AustLit

'This paper examines the autobiographical fiction of Australian authors Helen Garner and Kate Jennings and shows how these texts engage with and disrupt notions of genre. The texts examined are Garner's Monkey Grip (1977) and The Spare Room (2008); and Kate Jennings' Moral Hazard (2002) and the anthology of essays and short stories, Trouble: Evolution of a Radical/Selected Writings 1970-2010, which the author has described as her "stand-in for memoir."

'Monkey Grip, The Spare Room and Moral Hazard are marketed as novels, but draw significantly on actual events, blurring the boundaries of fiction and non-fiction. With these texts, Jennings and Garner contest assumptions about what the novel as genre is and can be. Garner in particular has been criticised for having the impudence to describe her autobiographical fictions as novels, with some critics dismissing these works as little more than transcribed and edited diaries.

'Drawing upon the ideas of genre theorists including Mikhail Bakhtin, Benedetto Croce and John Frow, this paper proposes a more liberal definition of the novel. These theorists assert that the novel is a dependent genre, a fusion of genres rather than a genre in its own right. Following Frow and Bakhtin, I argue that the malleability of the novel is precisely what makes the form so suited to the boundary-blurring writings of Garner and Jennings. This paper also examines what the authors themselves have to say about genre and the power it exerts over how their works are read, critiqued and received. It draws on the work of feminist critics including Mary Eagleton, Joy Hooton, and Cinthia Gannett, to show how the work of Garner and Jennings sits in the traditions of diaries (or journals) and autobiography, and how a discussion of genre is inevitably tied to that of gender.' (Publication abstract)