Confession

Abstract

Abstract:What is the question of autofiction: Is it true, or is it a good story? Does it matter? Or do we not, in fact, find the speculation to be its own bloodsport? Perhaps the collapse between the two is what interests us most. Autofiction is a widely misunderstood genre: work that typically employs an avatar of the author (who usually appears in the first person) to provide a modicum of distance between them and their work, while still exploring autobiographical material. In the 2010s, the genre became a publishing phenomenon. Writers as diverse as Sheila Heti, Teju Cole, Annie Ernaux, Tao Lin, Ben Lerner, and Karl Ove Knausgaard were somewhat incongruously lumped together for their investigation of the line between truth and myth.