Autoportraiture was a subsection of so-called autofiction, which was a term that emerged circa 2010* to at first re-brand and then reduce the complexity of and ultimately deride first-person autobiographical often-essayistic fiction that felt absolutely real. Autoportraiture primarily consisted of alinear pointillistic patterning of memories, descriptions, events, whatever. The author wore no mask, or at least readers assumed author/narrator unity. Presented fragmentary prose unified by the author’s perception, the reader’s enjoyment related to putting together the pieces and semi-straightening out the story as it evolved. Reading as a sort of weaving. Brief superficial impressions appear below of some representative examples of a form that’s never really ever been known as autoportraiture.
* Please see the clarification below from Rat Boy Summer and my response.
(I’ve googled Serge Doubrovsky for you.)
Autoportrait by Édouard Levé / Lorin Stein (Translator)
Please excuse me (and anyone else) for having previously pronounced upon the emergence in the late 2000s of the phenomenon known as “autofiction” without mentioning this as a major early text. I’d heard of it but hadn’t read it. Took forever to read, a few pages at a time, no real through-line other than hints of the author’s eventual suicide, cracks of light on his life, lists, tallies, stray memories and experiences, writing that feels real because it is real but in its random arrangement feels artful and therefore fictional in a way?
At the end, right before he reveals the bit about his friend’s suicide, which charges everything before it with purpose, that is, he’s writing to do what his friend can’t do — no one will know about what his friend experienced and will never experience again — at the end he says something like fifteen will always be middle-aged for him, and there’s something about this that feels centered on teenagerdom as stance or outlook?
I Remember by Joe Brainard
Fair-to-middling reminiscences, most interesting for occasional sexy homosexual encounters during times of comparative repression, for Frank O’Hara and Ted Berrigan cameos, for images of old downtown NYC. But so many of these entries seemed straight outta ’40s and ’50s central nostalgia casting, complete with good old-fashioned American racism. Vaguely interesting as a writing constraint. Too centered on childhood and adolescence in Tulsa USA? Surprisingly mid/normie, as the kids say, even considering the sexy bits (seemed insufficiently queer in the weird sense of the word). Have wanted to read it forever. A classic. But I also feel like Leve’s Autoportrait improved on this, with its depictions of life charged with death.
Autoportrait by Jesse Ball
Having read Autoportrait by Édouard Levé and then I Remember by Joe Brainard before this, I’m comfortable declaring Jesse Ball’s take on this technology a welcome evolution. I was disappointed that I Remember wasn’t weirder and, although I loved Leve’s self-portraiture, it felt a little too centered on adolescence. Ball’s rendition, although it freely moves without transitions in time and space, same as the others, the occasion for its composition, its point of departure, seems to have emerged from a later present. Early on there’s something mannered in the prose that burns off after maybe twenty pages. But the quality of the prose ultimately differentiates it, the peculiarity of the animal spirit animating its secret passages.
Brilliant corners are turned in all three books but this one swerves some more, careens, belly-flops like a board from high atop jagged crags into the sea. The effect overall somehow is coherence, not disorder or jumble or mess. The brain straightens its alinearity. Puts together a synopsis.
Leve’s original seemed charged with the stuff of life in the face of self-inflicted death/suicide. This doesn’t rely on anything as overtly hefty but there is a sense, particularly toward the end, that he’s someone who’s awed by the turning flock of birds. Books like these, like Handke’s The Weight of the World, the first book along these lines I’d read in the mid-’90s, enhance perception. They’re not about anything in particular. They’re about everything, nothing, anything, all of it. They’re about life in pure form. Pura vida. They squirm with life, like Perec’s Life: A User’s Manual or Knausgaard’s The Seasons Quartet.
Should also be said there’s a spice in this that seems purposefully or intentionally untrustable — after all, he self-IDs as an absurdist and teaches a class on lying. I very much doubt for example that this was written in a single day. Maybe a first draft was composed in a day but the language seems too honed. Several more days must’ve been spent editing.
Generally the impression of the author is favorable but like the foxes he draws I wonder how much I’d want him hanging around our chickens. Seems undomesticatable in a way, which makes for interesting reading. Ordered another of his books. And now on to Sheila Heti’s Alphabetical Diaries and then maybe back to Handke’s The Weight of the World before exiting memory lane.
Alphabetical Diaries by Sheila Heti
Admirable formal presentation/organization of raw journal text into, I suppose, spreadsheet cells the author could then easily alphabetize. Not the first alphabecedarian book I’ve read (haven’t read Abish’s Alphabetical Africa) — semi-recently really enjoyed MJ Nichols’s Condemned to Cymru, but this instance of alphabecedarianism seems like an original, reasonable, functional formal structure. Like with Knausgaard’s The Seasons Quartet, a basic structure fences in so many stray, squirmy impressions of living, of thinking, of getting it on (gratuitously, from my prudish perspective), and of writing, and thinking about writing, and everything else related to a somewhat surprisingly tight system of concerns about money, location, relationship dynamics, and sex . . .
Did I mention there’s a lot of sex? Seems like every page there’s some shagging, some oral, a pleasurable instance of anal toward the end, mostly but not exclusively hetero, to a degree that seemed excessive after maybe a third through, seemingly included to spice things up and keep readers awake? At times it seems like the bicameral modes of her consciousness in conversation wouldn’t quite pass the Bechdel test, always on about Lars, Pavel, et al.
Names seemed anonymized but not always. I thought (apparently most likely mistakenly) that “Hanif” may have been Hanif Abdurraqib? Zadie Smith is surely Zadie Smith, but is Lemons (old editor friend) actually Eggers (same sort of victual surname ending in S — also Lemons’ wife is Ida, which is close to the surname of Eggers’ wife)? And the baroness proprietor of a writer’s retreat in Tuscany is given the name Giovanna.
Often felt Canadian, by which I think I mean artsy cultured upper-midwestern edginess in conflict with native whitbreadness? Doesn’t seem like during this time she worked a job to supplement her writing (taught a little?). Felt at times like the surplus excrescences of an unrestrained life. And because there are no real restraints like job or husband or child or even pet cat or goldfish she tries to rein herself in, in a way, mainly with men it seems.
But generally as a reading experience I enjoyed this for the most part despite initial skepticism — didn’t think I’d read it when I first heard of it but reviews have been favorable and it seemed to fit with what I’ve been reading recently (see above). All are constructions of artfully yet almost randomly organized thoughts, observations, memories. Some memorable descriptions in this, too, like “the sky is the color of computers.” Often feels like meditation, one woman’s Samsara written out, the turning axle, a commodious vicus of recirculation, a particular strip of perception looped and modulating over time, organized into 26 sections.
Loved that a few lines after I said something aloud like “this is getting pretty boring” a line in the book appeared like “this is getting really boring” — I laughed and felt like we were on the same wavelength. Loved generally the juxtapositions and how a reader naturally repositions things into somewhat coherent time- and storylines. Insights about writing, about no meaning in writing, about how a writer organizes her life, responds to emails, maintains solitude while maintaining connections to society and meeting professional demands.
Enjoyed reading pages of sentences beginning with the same letter. How the S sentences aren’t quite like the D or T sentences. (Note: the “I” section is a doozy — once I got through it I felt like it was smooth sailing.)
Accelerated my pace toward the end and didn’t feel like much was lost — felt at times like a flip-book and the faster I read the better the stray images cohered and seemed animated/active. Would love to see the film version of this, with each sentence a micro-scene or still image with voice over.
She writes “I’ve never met Kafka, but I feel like I have.” I feel similarly about the author. Which is something good books can do — convey a sense of a spirit; make you feel like you know someone you don’t.
Also, somewhat relatedly: 37 minutes into this 2019 episode of Sheila Heti’s podcast, mostly preparing to interview Rachel Cusk, it suddenly gets really interesting, with Heti alone in bed whispering about the connection between acting and writing and its relation to contemporary literature and autofiction.
Speedboat by Renata Adler
Excellent slant autobiography, maybe the original of its type. I felt as I read that I was getting a purer strain of this stuff, something closer to the source, maybe even the original approach, tone, and form itself. A period piece in many ways, nicely dated, historical, fifties, sixties, seventies, Tiny Tim talk at one point, a good deal of perfectly phrased ’70s feminism (well-educated women from the great women’s colleges asked if they type), fragmented form to match the times of course.
For a book with only 170 pages replete with hundreds of section breaks it seemed like it went on too long and didn’t really evolve, like it started to collapse under its own weightlessness, something the author acknowledged toward the end with the bit about the microtonal composer suffering from “pitch fatigue” — evolution however probably would’ve taken the form of plotwork (more about Aldo or the landlord murder) and otherwise ruined this.
Didn’t really seem like a predecessor to personal blogging and social media posts, in that the language in this is so sculpted, carefully reckless, savvy, always entertaining, turns unexpected corners, relies on associative leaps, eschews traditional orientating transitions. Intentionally about fragmented times and feminism, obviously, but more subtly about class privilege, pins to the page what feels like hundreds of iridescent, delicate, upper-class, northeastern sociological specimens. Loved that the narrator’s surname sounds like “feign,” as though to say it’s a fake name.
Feels real throughout, entirely, and therefore’s a favorite, a pretty major meat in the relatively contemporary literary stew I’d somehow known was in the bowl all along but had let sink to the bottom for too long. Seriously, I’ve had this on my radar for nearly ten years.
Sleepless Nights by Elizabeth Hardwick
Some really strong moments but overall it felt too privileged, a sense that grew and grew until it overwhelmed my appreciation of the strong, smart sentences, like they were too tasteful. As with Speedboat, which I read before this and preferred, too much of a good thing became — by about three-fourths through — not enough for me. A great few pages about Billie Holiday but that section seemed like the climax of my interest and the rest went downhill. Glad I read it — a good book to read with brain scattered by summer heat — but I’m not sure I’ll remember it by the fall.
The Weight of the World by Peter Handke (translated by Ralph Manheim)
I need to re-read this. First read it in 1996 or so. Kept in the bathroom for a while. The hardcover is worth $150 apparently. An early version of the “autoportraiture” technology. Primo perception enhancer. Lines from this were excerpted to furnish the angels in “Wings of Desire” (Wim Wenders) with insight into the interiority of random folk on a subway.
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To support the publishers who have supported my writing, please acquire a copy of Like It Matters: An Unpublishable Novel, Chaotic Good, Neutral Evil ))), and/or JRZDVLZ (all from Sagging Meniscus). Or my translation of Horacio Castellanos Moya’s Revulsion: Thomas Bernhard in San Salvador. Or Thanks + Sorry + Good Luck: Rejection Letters From the Eyeshot Outbox directly from the publisher. Or even a copy of The Shimmering Go-Between directly from me (the publisher is kaput).