Selfless Autofiction

 I found several interesting ideas in Bécquer Seguín's Autofiction Without the Auto: On Javier Cercas’ Outward-Looking, Self-Centered Fiction; enough to keep from writing.

This sets up the idea:

This can come in different flavors: some prefer Knausgaardian novella-length digressions that give rhythm to the mundane chores of daily life, others favor the vibes of the Nelsonian graduate school theory classroom, replete with sex, gender, and philosophy. But no matter what the approach, they all lead in the direction of the self.

Not so for Cercas. His autofictional novels deal with a different kind of intimacy: the intimacy of how to report a newspaper opinion column. Against the popular stereotype of the armchair op-ed writer, opinion journalism, like its newsroom corollary, relies a great deal on facts and, often, on first-hand reporting. Opinion writers might report on the history of feminism or the history of their own family. But the best report all the same. What marks the difference between what they write and what those in a newsroom write has a lot to do with self-reflection, that is, the extent to which opinion journalists avow the persuasive techniques they use in their own writing. Op-ed writing, after all, doesn’t just identify a problem, it proposes a solution.

 How it was executed:

Cercas’s autofiction diagnosed a number of problems across contemporary Spanish society. But one stood out among the rest: the problem how to understand someone’s political ideology when it doesn’t align with their personality. In Soldiers of Salamis, the worldview of Cercas, the protagonist, gets scrambled when he researches the story of the fascist ideologue Rafael Sánchez Mazas, who, it turns out, was far more interested in writing literature than propaganda.

In The Anatomy of a Moment, which tells the story of how three of Spain’s most important politicians dealt with an attempted coup d’état on February 23, 1981, ideological commitments go out the window once the health of Spanish citizens and Spanish democracy is put on the line. Similar moments occur in The Impostor, which profiles a left-wing figure who is revealed to have fabricated his internment in a Nazi concentration camp, as well as in Lord of All the Dead, where Cercas, the protagonist, uncovers the fascist history of his relative before throwing into doubt the extent to which words on paper entail enthusiasm in person.

I have read one of Knausgaard's books, and I do not think his minute detailing of his life is for me. However, interrogating history does interest me. I think if I were starting "Only The Dead and The Dying" today I would try to use this example.

sch