Me and M'Novel

As the novel in a way democratized literature such that everyday, normal people, as opposed to just kings and lords, could be the subjects of great dramas, the natural question that arose was/is: can authors capture an audience's minds and attention with a narrative whose subject is an unexceptional life or whose protagonist is not an extraordinary person?

The answer to this question is yes, and many authors have answered it fairly resoundingly. The reason is that even an ordinary life is not insignificant. Meaning can be uncovered in anyone's life if there is someone perceptive enough to find it, and that is the job of a good author. Authors immerse readers into a world and connect us intimately with a character, and that world and that character have a dynamic relationship where they affect and change each other – this is a prerequisite for a story, or at least a good story. Every human being has this relationship with the world, the writer is simply modeling it. Significant events or interactions with the world happen in every person's life – birth, death, love, connection, loss, change, etc.

That's not to say, however, that you can make any life into a novel. In face, I would say that you cannot make any life into a novel. Implicit in that claim is the idea that life and novels are made of the same substance, that you can 'capture' someone's life in a novel. That is not quite true, because a life is not a narrative. We use stories to make sense and meaning out of our lives, but our lives themselves are an overwhelming flurry of simultaneous input, experiences, actions, reactions, thoughts, emotions, instincts, etc that narrative could not ever hope to capture.

Instead, narratives are artificial creations that can only model our lives and realities, although over time, storytellers have found new techniques and innovations to bring the artifice even closer to the reality. Writers work to capture the essence, or the “truth,” of a person's experience by creating structures that do not exist in real life, through which they are able to find and extract meaning.

So I would be interested in reading a novel in which I was the protagonist because I would want to see how the author decided to structure the narrative version of my life, how the author chose to convey the essence of my experiences, and what meaning he or she found in my life overall. But I don't know how I would feel about other people reading this novel because it won't be an accurate representation of my life. Most readers will buy into almost every aspect of the story (if it's a good author), and that narrative would almost certainly take precedent over the actual life I lived when people thought about me.