A Year in Reading: Matt Seidel
Autofiction and its attendant criticism having perhaps reached a saturation point, I decided to map out new avenues for autofiction writers to explore and new variants for autofiction critics to classify: a handy manual that doubles as my year in reading.
1. Umlaut-o-Fiction: Any work taking place in, or obliquely mentioning, Germany. Jennifer Hofmann’s The Standardization of Demoralization Procedures is a metaphysical spy thriller, an expansive novel set in the claustrophobic world of the East German Republic. An ailing Stasi officer confesses his life story to a young waitress, from writing his magnum opus (the titular Standardization of Demoralization Procedures) to his interrogation of a quantum physicist who vanished under mysterious circumstances. The superannuated officer is obsessed with “ordung” even as the regime collapses and mysterious events (“spooky action at a distance” in quantum mechanical terms) occur that do not obey the iron laws of authoritarianism.
This category, somewhat counterintuitively, has two entries. The first is by , whose brash narrator proclaims early on: “And I don’t mean to offend you Dr. Seligman, especially now that you have your head between my legs, but don’t you think that there is something kinky about genocide?” Just what Dr. Seligman’s head is doing between the narrator’s legs—is one aspect of the drama, though the true spectacle is in Volckmer’s discomfiting provocations (including masturbatory fantasies about the Führer).
