The Biographizer Trilogy

by D. Harlan Wilson

This volume contains all three installments of D. Harlan Wilson's trilogy of autohagiographies, including Hitler: The Terminal Biography, Freud The Penultimate Biography and Douglass The Lost Autobiography.

442 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 27, 2014

About the author

D. Harlan Wilson is an award-winning American novelist, literary critic, editor, playwright, and college professor. He is the author of over thirty book-length works of fiction and nonfiction, and hundreds of hist stories, plays, essays, and reviews have been published across the world in more than ten languages. Recent books include Strangelove Country: Science Fiction, Filmosophy, and the Kubrickian Consciousness, Minority Report, Jackanape and the Fingermen, and Outré.

Reviews

[Vincenzo Bilof · Rating 5 out of 5]

Meta-fiction can appear to be rather pretentious on the surface, but so many authors have pulled it off with amazing effect; more importantly, so many “fiction” novels are actually meta-fictional exercises that chronicle the author’s experience with a particular setting or conflict. Kerouac, Palahniuk, Ellis, Wallace—arguably, these authors have written meta-fiction, and they are considered some of the best authors America has to offer. D. Harlan Wilson may not be carrying on any kind of tradition in meta-fiction, or any genre fiction for that matter, but he has taken the conceptual vehicle that a biography of three prominent historical figures might represent, and he has transformed it into comparison/reflection.

Each personality in the trilogy represents an aspect of the human condition; we go from megalomania (Hitler), to confusion/crises (Freud), to realized empowerment (Douglass). In a timeline, you can also perceive that we have a progression from youth to old age—an organic timeline. This trilogy is not an actual biography, but rather a biography of the personality archetypes as they relate to a man’s life. There is dietary advice, Daddy-daughter relationship connections, writing advice, teaching advice, and there is, of course, explosions. Lots of explosions. But these “advisory” ideas do not come across as advice, but are often fueled by raw anger at systems that stifle creativity and human development.

I enjoyed these books because I didn’t feel like I was reading about one person in the sense that I was supposed to acquire a bunch of facts about a particular person or personas; instead, I was given an opportunity to see who I was and where I fit into the these personality archetypes. Just as the author was able to look into the mirror and see Hitler, Freud and Douglass (or perhaps not see them at all, depending on your interpretation of the work), I thought about where I was on the timeline of extended human-catharsis meltdown. Wilson didn’t throw any artsy-fartsy prose into the mix, but kept each chapter “accessible”; there wasn’t a whole lot of pretentious poetry-garbage, nor was there any “woe is me-please feel sorry for me” storytelling. Just the opposite, which made the entire trilogy an enjoyable read.