Bible Belt Autofiction

Autofiction is the in thing these days: a fictionalized version of the author’s own life experiences turned into a novel. In the last couple of years, I’ve read Sally Rooney, Naoise Dolan, and Elif Batuman, and there are many others — just google ‘recent autofiction’.

The latest to come my way via the library is Groundskeeping, by Lee Cole.

Cole is from the Bible Belt, Kentucky to be precise, and worked as a university groundskeeper so that he could take classes for free. His protagonist, Owen, is working as a university groundskeeper so that he can take classes at the fictional Ashby University in Kentucky.

Owen (and presumably Cole) has bounced around many blue-collar occupations in the last few years, while also struggling with a drug addiction. He is now clean, living in the basement of his grandfather’s house (rent-free; he doesn’t earn enough to pay for rent or live elsewhere), and taking a class in creative writing.

Much of the book consists of tedious, pointless details. Owen goes to a party.

It was a house way out in the country, decorated in the way you’d expect of a grad student — someone with an overdeveloped sense of irony and curation, who also happened to be broke. Foreign film posters,. A lamp made from antlers with a buckskin shade. Those chili pepper Christmas lights. We were standing in the pink glow of a Wurlitzer jukebox. In her right hand she held a Solo cup and an unlit cigarette. [..]

This might be useful background information for a spy, but neither the flat style nor the actual unremarkable details add much for the reader. Even more details are then noted down by Owen as part of his writing practice. After returning home from this same party, he writes in his notebook:

Crosscut saws.

Posthole diggers.

A rust-speckled Pepsi sign.

Purple Heart in a glass case.

Cardboard cutout of Walt Whitman at the party.

That is a LOT of inessential detail for the reader to plough through. Not coincidentally, in Owen’s creative writing class, there is a lot of discussion about detail.

The details you choose reveal what you think is important, and if you choose trivial details, you’ll out yourself as having a trivial intellect. This is what Tony told us.

There isn’t much of a plot, but the author heads off any such criticism by having one of his characters say:

I mean, plot can just be time passing, you know?

As you see, like Sally Rooney, this author does not use quotation marks. Paragraphs can be a single line, a sentence or a few words. It’s consciously literary and very meta, which may appeal to some readers and turn others off. (Unfortunately, I’m in the latter camp.)

Owen meets Alma, a visiting writer on a fellowship, and the two of them are drawn together despite Alma’s existing boyfriend. Alma is the daughter of Bosnian Muslim immigrants, but is in every stereotypical way a high-achieving East Coast liberal. She is shocked, shocked when she sees a Confederate flag flying, has never heard of the Scopes trial, and views the locals (including Owen) as if they were unfamiliar creatures in a zoo. Here are some snippets of Alma talking to Owen:

Did you just say critters?

What other weird words do you use?

Do you say “ain’t”?

My parents have less of an accent than you have even.

More interesting are the groundskeeping crew. Owen’s team of tree-trimmers includes James Masondo, who is black, and ‘Rando’, a local, overweight, asthmatic smoker. At one point Owen implies to Alma’s boyfriend that she is carrying on with James, and a brawl ensues. Later, James says to Owen:

I know what [Alma’s boyfriend] thought. You sure didn’t go out of your way to correct him. You realize what kind of situation that puts me in, right? To whip a white kid’s ass in the middle of the fuckin street? What if the cops had pulled up and seen me covered in blood?

James was a strong character, and I’d have liked to read more about him. It is suggested, ambiguously, that he is from South Africa, and his view of racial dynamics in Kentucky would be interesting. But alas, the novel is focused on Owen’s own navel-gazing.

In the end, the novel failed to enhance my interest in, understanding of, or empathy for any of these groups:

• Bible Belt conservatives. (the characters in the book were pretty stereotypical, and even in this novel, their good points are that they are kind to their own families)
• Americans living just above the poverty line. (In contrast, Richard Russo writes about the people of dying towns with so much warmth and empathy)
• Trump voters (what more is there to say?)
• Rootless twenty-somethings. (The protagonist in the book is pretty hard to root for, or even to like.)
• Cross-culture lovers (honestly, it was hard to see what attracted Alma and Owen to each other, but it’s just as hard to scrounge up any interest in the success of their relationship)
• Literary academics. (Alma is condescending, meanly competitive, and almost ridiculously ignorant of anything outside her upper-middle-class East Coast world)
• Coastal elites. (Alma’s family simply spouts unexamined ‘liberal talking points and platitudes’)

Of the autofiction I’ve read, I liked this one the least. Of course, it is fully expected that an author’s experiences will play into their writing, but sometimes, I just wish they would use their imagination instead.