Abstract
While autofiction has featured significantly in French literary theory for around four decades, postmodernism has rarely figured as a context for literary-critical analysis in France. In the United States the situation is almost the exact opposite. Autofiction features seldom in studies of American literature from the late twentieth century to the present day, while postmodernism remains one of the dominant categories within which to analyse late twentieth-century fiction. This chapter provides the first analysis of autofiction in the United States as a postmodern form of writing. More precisely it will examine the similarities between autofiction and the signature device of postmodernist writers, metafiction, in order to suggest that autofiction deserves to be regarded as an important postmodern form of writing. In fact, because of the emphasis on authorship in postmodern writing (its preoccupation with what it means to be an author), it can be argued that as much as autofiction emerges from within the tradition of postmodern metafiction in the United States, it might make sense to consider metafiction itself as a subcategory of autofiction. At the heart of the chapter is a study of the work of the Polish expatriate American-based writer Jerzy Kosinski, who began in the 1980s to describe his writing as autofiction. Kosinski’s work functions as a gateway to studying American autofiction in relation to postmodern metafiction. But the reception of his work also invites consideration of autofiction in a second context, what I term ‘obscene’ culture (celebrity- and scandal-obsessed and fascinated by self-revelation and exposure). The chapter also posits a third context, what Mark McGurl has termed ‘The Program Era’, in which the practice of ‘autopoesis’ (or self-production or self-reference) is central. While none of these three contexts is exclusively American, each is nevertheless especially relevant to literature produced in the United States in the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries, as we have moved from postmodernism to post-postmodernism. To demonstrate this, the chapter accompanies its focus on Kosinski with analysis of autofictions by his contemporaries Kurt Vonnegut and John Barth, and more recent work by the writers David Foster Wallace, Bret Easton Ellis and Dave Eggers.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Works Cited
Barth, John. Lost in the Funhouse: Fiction for Print, Tape, Live Voice. New York: Anchor Books and Doubleday, 1988 [1968].
———. ‘Lost in the Funhouse: Foreword to the Anchor Books Edition.’ New York: Anchor Books and Doubleday, 1988.
Baudrillard, Jean. Telemorphosis. Minneapolis, MN: Univocal, 2011.
Clements, James. ‘Trust Your Makers of Things! The Metafictional Pact in Dave Eggers’s You Shall Know Our Velocity.’ Critique 56 (2015): 121–37.
Coover, Robert. ‘The Magic Poker.’ Pricksongs and Descants. London: Penguin, 2011 [1969].
Dix, Hywel. The Late-Career Novelist: Career Construction Theory, Authors and Autofiction. London: Bloomsbury, 2017.
Doubrovsky, Serge. Fils. Paris: Galilée, 1977.
Eggers, Dave. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000.
———. ‘Appendix: Mistakes We Knew We Were Making.’ A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. London: Picador, 2001.
Federman, Raymond. ‘Self-Reflexive Fiction or How to Get Rid of It.’ Critifiction: Postmodern Essays. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1993.
Ferreira-Meyers, Karen. ‘Autobiography and Autofiction: No Need to Fight for a Place in the Limelight, There Is Space Enough for Both of These Concepts.’ Writing the Self: Essays on Autobiography and Autofiction. Ed. Kerstin W. Shands. English Studies 5 (2015): 203–18.
Franklin, Ruth. ‘Jerzy Kosinski’s Traumas, Real and Invented.’ The New Yorker, 27 March 2017.
Gasparini, Philippe. Autofiction: Une Aventure du langage. Paris: Seuil, 2008.
Gefen, Pearl S. ‘The Last Interview.’ Conversations with Jerzy Kosinski. Ed. Tom Teicholz. Jackson, MS: University of Mississippi Press, 1993.
Genette, Gérard. ‘Introduction to the Paratext.’ New Literary History 22 (1991): 261–72.
Green, Jeremy. Late Postmodernism: American Fiction at the Millennium. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.
Houston, Tracy Allen. The Phenomenological Self in the Works of Jerzy Kosinski. Electronic Thesis and Dissertations, University of Maine, 2003.
Hungerford, Amy. ‘McSweeney’s and the School of Life.’ Contemporary Literature 53.4 (2012): 646–80.
Kelly, Adam. ‘David Foster Wallace and the New Sincerity in American Fiction.’ Consider David Foster Wallace: Critical Essays. Ed. David Hering. Los Angeles, CA: Sideshow Media Group Press, 2010.
Kosinski, Jerzy. ‘Notes of the Author on The Painted Bird.’ Passing By: Selected Essays, 1962–1991. New York: Grove Press, 1992 [1965].
———. ‘Death in Cannes.’ Passing By: Selected Essays, 1962–1991. New York: Grove Press, 1992 [1986].
———. The Hermit of 69th Street. New York: Seaver Books, 1988.
———. ‘Art of the Self: Essays à Propos Steps.’ Passing By: Selected Writings, 1962–1991. New York: Grove Press, 1992.
McCaffery, Larry. ‘Kosinski’s Mask Behind the Mask.’ Critical Essays on Jerzy Kosinski. Ed. Barbara T. Lupack. New York: G.K. Hall, 1998.
McGurl, Mark. The Program Era: Postwar Fiction and the Rise of Creative Writing. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011.
Melehy, Hassan. Kerouac: Language, Poetics, and Territory. London: Bloomsbury, 2016.
Nicol, Bran. ‘The Memoir as Self-Destruction: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius.’ Modern Confessional Writing: New Critical Essays. Ed. Jo Gill. London: Routledge, 2005.
Schorr, Steven. ‘Dramatic Personae: A Cup of Coffee with Kosinski.’ The Harvard Crimson, 15 November 1977.
Shands, Kerstin, ed. Writing the Self: Essays on Autobiography and Autofiction. English Studies 5 (2015).
Sloan, James P. Jerzy Kosinski: A Biography. New York: Penguin, 1997.
Stokes, Geoffrey. ‘Jerzy Kosinski’s Tainted Words.’ Village Voice, 22 June 1982.
Vonnegut, Kurt. Slaughterhouse 5. New York: Delacorte, 1969.
Waugh, Patricia. Metafiction: The Theory and Practice of Self-Conscious Fiction. London: Routledge, 1984.
Widmyer, Dennis. Bret Easton Ellis. Available at https://web.archive.org/web/20071018072849/, http://www.chuckpalahniuk.net/features/interviews/breteastonellis/. Accessed 19 November 2017.
Wiesel, Elie. ‘Everybody’s Victim: Jerzy Kosinski’s The Painted Bird.’ New York Times Book Review, 31 October 1965.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Nicol, B. (2018). Eye to I: American Autofiction and Its Contexts from Jerzy Kosinski to Dave Eggers. In: Dix, H. (eds) Autofiction in English. Palgrave Studies in Life Writing. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89902-2_14
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89902-2_14
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-89901-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-89902-2
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)