Daniyal Mueenuddin on the Uses, and Abuses, of Real Life
As the well-known expression goes, “Good artists copy; great artists steal.” But where is the line between inspiration and appropriation? When do we have a right to borrow someone’s story, and when should we stay our hand? Daniyal Mueenuddin’s newest novel, “This Is Where the Serpent Lives,” draws in part on the lives of people he knows; as Mueenuddin recently reported, his use of reality has sometimes put him in “hot water.” Not long ago, Mueenuddin sat down with us to talk about a few fictional works that draw directly from truth—sometimes honorably, and sometimes, he thinks, not. “In some way, description is violation,” Mueenuddin said. “Does beauty forgive everything? If we make something beautiful enough, does that mean you get a free pass? I don’t know. I hope so.” His remarks have been edited and condensed.
Dubliners
by James Joyce
There’s a reason why Mr. Joyce spent much of his adult life in Trieste, and that’s because he couldn’t run into people there—especially people from Dublin, whose lives he used in his work, most notably in “Dubliners.” I think we have to agree, though, that, of Joyce’s appropriations, particularly shocking is the way he uses Molly Bloom as, to an extent, a stand-in for his wife, in “Ulysses.” Joyce wrote about sex, disclosing things that his contemporaries didn’t—and certainly breaking from the mores of his predecessors. That was part of why his work was so shocking. But, as I say, he could afford to do it, because he could just go off and live in Trieste.
In Search of Lost Time
by Marcel Proust
I’ve been engaging with Proust all my life. He’s a profound thinker and an amazing writer. One thing I don’t think we should forget about him is that when he wrote this book, he went into a version of what we in Pakistan call pardah—he stopped going out. Here’s a guy who used to dine out seven nights a week. Suddenly, he goes into seclusion and produces this book. I’ve thought a lot about why he did this. I don’t know how much of his motivation was shaped by the fact that he was a dandy, and that aging was therefore, I think, problematic for him. He had been a very handsome young man, and as he got older he got less beautiful. But I also think a big part of it was that, in a way, he used people he knew, and he spilled the beans. He might have found that he wasn’t actually being invited to so many dinners anymore.
My Struggle
by Karl Ove Knausgaard
For me, a person who can really speak to these issues I’ve been circling is Mr. Knausgaard. He really did spill the beans—and he got a divorce out of it. I don’t know all the details about what happened to his marriage, but I do remember reading that his wife felt very violated by what he wrote, and also that some relatives of his father—on whom he focusses in the first volume of this series—were very upset. And rightly, too. I mean, I wouldn’t have wanted to ride into history with the characterization that Knausgaard gives his father in that book. He comes off as a horrible, stupid drunk of the most unattractive kind. And I guess Knausgaard just said, That’s O.K. He was willing to let people be really upset.
For Lizzie and Harriet
by Robert Lowell
When we talk about the questions I’m talking about here, we really have to look at the relationship between Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Hardwick. Both of them were writers—Lowell a poet, Hardwick an essayist and novelist. She also co-founded The New York Review of Books. Lowell, famously, was a difficult man and a difficult husband. And he wrote about Hardwick extensively, including by appropriating portions of letters that she sent to him in a collection called “The Dolphin.”
The poet Elizabeth Bishop, with whom Lowell was close friends, famously told him, when asked to read the collection before it came out, “art just isn’t worth that much.” I’ve thought about that a lot, because I care about these two writers—Lowell and Bishop—more than I care about any others, probably. But I disagree with Bishop—I hope that art is worth that much, or can be. “The Dolphin” is a brilliant book. But “For Lizzie and Harriet”—which was named for Hardwick and the daughter Lowell had with her—is not very good. It didn’t have to be published, it doesn’t add to his stature. It was a misfire. And, ultimately, being a writer who borrows from life is something that should be gone about in a considered way, because life matters. People matter.