Figurative Pseudonyms: Biography and Confession

It is commonplace to say that art is born from experience, the extent of which is mostly immeasurable. In narrational art—which in addition to literature can include paintings, tapestries, and drawings as well as the musical-tone poem genre (the work of Mahler springs to mind, such as his song cycles and his first five symphonies)—the role of biography and autobiography is inevitable and inexorable but also contentious, as the rendering of experience exposes the infidelity of memory itself. Graphic novels and comics are a rich reservoir of memoir, testimonial, and autobiography but in a manner that requires special