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4

An I for an I

Reading Fictional Autobiography

Let us pause to develop a thread from the previous chapter. One of the questions posed there is whether Euhemerus was the author of the Sacred Inscription or whether this is merely the name of the narrator; I speculatively proposed that Theodorus of Cyrene may have been the author. But even if we discount that hypothesis and keep Euhemerus as the author, there is still an obvious sense in which Euhemerus the author is not Euhemerus the narrator, since the latter went to Panchaea and the former did not. The words in a text (any text) have issued from the consciousness of one individual (or collective). But at the same time, those words are always costumed, dressed for a role. The words you are reading now are mine to the extent that you can hold me to them; you can accost me in the street or email me to protest, and I will (to the best of my abilities) reply. But in another sense, this is not the “real me” speaking: I do not adopt this persona when buying fish, talking to my children, or playing soccer. Perhaps it is better to say that all of those separate verbal identities are facets of the same person, different roles that are assumed in the performance of everyday life.

But the literary “I” in fact poses a distinctive type of cognitive challenge. As a writer of nonfiction I may adopt stylistic mannerisms that are peculiar to this type of writing, but I do not introduce claims I know to be counterfactual; if I am found to have done so, reviewers will take me to task. When we read literary fiction, however, we know that the speaking “I” may make claims we must not expect to be true for the author. This is an obvious point, certainly, but I have belabored it because if we step back and think about the phenomenon, it begins to appear very strange: the author of a work of fiction simultaneously is the narrator (since she or he is responsible for every word) and is not (for the narrator is an unreal character).