Talk:Author surrogate

Author surrogacy vs. self-insertion
I looked for a number of variations on self-insertion before creating that article, but didn't think of 'author surrogate'. Maybe a merge is in order.

However, I'm not sure whether they're describing quite the same thing. Author surrogate seems to be talking primarily about major characters who act as a mouthpiece for the author. Self-insertion often covers minor characters who are used for purposes of self-mockery, or simply as an in-joke (akin to Alfred Hitchcock's cameos in his movies; while they represent the author, a lot of them don't really serve as surrogates. (For instance, Ariadne Oliver doesn't really provide much exposition on other characters; she's mostly there to mock Agatha Christie and flesh out the ranks a bit.) Would this work better as a merge, or as two interlinked articles? --Calair 23:48, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * I'm not certain, but I believe self-insertion is the author himself (or herself) appearing as a character, while a surrogate character is a stand-in for the author. Dante appears as a self-insertion in The Divine Comedy (other characters recognize him by name), while Huckleberry Finn says and does things that we can reasonably think Samuel Clemens thought he himself could/would/should say and do in similar circumstances.  Thus, some of these examples don't fit - Chaucer doesn't appear in The Canterbury Tales, to my knowledge... whereas Kurt Vonnegut uses both these techniques - Vonnegut appears as himself in a couple of books, and he also seems to use Kilgore Trout as a stand-in for himself. The Hokkaido Crow 16:57, 6 September 2005 (UTC)


 * Could be wrong, but by my understanding the first-person narrator of Canterbury Tales is intended to be Chaucer himself. I'm not sure whether it can be called self-insertion, though; beyond providing an angle to describe events from, he isn't really characterised. --Calair 23:09, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

Gandalf in LOTR
Before I knew the term Author Surrogate I felt like Gandalf serves that purpose in Lord of the Rings. Has anyone else noticed that? --theDunedan 07:00, 11 April 2005


 * There's certainly a bit of Tolkien in Gandalf, but I'm not sure it's enough to count as a full-fledged author surrogate. I get the impression JRRT also put a lot of himself into Frodo - the burden-of-responsibility theme that dominates Frodo makes me think of Tolkien as an inexperienced officer responsible for the lives of enlisted men in WWI. --Calair 00:08, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Mary Sue In Startrek
As I recall, Mary Sue was a character in a certain series of Star Trek fanfics who, well, encapsulated what is commonly called a Mary Sue today. Can anyone correlate? 24.69.18.229 04:38, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
 * You should try clicking the internal link: Mary Sue. NickelShoe 22:13, 30 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Mary Sue was the name of Paula Smith's parody character ("The youngest officer in the fleet...", etc.) in "A Trekkie's Tale", a 1960s fanzine-era fanfic that proved to be very popular and thus spawned the commonly-used pejorative term we all know and love today. See: Mary Sue. Runa27 22:33, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Is the author surrogate in Atlas Shrugged John Galt, Dagny Taggart, or both?
The section of the article on Usage suggests Galt, while the Examples list Taggart. I have not read Atlas Shrugged, but maybe someone who has could reconcile these statements. --69.143.3.122 22:32, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Huck in Huckleberry Finn and the issue of minor characters
I strongly disagree with the notion that Mark Twain used the character of Huck as an author surrogate. Huck's role in the novel was a demonstration of southern ignorance and growth from which. A very good example of a surrogate from Huckleberry Finn would be Colonel Sherburn, who's speech regarding the true cowardice behind lynchings performed by southerners has been recognized as coming straight from the personal sentiment of Twain.[http://louisville.edu/a-s/english/babo/hamilton/twainessay.html.

This article downplays the fact that an author surrogate is not necessarily a major character, especially in that all of the examples listed are as such. Unless anyone objects I'll ammend this and the Huck issue.

GarconDansLeNoir 06:04, 9 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Agreed, and some of the others look dubious too. Charles Dexter Ward? The Invisible Man? --Calair 11:41, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
 * As far as I can tell, people just keep adding to the examples. Most of that list could probably be removed per WP:OR. AndyBQ (talk) 15:50, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Twilight ref in fan fiction section
I've removed a few sentences from the Fan Fiction section of the article which dealt specifically with a character from Twilight and her alleged Mary Sue-ness. There was no source (and, for that matter, Twilight is not fan fiction), and the absence thereof made it smack of original research. dcd139 (talk) 05:16, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

Examples
What support is there for the examples? If there aren't references cited, wouldn't that skate perilously close to original research (someone adding a character because "hey, I think this author is writing himself in")? Petronivs (talk) 15:18, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Dante in the Divine Commedy
I think that the character of Dante in the Divine Commedy is actually self-insertion, while the actual author surrogate is the character of Virgil. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.53.173.116 (talk) 20:50, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Removed examples
As noted above, the examples were entirely uncited. Please feel free to readd them as sources materialize. The list follows. Mintrick (talk) 00:37, 23 July 2009 (UTC)


 * 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"
 * Ian Malcolm in "Jurassic Park"
 * 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.
 * Solid Snake/David in Hideo Kojima's Metal Gear Solid series of video games
 * King Mob (comics) in Grant Morrison's "The Invisibles"

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