Throughout a forty-year career as an award-winning author Graham Swift has insisted that "I am certainly not a writer who writes autobiographically . . . I don't write from my own experience", noting that the anthology
Making an Elephant: Writing from Withinis the "exception that proves the rule about not writing autobiographically" (McGlone). Swift even terms the collection “my
partlyautobiographical non-fiction book” (my emphasis; the quote occurs in an essay on creativity published in August 2014).
Making an Elephantoffers, as the author indicates in his three-page “Introduction” to the collection, “a glimpse or two” into the creative life without aiming at being “comprehensive” or memoir-like. Also in the “Introduction”, Swift highlights the distinction between…
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Citation: Logotheti, Anastasia. "Making an Elephant: Writing from within". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 09 September 2014; last revised 02 March 2020. [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=26548, accessed 25 November 2024.]
