Autofiction

Autofiction is a term applied to fictional autobiographies and memoirs, or life stories that include elements of fiction. Some authors and scholars define a memoir as a factual, straightforward account of events, while they classify autofiction as a recounting that offers more for the reader, such as analysis and insight into the motivation of the major character. Readers oftentimes cite the journal-or diary-like quality of autofiction as one of its appeals.

Autofiction originated in France and initially was primarily written by French authors. However, in the twenty-first century, such novels have become increasingly popular in English literature in Britain and the United States.

Background

Autobiographies and memoirs are very similar, and the terms are often used interchangeably. In the book publishing industry, an autobiography encompasses the writer’s entire life, while a memoir is limited to a timeframe or certain segment of the writer’s life. Autobiographies are generally structured chronologically, from early youth to the time of writing, covering virtually all one’s experiences. A memoir’s limitations may be broad, such as the whole of one’s childhood. They may also be quite narrow, such as a pivotal summer or eventful journey.

Authors have written their own stories for centuries. One of the most-read autobiographies is the incomplete account written by Benjamin Franklin and published in 1791. It is celebrated for its insight into one of the greatest minds of the eighteenth century, its depiction of life in colonial North America, and the rags-to-riches tale of his early life. It is also recognized as the template used by other famed eighteenth-century figures when they felt called to write their memoirs.

Noted memoirists in more modern times include Elie Wiesel, who recorded his experiences of persecution and near death during the Holocaust; Beryl Markham, whose West with the Night recounts a single solo transatlantic flight she completed in 1936; Maya Angelou, whose multiple memoirs cover racism, abuse, neglect, activism, and triumph; Malala Yousafzai, the young Pakistani activist who survived an assassination attempt because she dared to advocate for girls to be educated; and John Grogan’s account of life with an incorrigible pooch in Marley and Me.

The idea of autofiction, and the term itself, arose in 1977. Author and literary critic Serge Doubrovsky included a line in his novel, Fils, that was cut but ultimately included on the cover. While he considered the work to be fiction, he also revealed that the events and facts he used were true, suggesting the term autofiction. He initially included a line in the novel using a play on words, stating that his autobiography would be his auto-fiction if he wrote in his car. Doubrovsky was not creating fiction so much as writing about the experiences of a person he could not truly and accurately know—himself. Other writers and critics took note of the label that he chose and applied it to novels that were largely autobiographical if the primary personality bore the author’s name. Likely because Doubrovsky was French, autofiction largely remained an element of French literature for some time. It was increasingly adopted by authors writing in other languages, including English, German, Italian, and Spanish.

Overview

Some critics and literature analysts believe that autofiction offers some values to writers. Chief among these may be the buffer that fiction provides between the author and personal trauma.

Doubrovsky continued to write autofiction, which he compared to psychoanalysis. His first-person narrator in Fils attends psychoanalytic sessions and such therapy and discussion of psychoanalysis appears in his other works as well.

French writer Hervé Guibert gained fame for his novels. Much of his work addresses the AIDS epidemic and his own diagnosis with the virus. He describes in detail the physical toll that the disease took on his body. His autofiction work To the Friend Who Did Not Save My Life (1990) is a fictionalized account of the last days in the life of his neighbor, philosopher Michel Foucault, in the novel named Muzil.

A lauded master of autofiction in the twenty-first century is Norwegian author Karl Ove Knausgaard. He completed a six-volume, best-selling autofiction novel that was published from 2009 through 2011 in Norway and in English from 2012 to 2018. It is titled Min kamp, or My Struggle. He was inspired by personal trauma related to his father’s alcoholism, which led to the elder man’s death. He had previously published several novels that won acclaim but said that he lost interest in fiction. At the time, Knausgaard was also coping with the breakdown of his first marriage and was determined to write his life’s story openly and honestly. However, he also decided that he needed to examine his everyday existence to find meaning. The death of his long-estranged father prompted him to begin writing the novel. He used real names when he wrote his fictional memoir. He did not hold back, he said, offering both philosophical essays and detailed accounts of family life and parenting. He said writing in this way gave him freedom from concerns about character development, tone, and other style considerations. When the first volume, which sometimes has as its English title A Death in the Family, was about to be published, some relatives threatened him with a lawsuit because of what he wrote about his father and grandmother. Thanks to the legal tussle, the fictional work drew intense scrutiny and a great deal of publicity. The second volume, A Man in Love, traumatized his second wife. The following volumes are Boyhood, Dancing in the Dark, Some Rain Must Fall, and a sixth volume without a title in English. The final work details the reactions and consequences of writing the first five volumes.

As autofiction has grown into a more popular and widely published subgenre, other authors have found success within the space. Shelia Heti’s How Should a Person Be? (2010), used humor and honesty to try to answer deeply philosophical questions. Heti wrote another work of autofiction, Motherhood (2018), in which she focuses on the decision of whether or not to have children. Ben Lerner’s 2019 book The Topeka School takes place in Kansas and New York and the events and plot closely mirror the author’s own life.

Bibliography

Acheampong, Nicole. “Truth Is Stranger than Autofiction.” The Atlantic, 10 Dec. 2021, www.theatlantic.com/books/archive/2021/12/books-briefing-karl-ove-knausgaard-lucia-berlin/620932/. Accessed 10 Oct. 2024.

Bouraoui, Nina. “Top 10 Books of Autofiction.” The Guardian, 16 Sept. 2020, www.theguardian.com/books/2020/sep/16/top-10-books-of-autofiction-all-men-want-to-know-by-nina-bouraoui. Accessed 10 Oct. 2024.

Fan, Jiayang. “A 1970s Japanese Novel Leading the Way to Ferrante.” The New York Times, 15 Mar. 2019, www.nytimes.com/2019/03/15/books/review/territory-of-light-yuko-tsushima.html. Accessed 10 Oct. 2024.

Gronemann, Claudia. “Autofiction.” Handbook of Autobiography/Autofiction, edited by Martina Wagner-Egelhaaf, De Gruyter, 2019, pp. 241–46.

Klems, Brian A. “Memoir vs. Autobiography.” Writer’s Digest, 8 May 2013, www.writersdigest.com/write-better-nonfiction/memoir-vs-autobiography-2. Accessed 10 Oct. 2024.

Lorentzen, Christian. “Sheila Heti, Ben Lerner, Tao Lin: How ‘Auto’ Is ‘Autofiction’?” Vulture, 11 May 2018, www.vulture.com/2018/05/how-auto-is-autofiction.html. Accessed 10 Oct. 2024.

Quante, Michael, and Michael Kühler. “The ‘Self.’” Handbook of Autobiography/Autofiction, edited by Martina Wagner-Egelhaaf, De Gruyter, 2019, pp. 390–97.

Warner, Brooke. “Autofiction: What It Is and What It Isn’t.” Publishers Weekly, 8 Jan. 2021, www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/authors/pw-select/article/85269-autofiction-what-it-is-and-what-it-isn-t.html. Accessed 10 Oct. 2024.

Winter, Jessica. “Our Autofiction Fixation.” The New York Times, 14 Mar. 2021, www.nytimes.com/2021/03/14/books/review/autofiction-my-dark-vanessa-american-dirt-the-need-kate-elizabeth-russell-jeanine-cummins-helen-phillips.html. Accessed 10 Oct. 2024.