Writing of, or from, yourself

‘All literature is, finally, autobiographical’, said Borges. ‘Every autobiography becomes an absorbing work of fiction’, responded H. L. Mencken, though not, you understand, directly. Certainly the fictional element in autobiography is evident; Trollope thought that nobody could ever tell the full truth about himself, and A. S. Byatt has said that ‘autobiographies tell more lies than all but the most self-indulgent fiction’. An exaggeration, perhaps, but one with a kernel of truth.

Borges’s remark must, however, set any novelist pondering. In the most immediate sense it appears to be untrue. ‘What about invention?’ we may cry, ‘what about the imagination?’ Moreover, we have all read, and delighted in, novels that seem to have had no connection with the author’s life. Yet one should never discount sense in any observation from Borges. So what did he mean?