Self-Indulgence and Autobiography

The dislike of Blankets in class on Monday about how self-involved Craig is certainly true, and I would understand why one wouldn’t like it. I, however, did in fact like the book. And this issue—that sounds a little too serious—of Craig being too self-involved in the text, too hard on female characters, and so forth. I know it sounds callous but I do think characters exist in order to advance the plot of the main character—oh, I guess that doesn’t sound too bad. And this is something I truly believe, which is that even when the story contains characters not so self-involved that the writer has spread his personality out through many characters. With Blankets, and because it is an attempt to write an autobiography, this process isn’t filtered through the other characters—sort of making it end up being The Catcher in the Rye on steroids.

For me this isn’t too bad though. I’m not the biggest Catcher in the Rye fans, but it was a book I enjoyed the first time I read. Ever other time I’ve read it I have been fairly annoyed by it, and that’s how I imagine Blankets would be.

What I would like to convey here is that the autobiographical form, more than fictional, lends itself to this over-indulgent storytelling.