The Uses of History in the Biographical Novel: Roundtable with Bruce Duffy, Jay Parini, and Lance Olsen September 20, 2012

Round-table conversation with three prominent writers who have published novels which are also intellectual biographies. In 1987, Bruce Duffy published The World As I Found It, a novel which features characters such as Ludwig Wittgenstein, Bertrand Russell, and G.E. Moore. In the traditional genre of the historical novel, writers have frequently based their characters on famous people, as, for instance, Robert Penn Warren’s Willie Stark from All the King’s Men, who is based on Huey Long. But they have usually distanced themselves from the historical person by giving the fictional character a different name. But with the publication of The World As I Found It, that all changed. In 1990, Jay Parini published The Last Station, a novel about the last year of Tolstoy’s life. Since then, there have been numerous novels which would qualify as intellectual biographies about figures such as Arthur Rimbaud, Virginia Woolf, Henry James, Walter Benjamin, Friedrich Nietzsche, among others. In this round-table conversation, Bruce Duffy, Jay Parini, and Lance Olsen (author of Nietzsche’s Kisses) have all agreed to participate. Through the discussion, we hope to shed light on the nature of this new genre of fiction,clarifying how and why the novel as intellectual biography is more effective for illuminating historical events and political movements than the traditional historical novel. Roundtable will be moderated by Michael Lackey, English Discipline, UM Morris.

Books will be for sale at this event.

Official Website: https://events.umn.edu/020427