Novelists and poets whose autobiographical writing is better than their poetry and fiction

A few:

Richard Wright - Black Boy
George Orwell - Down and Out in Paris and London
Jean-Paul Sartre - The Words
Martin Amis - Experience
Gore Vidal - Palimpsest

Maybe Joan Didion.

Not exactly the prompt, but for "people who are better as journalists than as fiction writers," David Simon.

Some people rate Charles Willeford's I Was Looking For A Street and Something About A Soldier as better than his novels; I'm not one of them.

Harry Crews' A Childhood and the essays collected in Florida Frenzy are better than most of his other work, though.

Marcel Proust

Arthur Miller
Kathleen Jamie
Steinbeck (snap decision; I need to think it through)

Gore Vidal - Palimpsest

I enjoyed this a great deal, but I've never read any of Vidal's fiction, so I can't compare them. Some other authors better known for their fiction or poetry, but whom I mainly (or only) know by their autobiographical writings: Robert Graves ("Good-bye to All That"), Hemingway ("A Moveable Feast"), Mark Twain ("Roughing It", "Life on the Mississippi", "Following the Equator").

I fibbed re Vidal. I love Lincoln and Burr.

Roald Dahl Boy

Mishima
Emmanuel Carrere
JR Ackerley
Siegfried Sassoon

Clive James

I fibbed re Vidal. I love _Lincoln_ and _Burr_.

If this can mean EVEN better, than American Hunger, restored title of Black Boy, might be EVEN better than the restored text (Library of America edition) of Native Son, but that one's pretty damn great. Also, though he later deplored his agitprop short stories in that same LoA, they're pretty damn good, and prev unpublished novella in there is not bad either.
1984 earned its niche, but yeah overall Orwell's nonfiction is stronger than his fiction. Crick's biography refers to Down and Out as a novel (it's good either way).
The Armies of the Night and several other nonfictions are way better than any of the Mailer fiction I've read, though most of that was from 50s-68s.

William Burroughs

^^^ truth

tempted to say james thurber since i do think “my life and hard times” is his best work, but i also suspect most of it is more or less made up.

Jim Bouton. (He did co-write a novel.)

Zelda, do you mean Junkie and/or Exterminator Still mean to read those; are there more such? Would like to see a collection of book reviews, still remembering his Rolling Stone take on Scandals of Scientology. Also the interviews/conversations: Bowie in Stone, and Jimmy Page in, I think, the 70s version of Crawdaddy.

Junky and Queer I was thinking of, which are both excellent. I've tried with Burroughs' other stuff, with varying success...

Along with Burroughs, I think Mishima is key here. I like the novels I've read of his just fine, but Confessions of a Mask is a devastating masterpiece.

As for Clive James, his memoirs are OK and amusing, but in general I don't think he's a writer who is going to age well. Not really interested in his poetry at all I have to admit.

Was going to say Morrissey, but I've not read his fiction book.

His autobiography is a load of shit too

Florid.