Autofiction Grows Up, a Little

Literature as an enterprise is staked on the way that fictions reveal the contours of a deeper sense of reality, like a stone dropped into the bottom of a well. As Wallace Stevens observed, the power of literature is in its ability to cultivate a peculiar moment of belief in something that all involved parties understand is not real: “The exquisite truth is to know that it is a fiction and that you believe in it willingly.”

This kind of belief is trickier than ever in the age of the hot take, of the tweet, of “fake news.” What is evenly and accurately reported, fact-checked, expressed, and edited with an eye for unimpeachable veracity shows us how the world is, yes, but the facts are not the same as the truth and we live in a reactionary culture that is starving for both. The truth, in life and in art, takes shape through interpretation, that finicky mechanism by which the...