Autofiction moved from literary play toward earnest claims on the real.

Evidence

The more commonly cited, though later, origin of the term was a joke ultimately deleted from the text of a book by Serge Doubrovsky in 1977: “Si j’ecris dans ma voiture mon autobiographie sera mon AUTO-FICTION” (If I write in my car my autobiography will be my autofiction). The book’s back cover inscribed the word in a tagline while omitting the joke: “fiction of strictly real events or facts; autofiction.” Autofiction’s route, amid a crisis of literary value, from joke and play toward the zeal of the real defines its historical development (not coincidentally in the epoch from 1972 to the present), an ever more explicit expressiveness nauseated by mediation. — Anna Kornbluh, Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late…, 123

Categorization

• DEFINE: Supplies the coinage and first English usage dates of ‘autofiction’ (West 1972, Doubrovsky 1977) plus its itinerary from joke to zeal.