The Sixteenth International Conference on Books, Publishing & Libraries

Abstract

In the multilayered autofictions recently triumphed by Ben Lerner, Alejandro Zambra, Enrique Vila-Matas, and Julián Herbert, the novel medium itself is interrogated in gerundium – in the process of writing. This makes for works that are at once brutally honest and dishonest, as both are compulsory when exposing the artifice of writing and the performative nature of any storyteller. Like browsing through open tabs, the authors flicker between various fictions and (ostensible) non-fictions, as a way of grabbling with the human and literary impotence of never being able to seize or write the slippery present. The concern of temporality is reflected in playful approaches to form and structure. While critics name such novels “metafiction”, I find the term as anachronistic and unmeaning as “postmodern”. Rather, these are examples of the reactive “new” avant-garde novel in which the multimodal and narrative texture of writing is placed above plot. Readily able to communicate the essence and texture of a contemporary life highly marked by digitality, Lerner, Zambra, Vila-Matas and Herbert navigate the void between fact and fiction, between art and life, between materiality and ephemerality, and capture that distance through literary technique and poetic prowess.