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Article
Becoming Autotheory
Arizona Quarterly: A Journal of American Literature, Culture, and Theory
  • Ralph Clare, Boise State University
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
4-1-2020
Abstract

The impact of the recent boomin what U.S. critics and publishers are increasingly calling autofiction is a notable, if curious, phenomenon. Authors such as Chris Kraus, Sheila Heti, Ben Lerner, Maggie Nelson, and Rachel Cusk, as well as the wildly successful translations of works by Karl Ove Knausgård and Elena Ferrante, have gained both readerly and critical accolades. In various ways, autofictional works collapse fiction, nonfiction, and autobiography into texts that, as Marjorie Worthington writes, “constantly play with readerly expectations about memoir and fiction, thwarting both and thereby forcing a recognition that . . . the line is at times rather permeable” (149). While something about these authors’ works seems radically new, however, several critics have put this boom into historical and cultural perspective. Autofiction, it turns out, has a notable literary and historical lineage.

Citation Information
Ralph Clare. "Becoming Autotheory" Arizona Quarterly: A Journal of American Literature, Culture, and Theory (2020)
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/ralph_clare/46/