I think readers of fiction love to speculate about facts underlying the narrative. Particularly when it comes to characters. How much of any character is based on someone In Real Life? I know it’s been mentioned that Joelle van D, aka Madame Psychosis, aka PGOAT, was based on Mary Karr and some of us on Twitter have wondered about the inspiration for characters such as Don Gately and the truly psychotic Randy Lenz.

This is where the Fresh Air interview comes in. I honestly had to pause and re-center as Karr described seeing early drafts of IJ w/ characters literally bearing the names of and stories lifted from Real People DFW knew in AA and NA. This knowledge makes me feel pretty squeamy. Granted, Karr still seems to be working out a metric shedload of anger towards her former boyfriend and isn’t, as she herself admits, infallible when it comes to the recollection of times past. Still… Um, yeah.

Would love to hear what others think of all this.