FACT VS. FICTION: THE DOUBLING OF THE BIOGRAPHICAL SELF IN BIOFICTIONS ABOUT F. SCOTT FITZGERALD AND ERNEST HEMINGWAY

The rewriting of past lives is a source of reinventing, rediscovering the self. Therese Ann Fowler’s Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald as a biofiction of the Fitzgerald’s deals with Fitzgerald’s wife Zelda, in particular. As such, it is created to take particular stance or promote particular aspect of the real life story by turning it into fiction. Paula McLain’s The Paris Wife touches upon a very specific time of Hemingway’s life that he himself must have forever remembered. As postmodern literary works they question but do not reject their own fictional status and thus become metafictional. Their metafictional elements also point out to the fictionality of fiction, involving the reader in the creation of the meaning of the text