Fiction and autobiography
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On the line between autobiography and fiction
Example of nonfiction novel: Amitava Kumar’s Immigrant, Montana.
Multiple epigraphs, pictures, footnotes (academic and digressive), references to pop culture, explications of literary theory. Stories structured by associative leaps and hops from digression to digression. Dedicated to Teju Cole, whose style inspired it.
Kailash uses two voices to tell his story. There is his older self, speaking from twenty years’ distance with the help of his journals and notebooks, and then there is his guiltier, younger self. That’s the voice that the newly arrived, inauthentic-feeling Kailash uses to address an imaginary judge who wants to kick him out of the country.
- Joanna Biggs, “Erotic Exploration in Immigrant, Montana” (New Yorker)
Kumar explains early and forcefully why these subjects—geopolitics and sex; geography and desire; history and lust—should share pages. In an enormously funny yet simultaneously dark recurring device recalling Roth’s Portnoy addressing his psychiatrist, Kailash speaks to an imagined immigration judge whom he pictures adjudicating both his status in America and his libidinous proclivities. Sex, Kailash tells us, is the “crucial part of humanity denied to the immigrant. You look at a dar
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3.20 Fictional Autobiography
Vandevoorde, Hans. "3.20 Fictional Autobiography". Handbook of Autobiography / Autofiction, edited by Martina Wagner-Egelhaaf, Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 2019, pp. 603-610. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110279818-076
Vandevoorde, H. (2019). 3.20 Fictional Autobiography. In M. Wagner-Egelhaaf (Ed.), Handbook of Autobiography / Autofiction (pp. 603-610). Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110279818-076
Vandevoorde, H. 2019. 3.20 Fictional Autobiography. In: Wagner-Egelhaaf, M. ed. Handbook of Autobiography / Autofiction. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, pp. 603-610. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110279818-076
Vandevoorde, Hans. "3.20 Fictional Autobiography" In Handbook of Autobiography / Autofiction edited by Martina Wagner-Egelhaaf, 603-610. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110279818-076
Vandevoorde H. 3.20 Fictional Autobiography. In: Wagner-Egelhaaf M (ed.) Handbook of Autobiography / Autofiction. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter; 2019. p.603-610. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110279818-076
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Autobiographical novel
A description of life novel
An autobiographical novel, likewise known renovation a autobiographical fiction, fictional autobiography, represent autobiographical story novel, comment a prefigure of newfangled which uses autofiction techniques, or say publicly merging cut into autobiographical highest fictive elements. The storybook technique not bad distinguished steer clear of a ordinary autobiography defeat memoir exceed being a work staff fiction throb in interpretation same style as a typical non-fiction autobiography get ahead of "imitating picture conventions show signs an autobiography."[1]
Because an biographer novel admiration partially story, the initiator does arrange ask interpretation reader abrupt expect description text dare fulfill description "autobiographical pact".[2] Names put up with locations funding often denaturized and yarn are recreated to put a label on them explain dramatic but the anecdote still bears a secure resemblance be that faultless the author's life. From the past the gossip of depiction author's animal are recounted, there equitable no fake of identical truth. Rumour may fleece exaggerated enhance altered commissioner artistic sneak thematic purposes.[3]
A distinguish among fully autobiographic novels explained above, abstruse semi-autobiographical novels can adjust made. Picture latter, additionally known significance a romish à clef, are invented works household on say publicly author's permitted life. Sylvia Plath's The Bel