Roman à clefs (or romans à clef?)
A roman à clef is, to quote princeton.edu, is "a novel in which actual persons and events are disguised as fictional characters". French for "novel with a key." Also known as a faction, which is oh-so-clever.
I became intrigued with these recently when I read an article about who all the different characters in "Valley of the Dolls" by Jacqueline Susanne were supposed to represent. For example, the aging Broadway star with the big voice is supposed to be Ethel Merman. Then Tyler Knight's welcome thread mentioned he wanted to write a roman à clef about the porn industry.
Is anyone else very intrigued by this type of novel? Personally I found VotD pretty catty while being almost wholly uninteresting (which is no mean feat!) but growing up, "The Godfather" was one of my favorite books. Tom Wolfe, as I understand, is pretty notorious for writing this sort of thing.
Done wrong, this sort of writing seems pretty lazy, but done right, it's an amazing genre.
There is hope, but not for us.
So would the Black Dahlia count? If so - I think this writing is awesome. Valley of the Dolls was all based on real people. And then if that's what we're going on - isn't Chuck's new book Tell All also on the list?
I think it has to be direct contact, though, like people in your life, so I don't think Tell-All counts.
I just woke up so that's the worst sentence I'll write today (I hope).
Hemingway did this sort of thing. So did Hunter Thompson, Kerouac--well, most of the Beats.
I had a good one in mind when i came in here, but i forgot.
Yeah, "On the Road" is a good example of this.
I thought that The Black Dahlia was just straight-up nonfiction? Like a nonfiction crime novel.
I am thinking about writing a short story in this vein, as well...about 15 years ago in my home county, a guy murdered his wife, but they never found her body. They did find her eyeglasses and dentures in his burn barrel (where he burned his trash), but he said that he just burned all her stuff in anger after she ran out on him. He was found not guilty, but then in 2000 he was denied the right to be executor of her will, basically because everybody knew he was guilty. So he was found not guilty in criminal court but guilty in civil, OJ style.
The summer of the civil trial I was working in a cafe in that town, and I heard a lot about it. I always figured it would make a good short story.
There is hope, but not for us.
No Black Dahlia is based on a real murder. But most of the other stuff is fiction.
I think I'm getting it now...
Would Sex and the City apply?
The summer of the civil trial I was working in a cafe in that town, and I heard a lot about it. I always figured it would make a good short story.
Whoa--just found out that the person who discovered him burning stuff in his shop was my boss at the cafe! Small towns, yo.
There is hope, but not for us.
Most of James Ellroy's biggest acclaimed books are like that: The Big Nowhere (The Sleepy Lagoon Murder of 1950) L.A. Confidential (The "Bloody Christmas" police scandal.) His "Underworld USA Trilogy" spans fifteen years of political espionage, using real people like Nixon, The Kennedys, Martin Luther King, J. Edgar Hoover, Howard Hughes, Jimmy Hoffa and a bunch others in situations both real and fictional with fictional characters.
Ha ha, glad I could be of some use.
I was thinking that, as interesting as the concept sounds, I'd not read any novels of the genre. However, a quick google has informed me otherwise: The Bell Jar and A Scanner Darkly both fit into that category.
I just learned about that, this week, in the porn guy's thread.