The Death of the Postmodern Novel and the Rise of Autofiction
Instead, in a move resolutely against the grain of postmodern fiction — which is often defined as a distrust of metanarratives — she embraces a single, powerful metanarrative: she will believe exclusively in her own life.
“My concern is how we live fictions, how fictions have real effects, become facts in that sense, and how our experience of the world changes depending on its arrangement into one narrative or another.” — Ben Lerner
All of these novels point to a new future wherein the self is considered a living thing composed of fictions. [...] What’s happening is that new novels [...] are redistributing the relation between the self and fiction. Fiction is no longer seen as ‘false' or 'lies' or 'make-believe’. Instead it is more like Kenneth Burke’s definition of literature as “equipment for living.” Fiction includes the narratives we tell ourselves, and the stories we’re told, on the path between birth and death. — “And, besides, when I make phrases is it really me who is speaking?”
The best way I can describe the new autofictional novel: the oeuvre is the soul. The artist’s body of work, in other words, has come to replace the religious ideal of the immortal spirit. — cf. Schwabsky’s Object or Project