Question

The passages below explore the relationship between factual accuracy and autobiographical fiction.

Passage A
The recent controversy surrounding several prominent autobiographical novels has centered on the discovery that their authors significantly altered key historical facts. Critics charge these writers with deceiving the reading public, arguing that labeling a literary work "autobiographical" constitutes an implicit promise of objective factual accuracy. This rigid view, however, fundamentally misunderstands the purpose and mechanics of autobiographical fiction. The genre exists precisely because the raw data of a human life—the specific dates, the geographic locations, the verbatim transcripts of mundane conversations—rarely coalesce into a narrative that conveys the psychological reality of an experience. An author's lived experience is inherently subjective, filtered through memory and emotion. To capture this internal landscape on the page, the autobiographical novelist must be granted the freedom to compress time, amalgamate secondary characters, and invent dialogue that captures the essence, if not the exact words, of past interactions. These deviations from the historical record are not acts of deception or journalistic malpractice, but rather necessary aesthetic strategies employed to achieve a higher, more profound emotional authenticity. When we read autobiographical fiction, we are not reading to learn exactly what happened on a specific Tuesday in the author's distant past, but rather to intimately understand how it felt to be the author during a formative period of their life. To evaluate these subjective literary works by the strict, verifiable standards of journalism is to entirely miss their artistic function and potential.

Passage B
Defenders of extreme fabrication in autobiographical fiction often argue that emotional resonance justifies any departure from the historical truth. However, this defense ignores the unique and fragile contract that exists between the author of an autobiographical novel and the reader. This specific literary genre derives its distinct power not merely from its narrative qualities or stylistic prose, but largely from the reader's awareness that the central events being depicted genuinely occurred in the physical world. We are moved by a protagonist's struggles in an autobiographical novel in a way we are not moved by pure fiction precisely because we believe those struggles mirror the author's real-world trials. While no reasonable reader expects an autobiographical novel to be a flawless, second-by-second documentary—it is generally accepted that a writer might smooth out clunky dialogue, alter a minor timeline for the sake of narrative pacing, or omit irrelevant acquaintances—the fundamental architecture of the narrative must remain undeniably anchored in reality. If an author completely invents central traumas, fabricates pivotal life events, or introduces entirely fictitious major characters, they are no longer writing autobiographical fiction; they are simply writing standard fiction while unfairly borrowing the gravity and unearned sympathy of lived experience. Such absolute fabrications represent a severe breach of trust that ultimately damages the credibility of the genre as a whole, leaving readers skeptical of the very works that should inspire profound empathy.

Based on the passages, which one of the following expresses a view about autobiographical fiction that is shared by both authors?