The London-based writer Rachel Cusk is often included in this autofiction posse, though her work has as many affinities with the essay and drama as with memoir. But what happens when fundamental aspects of the novel are stripped away? Can it survive a program of reduction or does it morph into something else? These are among the questions raised by a range of writers-Jenny Offill, Sheila Heti, Chris Kraus, Karl Ove Knausgaard-who have tired of certain novelistic conventions-plot, character development-and whose work has been addressed under the rubric “autofiction” because it blends autobiography and fiction. This capaciousness and elasticity is also how we know the novel is still able to evolve, to stay alive as a form.
Kudos, by Rachel Cusk, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 232 pages, $26Ī curious defining trait of the novel is its ability to ingest other forms or genres-short stories, lyric poems, tragedies, texts, sexts-without losing its identity.
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