Date Published:

Abstract:

In recent years one has observed the rise of new forms of (self-)life-storying, not only as a means of expressing one’s dissatisfaction with the turn-of-the-21^st-century auto/biographical boom but also as a manifestation of the crisis of both the auto/biographical self and form. These new self-narratives ostensibly resist the canonical “laws” of auto/biographical writing yet eagerly embrace real events from the authors’ lives. This article discusses one of the most acclaimed examples of 21^st-century (self-)life-storying, Rachel Cusk’s “Fay” trilogy — Outline (2014), Transit (2016), and Kudos (2018). Drawing on Cusk’s archival records, it focusses on the way Cusk’s auto/biographical authorial self becomes first fictionalized and then compartmentalized into the series’ fictional characters. By referring to Clair Bishop’s Artificial Hells (2012), this essay argues that Cusk’s trilogy should be recognized as employing the strategy of “delegated performances,” where the narrativization of the self is dependent on “outsourcing” the authorial self. This strategy is here seen as a signpost of new autofiction.

December 2024.  Robert Kusek (Ph.D, D.Litt) is Associate Professor at the Department of Comparative Studies in Literature and Culture, Faculty of Philology, as well as Head of Research Centre for Transnational Literary Studies at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland. His research interests include life writing genres, the contemporary novel in English, queer heritage, as well as a comparative and transnational approach to literary studies. He is the author of two monographs and several dozen articles published in books and academic journals. He was a researcher in a number of Polish and international projects – currently he is a principal investigator in the National Science Centre funded project entitled “(Un)accidental Tourists: Polish Literature and Visual Culture in South Africa in the 20th and 21st Centuries.”