Writing on the loose

A journalist writes a book about his generation, based on the advertising campaign for a car. A genre noir writer voices his political and literary ideas in the style of his fictional anti-heroes. A politician supports his career with personal reflections about his weight loss campaign. A French novelist writes a 9/11-autofiction. These authors’ works are just samples of the many directions autobiographical literature has taken in Germany and France after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Although the books share a link with autobiography, they would not be found in the same section of a bookstore or library – nor would a literary scholar group them as belonging to one and the same genre. Focusing on the way in which the selected texts combine belletrist endeavours with political argument, this study shows that Illies, Dantec, Fischer and Beigbeder utilize a literary approach to factual writing known as “creative nonfiction.” It demonstrates, through close examination of the four books, that creative nonfiction has grown out of the confines of 1960s and 1970s Anglo-American New Journalism, and has evolved into a valuable framework through which to explore fresh links between literature and politics in the emerging and diverse forms of new European writing.