Oh I agree! It adds so much to have such detail about the time and location. It just makes me laugh that it seems a third of his page count (that I've read) is essays.

[–] Eq0@literature.cafe 2 points 1 week ago

Maybe he went the other way. He had a bunch of essays and wondered “what coherent story can I build out of this?”

[–] Rothe@piefed.social 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Alexandre Dumas did the same, at least in his memoirs. The manuscript for his complete memoirs would be something like 30+ volumes long, and he only got to writing about his life as a relatively young adult before he actually began writing succesful novels, and it is mostly because they are full of essays on all kinds of topics. Edited versions of his memoirs are published with most of the essays removed, and the longest is 6 volumes, while most are 1 or 2 volumes.