Autofiction Zero

Thoughts on Other Lives But Mine by Emmanuel Carrère, translated by Linda Coverdale

I love full-fat Dr Pepper.

Or, at least, I used to love it.

Ever since my childish diet caught up with me and I had to stop drinking full-fat sugary drinks and necking whole bags of Haribo Starmix like mummy was going to confiscate the packet if I didn’t inhale it in one, I haven’t been able to drink the stuff.

I drink Dr Pepper Zero from time to time, but let's be honest: it’s not the same.

The sugar is what we like.

I like Emmanuel Carrère, too. His writing is brilliant, as I pointed out when I read his most recent book, V13: Chronicle of a Trial.

In fact, in that piece, I gushed over his genius.

I stand by my gushing. Limonov. The Kingdom. The Adversary. All brilliant books that I recommend wholeheartedly and perhaps a little aggressively, like a Parisian waiter forcing you to choose your entrée.

But like with all relationships, sometimes you don’t get on.

It’s not that you love the person any less; it’s just that, for whatever reason, in this particular instance, their presence irritates you.

However, to mix my metaphors in such a nonsensical way as to ban me from ever writing for a prestigious literary magazine, my instinct is that the reason I didn’t get on with Other Lives But Mine as much as I have with other books by Carrère is that there wasn’t enough of his presence.

An untangling

Having intentionally tangled two metaphors together, let’s unpack them, thus giving me enough material to form this piece without having to needlessly and stupidly criticise a fine writer.

The reason I like reading Carrère, personally, is that he has mastered (and often subverts) the modern trend for autofiction.

Autofiction, to some extent, is bollocks. All fiction is autobiography in some way, and the most likely reason the term even gets used in the literary world today is because a) people are dull and prescriptive, and b) people got fed up with describing everything as post-modern.

To question the authorship of a novel is a post-modern act, and essentially, that’s all autofiction does, up until the point it becomes pure fact and passes into autobiography. Though even then, can there ever be such a thing as pure factual autobiography? There are countless Radio 4 programmes to be made by well-spoken Oxbridgers exploring that line in the sand alone.

Still, Carrère is an autofictionalist par excellence, and when it comes to autofiction, or post-modern literature blurring the role of the author, that’s what I turn up for.

I like full-fat Dr Pepper because it contains too much sugar; I like Carrère’s writing because it contains—arguably—too much of the author.

Trouble is—for me, at least—Other Lives But Mine doesn’t contain enough of the author.

It’s Autofiction Zero, which I don’t mind, but I don’t love.

The clue is in the title

The clue, I suppose, is in the title. That said, even though the likes of Limonov and The Kingdom are primarily concerned with lives other than Carrère’s, it’s his interaction and experience of the primary subjects that seem to drive those books and provide a certain vigor to the work.

Here, he takes more of a backseat and loses me a little as a result.

Otherwise, it has all the hallmarks of a Carrère novel, and the people’s lives he is concerned with are fascinating, if a little uncomfortable to read about, given the presence of so much sadness (it opens with lives lost in the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami and then pivots to two people from his life struggling with cancer).

It’s thoughtful. It’s poised. It’s wise. And reading about these other lives is moving. But as a book, it just didn’t grab me by the lapels and shake me like his work usually does.

I wasn’t wearing a jacket, so the fault is likely mine. And I have no doubt I’ll spend more pleasurable time with Carrère before too long.

My recommendation: For Carrère completists, it’s interesting in the sense of seeing how his style has evolved. This book preceded both Limonov and The Kingdom, and we might never have had those two masterpieces if he had not further developed his voice from The Adversary through this book. For readers new to Carrère, I might politely suggest starting elsewhere.