AUTOFICTION

THIS IS BASED ON A TRUE STORY (I AM BASED)

Is that books about cars or something.

I’ve read Tao Lin and enjoyed it. I thought Leave Society was kinda boring and repetitive. I like his Substack notes. Delicious Tacos is good. I bought his books like a good little chud and I follow him on Twitter and he liked a post of one of my paintings and that made me feel good for two days. I don’t really read contemporary autofiction I guess. Maybe I do. I don’t really plan on it. (Unless it’s good.) I see Caleb Caudell’s latest book contains “semi-auto fiction” in its subtitle and I will read that but I’m reading his work in chronological order and I just started The Neighbor. Maybe I make it. Maybe I’m doing it right now. You tell me.

I think the problem “people” have with autofiction these days is that a “person” isn’t writing it. We hate whatever it is we are now, it doesn’t seem like a person, whatever it is. It definitely isn’t a man, and if it is, we recoil. (Maybe this doesn’t apply to you, in which case, you don’t get to post on Substack (because doing so removes your dick and balls, I don’t make the rules.)) Autofiction is bad because there are no humans writing it and no humans reading it. (Remember that part earlier when I said I don’t read it? Hehe I totally owned you. (Though my dick and balls have been removed.)) You need to be a completely insane freak to be a man right now. You aren’t an insane freak? Guess you aren’t a man. This isn’t a joke. Autofiction should be a guy killing criminals at night in his neighborhood, he should rip the clothes off his HR manager and spank her bare, cottage cheese ass in front of every employee in the company, he should dunk university professors’ heads in toilets, he should be a cult leader with a beautiful wife and healthy children. Then you would say autofiction is good. (I am an immature retard, I know.) I guess autofiction is a guy going to a restaurant and feeling anxiety. I don’t know because I don’t read it, but I’ve got the feeling autofiction is a story of me at a restaurant writing about how I would love to return to this restaurant to write a story about writing a story about writing a story in a restaurant. How interesting. Maybe it’s a skinny fat girl writing about her ribs feeling like air. You’ll share her work because you want to have sex with her because you are a faggot controlled by your base instincts. She will probably have sex with you, good job. Does Bukowski’s Post Office count as autofiction? Write an essay about how that’s an incorrect term, the “my ribs are lighter than air” girl will love that. He was an alcoholic who worked at a post office, the book is about an alcoholic working at a post office, but no, it’s an autobiographical memoir. Gimme a break. (It’s better than most contemporary autofiction because Bukowski was a better writer.) I would put you and Bukowski in a headlock and Joe Rogan would interview me about it and all my jokes would go over his head. (Because I am taller than him.) People would say the video is AI generated and they would be right in a sense and you would get all excited about writing an essay about images versus reality and are eyes part of the brain and is decapitation a head or a body removal. No mom, I swear it isn’t autofiction, I swear, it came to me in a dream. (Do you have a source for that?) Anything can be good if it’s done well. Any kid can make a mess, takes a man to clean it up. That’s a quote from the movie Max Keeble’s Big Move serving as an example of what I just said: anything can be done well, a dumb children’s movie can contain a timeless epigram.

Quality is the mortal enemy of equality. Yikes, have a normal one, man. To make anything good you must first reject the notion of equality. (I know you don’t have the balls to call equality evil, in fact I am evil for doing so, I know.) You just lie about it anyway, everything you do is paint on the canvas (and so are you), every breath you take is a protest against the mass, but you are a Good Person so you can’t stop lying and you’ve lied so much to yourself all the time that you really think the “my ribs are lighter than air” thing is good. You would thank me for punching you in the face. You would thank me for giving you something good to write about in your autofiction story. It’s perfect because something actually happened, someone was an actual person (me punching you in the face) and luckily you got to observe and report and not act, definitely not act, in that way you always liked where you never get uncomfortable and your ribs really do feel lighter than air. Prove to me the imagery is good by punching me in the face. A story about a car would be better than your restaurant thing. Do you sweat while you’re typing or tug at your collar? Do you nod when you re-read your sentences? You wanna get punched in the face so bad. She tells me what she wants and I don’t care because I know what she needs. The mob is a woman, whoops I misquoted a fascist, yikes. The audience needs you to punch them in the face.

Ok I’m sorry I used second-person pronouns to drag you into this. I’m sorry. Giving the audience what they want versus giving the audience what they need. I bet you ask women what they want. I bet you’ve never given a woman what she needs. Sorry, I did it again, I dragged you into this. But I know you wanna get punched in the face so bad, you want something good to put in your autofiction. And that burst, that violence, that act was a momentary crystallization of man imposing his will, of something good in autofiction. (You’re only allowed to write about that when you write about reading a story someone else wrote about it.) A man punches, a man can write an autobiographical memoir, something else writes autofiction.

I have never punched anyone in the face, there I admit it. I have been punched in the face a couple times, once by a grown man when I was 13. This whole thing was a projection, you’re right you’re right, you can replace every instance I wrote “you” with “I” and you will have cracked the code, there was a code to crack and an essay to write about literary analysis. Maybe you should punch someone instead of doing that. I am projecting, I should do that instead of writing literary analysis, I hate myself, my own face is blackened in the self portrait I posted about media analysis. I am obviously very disturbed in some way and you are a Good Person. What about all the stuff I don’t post? What if I painted beautiful, colorful, warm portraits of people I love and I never shared it with you? What if I had totally normal self portraits I’ve drawn which I will never share with you? Are you still working on your literary analysis essay? You’re enjoying this because it’s written by an actual person and it’s so refreshing to see that, you’re a person too, I know, it’s so good to know that there are still some humans out there. I would write about cars if I were good at it. What if the thing I am good at is writing autofiction? I’m scared it might be. Why am I scared of that? If I call it an autobiographical memoir then it’s not so scary. Then it’s Serious. A Substack post? Even better.

I am struggling with this. I wrote a science fiction story and the protagonist is a woman and it definitely isn’t autofiction but when I read it, it is. It is a science fiction story about a woman and I can’t stop seeing parts of my psyche all over the place. And I’m not sure if it’s good, it doesn’t feel as good as my more “autofictional” pieces have been, maybe that’s what I’m actually good at. So maybe I should do more of that. Oh yeah, I can do both and make paintings and recommend good books, what a relief.

I am writing this at work right now. I am taking advantage of company time. I have my own little office and I am so grateful that I can do this. I feel a burden now that I need to do this, the burden feels so good, I need to write while I have this opportunity, it would be a sin not to create given this opportunity. My office has a window. My little area has a portion of the painting Beatrice Addressing Dante from the Car by William Blake printed on the wall because I asked for it. I am healthy. Things could be so much worse.

Autofiction should be you writing “thank you” over and over again. Instead, it’s you apologizing. You should stop doing that. Even the audience doesn’t like that. Try telling the truth for once. If you feel like you’re a little worm who has panic attacks in restaurants because your self-absorbed anxiety and rumination is so important, then why are you burdening someone else by asking them to read about it. Oh it’s because you’re a little worm and that’s what little worms do. The audience both needs and wants a person. The worm audience enjoys little worm dirt tales, what if you gave them something better and they liked it and so did you. Maybe you write good dirt stories, I’ve been hard on you, if that’s what you’re good at then maybe that’s what you should do, I’m sorry even though I shouldn’t be.

What if I was good at autofiction? What would that mean if I felt a glorious burden and I was smiling writing this sentence and I didn’t feel bad about it at all and I only shared certain things and parts remained hidden and I crafted an online literary persona who hates that there’s some idea of a person that he cannot grasp and that’s what makes his work humanizing and maybe even good? I’ll let you know if I find out.