#Autobiography

[sarathewrestlingfan]

[theoptia]

Fernando Pessoa, from The Book of Disquiet

Text ID: By thinking so much, I became echo and abyss. By delving within, I made myself into many.

[one-time-i-dreamt]

I was forced to read a Donald Trump autobiography for one of my college courses. It was just the plot of Boss Baby. He thought nobody would notice. 

[haveyoumetmythief]

Me: It is Perfectly Normal to struggle while doing visual tasks in the dark, and fumbling while plugging in my phone is a neutral act. It has been over a decade, can you please just-

The Thing Inside My Brain:

[xalala]

Transformers One (2024) dir. Josh Cooley

[mournfulroses]

Virginia Woolf, from “A Sketch of the Past,” written c. 1939

[lets-get-lit]

There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you. 

- Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

[90s-2000s-barbie]

Ashlee Simpson - Autobiography (2004)

[druid-for-hire]

an autobiographical comic. it happened to me one night

this was developed for the Static Fish Fall 2024 comic anthology, purchasable at MoCCAFest!

(id under the cut)

[images id: a six-page digitally drawn comic titled "Emergency," by druid-for-hire. The subtitle reads, "The events depicted took place on August, 2024."

The first page shows a homely-looking, warmly-lit living room in the middle of the night. The digital clock on a TV cable box reads "2:43 AM." A figure sits on the couch on their laptop, at ease. The narration reads, "Of my family, I am the latest to sleep. The rest are all in bed by midnight. Maybe 1 AM at a stretch, or if it’s a holiday. After that, the house falls to me."

The second page shows a cable TV menu tuned to the channel "MeTV." There are drawings of the narrator from The Twilight Zone; Columbo; and Captain Kirk and Spock from Star Trek. The figure is lazily working on their laptop. The narration reads, "One summer, I developed a particular habit. Every night, when my parents were done watching the news and went to bed, I’d throw on MeTV. They aired nothing but shows from the 50s through to the 80s. Some of it was good. Twilight Zone. Columbo. Star Trek. Most of it I didn’t care about, but it didn’t actually matter; I just wanted the noise. I found vintage television comforting. I was soothed by 32mm film and STC mics." Then there is a sudden blue light shining on them from offscreen, and they look up. The narration reads, "One night…"

The third page shows an enormous blue screen with white bold text at the top reading "Emergency Alert System," the figure small in front of it. They look up in horror, lit all blue in darkness. The narration reads, "... there's an emergency."

The fourth page shows the figure still lit all in bright unnatural blue surrounded by darkness, scrambling for the right TV remote. The narration reads, "It's dead silent. All of a sudden, I can feel the darkness in the house. I don't care how important it is. I'm not getting the news like this. I'd get a panic attack before I got anything useful. Besides, the alarm is going to wake everyone up soon. I have to turn it off." Words appear on the screen, but they refuse to look and their head is blocking the words from the viewer. The narration reads, "Words appear. I can't even look." They turn it off with a click. Warmth and light returns to the room. They take a moment to breathe, then glance back up at the blank screen, and turn to their laptop and start typing.

The fifth page shows a portion of a history reading searches such as "is there an emergency alert in my area," "emergency alert system today," "breaking news nj," "weather in nj," and "emergency alert system august." The person looks nervous. The narration reads, "Nothing. If it's not some 2AM breaking news, it has to be nothing. I'd see it if there was. I lie near the city. Was it a test? EAS tests happen in the dead of night all the time. But the tests make sound. That's the whole point of them. This one didn't, even when the text came on. It just..." One more search says, "how old is the eas screen..." The narration reads, "Was it part of the recording? Couldn't have been. They say this EAS type is from 2016. After five minutes, I check if it's still on." There is a brief panel of blue with bold white words cut off and obscured by the silhouette of the figure. They turn it off again. "Still no sound. I can't look."

The sixth page shows the figure waiting in front of an enormous dead screen. Numbers from the digital clock on the cable box read "2:48," then "2:58." Tentatively, they click the remote and turn the TV on again. Star Trek is on the screen. The figure looks on in apprehension and subdued terror. The narration reads, "Star trek is back. Everything is fine. But I can't shake this feeling... like I missed something." end id]

[kallenchi]

T diary Image description in alt text.

[theoptia]

Ta-Nehisi Coates, from Between the World and Me

Text ID: The pursuit of knowing was freedom to me, the right to declare your own curiosities and follow them through all manner of books. I was made for the library, not the classroom. The classroom was a jail of other people's interests. The library was open, unending, free.

[one-time-i-dreamt]

I walked into Barnes & Noble to see that Prince Hamlet was the cashier and he was trying to sell his autobiography in play form, Hamlet. He didn’t know who Shakespeare is.

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Writing Notes: Autofiction

Autofiction - (short for autobiographical fiction) is a genre of literature that combines elements of autobiography and fiction.

In autofiction, details of the author’s life blend with fictional information, characters, and events.

It often reads as like a published first-person account of the writer’s real life.

The line between fiction and fact might not always be clear to the reader, leading to a sense of instability in the narrative.

Autobiographical novels are novels that use elements of autofiction.

Characteristics of Autofiction

The specific characteristics of autofiction are subject to interpretation, but some common features in autofiction works include:

Life proximity: Beyond character names, the work will contain similarities between the author’s life and that of the protagonist. The most important one tends to be the role of writing in the protagonist’s life. Often, the protagonist is a professional writer. Some autofiction is a type of autobiographical metafiction, which focuses on the writing and storytelling process.

Name sharing: Authors of autofiction will sometimes share the same name as the protagonist of the novel or short story.

Uncertainty: Much of the tension in autofiction comes from uncertainty about what is real and what is fictional. Some details will be verifiable, but others may be difficult or impossible to determine by a reader, causing speculation.

Examples of Autofiction

Autofiction is a fairly popular genre, and there have been several recent examples of this blend of the real and the fictional:

Every Day is for the Thief (2007): The first novel by Nigerian-American writer Teju Cole, this account of a young man’s journey to Nigeria has a diaristic form, reflecting Cole’s own journey to discover his roots.

My Struggle (2009-2011): In this epic cycle of novels by Norwegian writer Karl Ove Knausgaard, the author tells the story of his own life. Knausgaard made up details to fill in the blanks of his recollection.

How Should a Person Be? (2010): Canadian writer Sheila Heti constructed this work from interviews with various personal friends, offering a unique version of autofiction.

The Outline Trilogy (2014-2018): Rachel Cusk, a British-Canadian writer, has worked in both fiction and essay form. Critics consider her trilogy of novels, Outline, Transit, and Kudos, to be autobiographical fiction. Unlike most autofiction, the narrator in this trilogy relays information about other characters and not much about herself.

Motherhood (2018): This work of autofiction by Canadian writer Sheila Heti focuses on her struggles about deciding whether or not to have children.

The Topeka School (2019): In Ben Lerner’s work of autofiction, the author describes experiences that closely mirror events from his own life, in scenes set in Kansas and then New York.

A Brief History of Autofiction

Autofiction dates back to Ancient Greece, and its popularity continues to rise.

First-person narratives: First-person narratives with an autobiographical component are nearly as old as literature itself. Some scholars credit “I,” a lyric poem by the Archaic Greek poet Sappho, as an early example of this type of text.

In Search of Lost Time (1913-1927): Scholars consider this seven-volume work by the French novelist Marcel Proust an early version of autofiction. It involves many details and characters from Proust’s own life, although much else is fictionalized.

Autofiction: The term “autofiction” first surfaced when the author Serge Doubrovsky used it to describe his 1977 novel Fils. Sleepless Nights (1979) by Elizabeth Hardwick and I Love Dick (1997) by Chris Kraus were instrumental in popularizing the genre and the use of the term in scholarship and book reviews.

Source ⚜ More: References ⚜ Writing Resources PDFs

[haveyoumetmythief]

Happy lesbian day, my Pinterest algorithm has me dead to rights

[mournfulroses]

Britney Spears, from "The Woman In Me," originally published in October 2023