Autobiography is “Dangerous Business”

Wade Center - A podcast by Wade Center at Wheaton College (IL)

Dorothy L. Sayers describe autobiography as “dangerous business” in The Mind of the Maker. To write one is either “a mark of great insensitiveness to danger or of an almost supernatural courage.” In this week’s episode, Drs. Crystal and David C. Downing sit down with Producer Aaron Hill to discuss the autobiographies written by three and half of the Wade Center authors. What are the pitfalls of the genre? What makes it such "dangerous business?" And how can readers differentiate between autobiographical episodes and genuine fiction in the novels of authors such as C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Dorothy L. Sayers?