I agree that there’s a really specific and unique pleasure in reading well-crafted narratives that are effectively aimed at other writers as a sort of … not in-joke, but not a shibboleth, either. A way for writers to acknowledge to each other that you expect your life to be a story and it just refuses to be, but the actual content of it is still as compelling and worthy of notice as the exciting story-shaped stuff.
I dunno! I see this so much pretty much across genres. I’m thinking especially of stuff like Turgenev’s “short stories”, specifically “Hunting Sketches”. I read a bunch of them recently and I was mesmerised, but all that happens is a posh guy wanders around the countryside talking to serfs and “landlords” (local gentry who own land and the serfs on the land). The original Russian term translates better as “jottings” or “notes to myself”. They’re primarily concerned with character portraits, really, but they’re not character-driven in that nobody has much agency (and the ones who try to have it — all gentry — are depicted as Russian cousins of Don Quixote, while the good and pious serfs are shown as acquiescing to their fate; not stoically, but definitely with a kind of amor fati, almost).
So I wonder what connection, if any, there is between older forms of short fiction and the modern autofiction novel? I think it might be more obvious if I was at all familiar with German and Francophone literature, but alas, the only French novelist I’ve read is Dumas père. German literature was simply not mentioned when I was growing up. Anyone worth reading was French, Russian, or Anglophone. Now, this might be for an obvious and understandable reason (I’m a Soviet Jew), but it does mean that I am missing vital context for European literature.
I think I’m going to give Transcription a try. I didn’t love The Topeka School but let’s see. Re Sebald, have you read Carole Angier’s biography? Some of the stories in it about who some of his characters are based on (and the real-world fallout) are quite fascinating. Lerner did a write up for it in the NY Review of Books.
I only recently began to read Ben Lerner and loved him, though I struggle to let him off the hook just because he worries so much. I sort of hope Adam is an extreme Lerner: a slightly more naive, navel-gazing version of himself. Maybe the fact that all four books revolve around him means this is not true. I felt that Leaving the Atocha Station was ultimately about the looseness of the world and the power we have to impose our subjectivity on it. For that reason, I quite value part of that sequence on artistic experience that you didn’t highlight: “since I had often known these people before and after their experience and could register no change”. I wonder whether he says this to highlight that the limitation is his own? I mean, it’s funny. Maybe he just says it to be funny.
I also really loved Transcription, though it is the only of Lerner’s books I have read.
I loved your explanation of why you enjoy the novels: “The books are full of strange one-off incidents—characters who creep into the narrative, take center stage, and then disappear, without us ever learning more about them.
The effect is really engaging, because it feels like you’re witnessing the kinds of quotidian moments that normally get left out of stories. And if you’re reading quickly, absorbed in the text, you don’t notice—or don’t allow yourself to notice—that you’re seeing a version of everyday life that’s subtly crafted engage your interest. It’s like reality, if reality was actually interesting.”
I found the lack of paragraphing in Austerlitz—page after page of unrelenting gray—to be too much to bear, right up until it wasn't. You've inspired me to read more Sebald. Thanks for that.
It seems with these writers that there's a return to the 18th century novelist technique (Defoe etc.) of taking effort to frame the story as if it were non-fiction. Diaries and biographies have a different aura to them.
I agree that there’s a really specific and unique pleasure in reading well-crafted narratives that are effectively aimed at other writers as a sort of … not in-joke, but not a shibboleth, either. A way for writers to acknowledge to each other that you expect your life to be a story and it just refuses to be, but the actual content of it is still as compelling and worthy of notice as the exciting story-shaped stuff.
I dunno! I see this so much pretty much across genres. I’m thinking especially of stuff like Turgenev’s “short stories”, specifically “Hunting Sketches”. I read a bunch of them recently and I was mesmerised, but all that happens is a posh guy wanders around the countryside talking to serfs and “landlords” (local gentry who own land and the serfs on the land). The original Russian term translates better as “jottings” or “notes to myself”. They’re primarily concerned with character portraits, really, but they’re not character-driven in that nobody has much agency (and the ones who try to have it — all gentry — are depicted as Russian cousins of Don Quixote, while the good and pious serfs are shown as acquiescing to their fate; not stoically, but definitely with a kind of amor fati, almost).
So I wonder what connection, if any, there is between older forms of short fiction and the modern autofiction novel? I think it might be more obvious if I was at all familiar with German and Francophone literature, but alas, the only French novelist I’ve read is Dumas père. German literature was simply not mentioned when I was growing up. Anyone worth reading was French, Russian, or Anglophone. Now, this might be for an obvious and understandable reason (I’m a Soviet Jew), but it does mean that I am missing vital context for European literature.
I think I’m going to give Transcription a try. I didn’t love The Topeka School but let’s see. Re Sebald, have you read Carole Angier’s biography? Some of the stories in it about who some of his characters are based on (and the real-world fallout) are quite fascinating. Lerner did a write up for it in the NY Review of Books.
I only recently began to read Ben Lerner and loved him, though I struggle to let him off the hook just because he worries so much. I sort of hope Adam is an extreme Lerner: a slightly more naive, navel-gazing version of himself. Maybe the fact that all four books revolve around him means this is not true. I felt that Leaving the Atocha Station was ultimately about the looseness of the world and the power we have to impose our subjectivity on it. For that reason, I quite value part of that sequence on artistic experience that you didn’t highlight: “since I had often known these people before and after their experience and could register no change”. I wonder whether he says this to highlight that the limitation is his own? I mean, it’s funny. Maybe he just says it to be funny.
I also really loved Transcription, though it is the only of Lerner’s books I have read.
I loved your explanation of why you enjoy the novels: “The books are full of strange one-off incidents—characters who creep into the narrative, take center stage, and then disappear, without us ever learning more about them.
The effect is really engaging, because it feels like you’re witnessing the kinds of quotidian moments that normally get left out of stories. And if you’re reading quickly, absorbed in the text, you don’t notice—or don’t allow yourself to notice—that you’re seeing a version of everyday life that’s subtly crafted engage your interest. It’s like reality, if reality was actually interesting.”
The Park Slope food co-op may be the single most drama filled organisation in this city and for that reason the good they do does not spread further.
And I think there’s a metaphor in that.
I found the lack of paragraphing in Austerlitz—page after page of unrelenting gray—to be too much to bear, right up until it wasn't. You've inspired me to read more Sebald. Thanks for that.
It seems with these writers that there's a return to the 18th century novelist technique (Defoe etc.) of taking effort to frame the story as if it were non-fiction. Diaries and biographies have a different aura to them.