Author surrogate

As a literary technique, an author surrogate is a character who expresses the ideas, questions, personality and morality of the author. Upon occasion, authors insert themselves under their own name into their works, typically for humorous or surrealistic effect.

Usage

Fiction

Frequently, the author surrogate is the same as the main character and/or the protagonist, and is also often the narrator. As an example, the author surrogate may be the one who delivers political diatribe, expressing the author's beliefs at an appropriate time, or expound on the strengths and weakness of other characters, thereby communicating directly the author's opinion on the characters in question. Philosophers may use author-surrogates to express their personal positions, especially if these are unpopular or run counter to established views. British writer David Hume used the author-surrogate 'Philo' in the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. Ayn Rand used her character John Galt to express her philosophy of Objectivism in her novel Atlas Shrugged. Perhaps the best-known philosophical author-surrogate is Socrates in the writings of Plato.

Most stories have an author surrogate, insofar as the author is usually capable of pointing to one character (major or minor) whom he or she identifies with to a much greater degree than any other character. This can take the form of a realistic depiction of the author (Benjamin in Animal Farm), or a negative (Woody Allen in many of his films) or positive depiction of the author.

Fan fiction

Author surrogacy is a frequently observed phenomenon in hobbyist and amateur writing, so much that fan fiction critics have evolved the term Mary Sue to refer to an idealized author surrogate. The term 'Mary Sue' is thought to evoke the cliché of the adolescent author who uses writing as a vehicle for the indulgence of self-idealization rather than entertaining others. For male author surrogates, similar-sounding names such as 'Gary Stu' are occasionally used.

Examples

• Geoffrey Chaucer in The Canterbury Tales
• Jo March in Little Women
• Dante Alighieri in The Divine Comedy
• Yorick in A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy
• Paul Auster in the New York Trilogy
• Isaac Asimov in Murder at the ABA
• Martin Amis in Money
• Alexander Pushkin in Eugene Onegin
• Jorge Luis Borges in "The Aleph", "The Zahir" and "The Book of Sand"
• Dagny Taggart in Atlas Shrugged
• Huckleberry Finn in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
• Brian Griffin in "Family Guy"
• Charles Dexter Ward in The Case of Charles Dexter Ward
• The Invisible Man in Invisible Man
• Dr Robbins in Even Cowgirls Get the Blues
• Richard Rory in Steve Gerber's Man-Thing and Omega the Unknown
• Charlie Kaufman in the film Adaptation.
• Ariadne Oliver in the Hercule Poirot series of novels by Agatha Christie
• "Horselover Fat" in VALIS (a Greek and German translation of author Philip K. Dick's first and last names)
• Raoul Duke in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
• Spider Jerusalem in "Transmetropolitan"
• Liz Lemon in 30 Rock
• John Steinbeck also locates his family tree within one of his novels, East of Eden, as being traced from a major character, Sam Hamilton.

Perhaps one of the best known is Kilgore Trout, author surrogate to Kurt Vonnegut. Vonnegut makes no secret of the fact, and meets Trout personally more than once in his works.

Other uses

The expression has also been used in a different sense, meaning the principal author of a multi-author document.

See also

• Audience surrogate
• Autobiographical novel
• Author character
• Mary Sue

Notes

References and further reading