With no official end or sentimental sendoff, it seems as though autofiction’s time as a reigning form, a privileged container for the contemporary moment, has begun to dwindle. In retrospect, it’s clear that we loved autofiction in part because it upheld deep-rooted myths about how special we were, even as we moved within the mundane career-building, self-constructing rhythms of our lives. In a scene from Rachel Cusk’s Outline where the...
As we were preparing to launch this magazine, we told our first cohort of writers not to pitch us anything about contemporary fiction. We were bored by it, we said — mostly but not entirely tongue-in-cheek. This issue, we’re making an exception. It seems to us that the literary ground has shifted, and the forms and themes considered most exciting just a few years ago are now all but exhausted....