Bo Burnham

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The Story Of "Me"

Autofiction, or works in which the eponymous author appears as a fictionalized character, represents a significant trend in postwar American literature, when it proliferated to become a kind of postmodern cliché. The Story of "Me" charts the history and development of this genre, analyzing its narratological effects and discussing its cultural implications. By tracing autofiction's conceptual issues through case studies and an array of texts, Marjorie Worthington sheds light on a number of issues for postwar American writing: the maleness of the postmodern canon--and anxieties created by the supposed waning of male privilege--the relationship between celebrity and authorship, the influence of theory, the angst stemming from claims of the "death of the author," and the rise of memoir culture. Worthington constructs and contextualizes a bridge between the French literary context, from which the term originated, and the rise of autofiction among various American literary movements, from modernism to New Criticism to New Journalism. The Story of "Me" demonstrates that the burgeoning of autofiction serves as a barometer of American literature, from modernist authorial effacement to postmodern literary self-consciousness.

Adultolescence

Gabbie Hanna disarms the sacred and elevates the mundane in this exhilarating debut collection of illustrated poems. Ranging from the sing-song rhythms of children’s verses and a sophisticated confessional style, Gabbie explores the emotionally charged space between childhood and womanhood, revealing her own longings, obsessions, and insecurities along the way. Adultolescence heralds the arrival of an artist with a magical ability to connect through alienation, bury truth bombs within observations about pizza cravings and social media, and detonate wickedly funny jokes between moments of existential dread. You’ll turn to the last page because you get her, and you’ll return to the first page because she gets you.