Hopefully you enjoyed What Is It? Genre Part I, it’s now time to delve a little deeper.
Let’s take a look at the differences between: biography, autobiography and memoir? Often confusing, are they all the same?
A biography is the life story of a person written by someone else.
An autobiography is the life story of a person written by themselves.
A memoir is a collection of memories from a person’s life, told in the first person. It’s different from an autobiography, because it does not tell the entire life story.
Now that we’ve got that straight, what is the difference between an authorised or unauthorised biography? An authorised biography is a biography written about a person with the subject or family’s permission.
An unauthorised biography is just that. A biography that has no approval from the subject, which naturally means the subject has not contributed information or personal material to the biography. A well known unauthorised biography is Oprah: A Biography by Kitty Kelley.
Just when you thought that was the end, I bring you fictional autobiography. Essentially, it’s when an author creates a fictional character and writes a book as if it were a first person autobiography. Sound confusing? A popular example of a fictional autobiography is Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. This also brings us to the controversy of autobiographical fiction. This is when an author will write a book and claim it is their autobiography, although it contains falsehoods and may not be true at all. A great example of this is A Million Little Pieces by James Frey, originally sold as a memoir but later found to contain much fiction.
Many readers will suspend disbelief in order to enjoy a good fantasy or fairytale, but if an autobiography is found to contain false claims or fiction, is it any less enjoyable? I like to know what I’m reading beforehand and resent it if I find out later that a book was not all I thought it was. What about you?
Let’s look at a few more genres before I close off this What Is It? article on genre.
Gothic literature is very popular and includes such novels as Dracula by Bram Stoker and Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. Gothic novels contain some of the following elements: horror, secrets, romance, madness, death, ghosts, supernatural and gothic architecture including haunted houses and castles. Characters in a gothic novel will often include: women in distress, tyrannical males, maniacs, heroes, magicians, angels, ghosts and much more.
Gothic horror or gothic literature is a great genre, but what about Tasmanian gothic literature? Yes, you read right, there are a number of novels now classified as Tasmanian gothic literature and if this tickles your fancy, you may want to check some of them out: The Roving Party by Rohan Wilson, The Hunter by Julia Leigh and Gould’s Book of Fish by Richard Flanagan.
Whatever your reading tastes may be, you are bound to enjoy some genres more than others and at some point in your reading life, continue to read from your favourites. Just remember to keep exploring and venturing into new reading territories because you never know what you’ll find.
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