to convince L. “Is it so important whether the way life’s described in books is true or invented?” she asks. “They want to be told about life, don’t you see?”ĭelphine doesn’t, at first. Fiction must be “Real,” she says (with a capital “R”) it must be “authentic.” “People have had enough of well-constructed intrigue, clever plot hooks and denouements,” she tells Delphine. Even more forceful are L.’s views on what you might call the nature of fiction itself. has expressed strong opinions on Delphine’s work: she has already dissuaded Delphine from working on two different projects. “We’ll start by answering your mail and then we’ll write the preface,” she tells Delphine. One day, Delphine reaches a point of crisis: she has been asked to write a preface for a reissued volume of Guy de Maupassant’s Notre Cœur, the preface is already weeks late, and still, she finds herself unable to write. I know that it recurred more and more strongly: an acid reflux that took my breath away. I cannot date the very first time I felt a horrible burning sensation in my throat as soon as I sat in front of the machine. Not just to open a Word file, but also-progressively, insidiously-to answer emails, to write letters. When winter began, it became difficult for me to go near the keyboard. is the only person she sees, the only person she talks to.Īt the same time, Delphine’s block is growing worse. Her children are busy, François is frequently away, and after meeting her at a party, it isn’t long before L. She has a lover, François, and a wide circle of friends. She can’t write a grocery list.ĭelphine is middle aged, divorced, and the mother of two teenage children who will soon leave home for college. She can’t write anything, can’t go near her computer. Following the publication of her most recent novel, however, she falls into an increasingly miserable state. The story is simple: a writer named Delphine, like her creator, is drawn into a strange, invasive friendship with a woman referred to as “L.”ĭelphine, like Delphine de Vigan, is a writer of some success. Take Stephen King’s Misery, for example, or Delphine de Vigan’s Based on a True Story.īased on a True Story, published in French about three years ago, sold half a million copies, inspired a film by Roman Polanski, won several prizes, and purportedly became an “international sensation.” The novel appeared in English, translation by George Miller, last year. Some embed these fetishes into the work itself. Writers who refuse to work with any but one brand of pen, or at any but one time of day, or without lighting candles, or playing music, fetishize their process.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |