DOI: 10.24308/iass-2014-142

Universite Paris 8, France

mimi.okb@gmail.com

Abstract

Quant à l’écriture contemporaine, nous sommes fréquemment témoin d’une attitude audacieuse de ceux qui écrivent, même plutôt exhibitionniste pour exposer leur vie intime, non seulement dans le domaine de la littérature mais aussi dans les activités des amateurs. Ce constat phénoménal serait issu de la nouvelle situation environnementale dans notre société de l’information: nous avons souvent des moyens pour publier un texte sur un espace virtuel tels le blog et les réseaux sociaux grâce à l’accès internet, cette ouverture nous encourage de nous engager passionnément dans une activité ludique: écrire sur le moi, ma vie et mon histoire intime.

Comme genres littéraires, le terme d’« autofiction » n’existait pas avant les années 1970. Ce fut Serge Doubrovsky, écrivain français, qui inventa ce nouveau genre littéraire pour définir sa propre œuvre, intitulée « Fils » (1977) dans laquelle l’auteur désira distinguer la fiction autobiographique d’avec l’autobiographie. L’autofiction est donc un terme qui porte un sens transdisciplinaire, notamment ces deux caractéristiques: la fiction et l’autobiographie. Toutefois, la caractéristique de l’« autofiction » elle-même était toujours présente dans les activités humaines à propos de l’écriture.

Par ailleurs, en France, Philippe Lejeune, théoricien de la littérature, notamment spécialiste de l’autobiographie, a publié « Le pacte autobiographique » (1971) dans lequel l’auteur a réalisé ses recherches riches sur une activité historiquement répandue en Europe: tenir un journal intime. Bien entendu, le journal intime n’est pas toujours un recueil des histoires vraies, comme démontra Sophie Calle, artiste française, à travers son ouvrage intitulée « Des histoires vraies » (2002). En jetant un regard sur les lieux de création littéraire, la relation entre l’écriture sur soi comme le journal intime et la littérature contemporaine est interactive et dynamique. À mon avis, il est grand temps de considérer cette problématique: enjeux esthétiques de l’autofiction afin d’interpréter profondément une dernière tendance puissante dans la littérature.

Dans cette communication, j’analyserai certaines œuvres autobiographiques d’Hervé Guibert et le style d’écriture expérimental d’Hitomi Kanehara, ainsi que son œuvre intitulée « Autofiction » (2006).

1. Introduction

In contemporary writing, we often witness a daring, practically exhibitionist attitude, with authors revealing in intimate detail confidential aspects of their personal lives. Not only in literature but also in amateur writing, this new attitude is remarkable. This is due recent environmental developments in our information society. To be concrete, now that Internet access is widespread, we are able to publish anything we want on supports such as blogs and social media. This possibility of self-exposition encourages us to be passionately engaged in a ludic, but serious, activity: writing about our own lives, selves and stories.

As a literature genre, the term “autofiction” did not exist before the 1970s. Serge Doubrovsky[1], a French writer, introduced “autofiction” into the domain of literature with the publication of an autobiographical fiction titled Fils (“My sons”, 1977). With this book, the author clearly distinguished autofiction from the autobiography; in autofiction, the author is the narrator and main character at the same time. The appellation of the protagonist can vary like “I”, “he” or “she”, and so on. Defining a work as autofiction is not a simple task because when a story is deeply based on a person’s real life, it is difficult to work out whether it is a fictional or true story. However, when determining a work’s literary value, it is not necessarily vital or interesting to know the truth. From a historical point of view, even before the invention of the term “autofiction,” these characteristics already were present in literary expression.

In France, Philippe Lejeune, literary theoretician and specialist of the autobiography, published Le pacte autobiographique (1971), which detailed important research on diary keeping, an activity historically practiced in Europe. It is evident that a diary is not always a selection of real stories, as Sophie Calle demonstrated through her work titled Des histoires vraie (“true stories”, 2002). Looking at diverse platforms of literary creation, there is an interactive and dynamic relationship between contemporary literature and literature focusing on “the self” (such as the diary). Lets consider this matter: what are the aesthetic elements of the autofiction as a recent trend in literature?

In this paper, I will analyze certain autobiographical works by Hervé Guibert and his experimental autofiction writing, with the intent of considering the aesthetic purpose of self-writing.

1.1. The life and works of Hervé Guibert

Hervé Guibert, journalist, photographer and writer-diarist, is considered as a pioneer of the literary genre “autofiction”.

Hervé Guibert, born in 1955 in Saint-Cloud, France, died with AIDS in 1999, is known for his autobiographic and photographic works. Born into French society after the World Wars, to a middle-class family composed of his parents, a sister and his great-aunts Suzanne and Louise (who played a important role in some of his literary works concerning familial themes, in Mes parents (“my parents”), for example), Guibert went on to study drama in La Rochelle in the drama club “La Comédie de la Rochelle et du Centre Ouest”. He failed the entrance examination for Institut des hautes etudes cinematographiques (IDHEC) at the age of 18. Homosexual, his sentimental life revolved around many men, like Michel Foucault[2], whom he met for the first time in 1977, Thierry Jouno, director of the Sociocultural Centre for the deaf in Vincennes, and Vincent M., an old friends from his adolescence who inspired his novel Fou de Vincent.

Hervé Guibert was diagnosed with AIDS in 1988. Two years later, he published his roman À l’ami qui ne m’a pas sauvé la vie (“to the friend who did not save my life”), which revealed his HIV status and made him well-known. In 1991, the year of his death, he completed a home-made film titled La Pudeur ou l’impudeur showing the last year during his battle against AIDS and pains from the many diseases he acquired. He died on December 27^th 1991 and this film was released posthumously in January 1992.

Life with AIDS did not obstruct Guibert from writing, far from that. He became deeply involved in writing up until the end of his life, leaving behind fragments of text about himself, autobiographical articles and diaries concerning his sentimental life.

While Hervé Guibert published some of his early works in 1977, 1982 and 1983, the majority of his novels were published at the end of his life, between 1989 and 1991, that is, after his 1988 AIDS diagnosis.

2. When a real life becomes a fictional story: analysis of the creative process of Hervé Guibert

2.1. The initial purpose of diary

At the interview with François Jonquet, critic of the literature, Hervé Gubert declared:

Very often a written work is born because there is, inside a diary, a theme or character who, becoming too insistent, unstabling or brushing this daily equilibrium—moreover, I do not write in it everyday (I do not date it either). Mes parents, for example, is largely an extraction from my diary; Fou de Vincent entirely. The diary permits me to bridge between different universes: passing between stories about my great-aunts to erotic tales. My books are appendixes and the diary, the vertebra, the essential part. (Interview with François Jonquet[3])

It is important to remark that his “books” are often accessory while the diary is “la colonne vertébrale, la chose essentielle” (“the vertebra, the essential thing”).

L’été 76 je passe un été terrible avec mes parents à Porquerolles. Je suis atrocement amoureux de T. que j'ai connu six mois plus tôt … Il m’écrit de temps en temps et les lettres que moi je lui écris deviennent si nombreuses et si torturées que je n’ai plus qu’à les faire passer sur un cahier. (…) Le cahier aux lettres d'amour est devenu un livre édité (…) : La mort propagande.(Mes parents, p.108)

[In the summer of 1976 I passed a terrible summer with my parents in Porquerolles. I was horribly crazy for T. whom I met six months before … He writes to me from time to time and the letters I myself wrote to him became so numerous and so troublesome that I could not help but put them into a notebook. (…) The notebook for love letters became a published book (…): La mort propaganda.” ]

We can also remark that his diary originates from a kind of message board or love letter platform.

2.2. Intention of the diary publications

Among his many novels, although almost all of Hervé Guibert’s works are based on the diary he kept for fifteen years, there are two works based entirely on extracts from his diary. They are Mes parents and Fou de Vincent. According to his interview with François Jonquet, his diary, considered as “the vertebra, the thing essential” by himself, was later published in 2001, with the title Le Mausolée des amants, Journal 1976-1991[4], ten years after the author’s death. The 361 page diary, typed by Hervé Guibert himself, was completed by Christiane Guibert, his successor, who added 35 pages[5]. Hervé Guibert had already been interested in the diary’s publication in 1984 and proposed to Hector Bianciotti, editor of Gallimard.[6] Bianciotti then offered to publish a work inspired by the diary. Their project became Mes parents (1986), one of the first works entirely based on his diary.

Two works made up entirely by extracts from Hervé Guibert’s diary are, as mentioned above, Mes parents and Fou de Vincent. Hervé Guibert always appreciated the writing of Kafka and considered him as one of the best writers. Reading the diary of his forefather (Le journal intime, Franz Kafka), Guibert dreamed that one day, maybe after his death, his diary would be published and read by future lovers of literature like Kafka’s diary. His love for Kafka is particularly remarkable in La mort propagande. According to Guibert, it is the first novel originating from the diary. However, from a purely autobiographical point of view, with chronologic investigation, there are several ambiguous points in this novel concerning dates and years as remarked his friend-witnesses and researchers. In this story, as in some other works, the author enjoys incarnating Kafka who also kept a diary. But, there are some notable differences between Guibert and Kafka’s use of the diary. While Hervé Guibert used diary extracts directly, Kafka just used his diary for jotting down ephemeral ideas, as a kind of external memory to take advantage of later when weaving stories together.

The novel Mes parents is therefore literally a collection of extracts from Guibert’s diary about memories of his parents. The first part starts with a scene where his great-aunt Suzanne reveals a dishonourable story from her mother’s youth: the secret of the birth of Dominique, her older sister. The work has a strange structure with an autobiographical part and many reprises from other works.

Fou de Vincent published in 1989 is also a work constructed by extracts of Guibert’s diary, focusing on the said adolescent “Vincent”. In Le Mausolée des amants, Journal 1976-1991, Guibert relied on his diary for the realisation of this story. This story starts with Vincent’s fall from the fourth floor, followed by his hospitalization, and two days later his death. This last part is fictional and is probably the only element that makes Fou de Vincent a fictional work. In this novel, Vincent dies in 1989, and the story covers Guibert’s memories of this boyfriend over seven years, from their meeting in 1982 to Vincent’s fictional death in 1989. The author assembled fragmented texts about this man, but for the purpose of linking them together, Guibert modified and rewrote many parts of his work.

3. The diary for the “open” writing

3.1. “Open” writing

Traditionally, a novel is not composed by extracts from diaries, but is an entirely invented story. Therefore, that Hervé Guibert wrote his novels based on his real life placed him in a new position within traditional literature. Today, we are used to “autofiction” as an already known literary genre. Modern amateurs, those who read contemporary literature, decode, interpret and naturally understand the relationship between written fiction and an author’s personal life through psychoanalytic or psychological explanations.  Today, we witness the importance of the autofiction in literature.

The worth of Hervé Guibert’s writings awaits in the following questions: why is the diary a literary work? How can we judge extracts of a diary found in a novel? How can we evaluate, appreciate and love this “new” literature?

Let’s look at one of his works as an example, Le Mausolée des amants, Journal 1976–1991, that I mentioned above.

J’écrivais des lettres à T., je ne les lui envoyais pas, plaçais l’enveloppe cachetée à son nom dans une boîte de bois blanc, et il venait les lire, elles étaient à sa disposition, dans la boîte,(…). Les lettres ont cessé, le cahier a pris le relais, est devenu l'endroit où il pouvait venir lire, à tout moment, dans mon absence. Je lui laissais mes clefs pour qu'il soit plus libre de le consulter. Maintenant j'ouvre la boîte en public, j'ouvre le cahier et je le laisse ouvert, exposé : je peux facilement m'imaginer mort. (reference)

[I wrote letters to T., without sending him these letters, but noted his name and placed envelops secretly in a white wood box. When he came to read, they were available to him in a box, (…). The letters were over, the notebook replaced the letters, became the place where he could come to read them, whenever he wants to, even during my absence. I left him my keys so that he could consult more freely. Now, I open the box in public, I open the notebook and I left it opened, exposed: I can easily imagine myself dead.]

His writing style and method exhibit the “open-minded” attitude that initiated the new literary genre of autofiction. Hervé Guibert declared that he had nothing to conceal and that his diary was written to publish. He continued writing about himself in order to “substitute” the act of writing for living. For this author, the life is an act of writing and living signifies “keeping his diary”.

His way of being a man of letters brings to mind the theory of l'œuvre « ouverte », or « open » work. This attitude is connected in many ways to contemporary writing, such as online or digital publications on different social media. It is possible to imagine that Hervé Guibert would probably be generous in terms of imitation, appropriation and modification of his original texts, even if his writings were transformed and used as a kind of “opened” resource.

4. Artistic interaction

4.1. Sophie Calle and Hervé Guibert

I would like to remark in particular on an interesting resonance seen in a work by Sophie Calle, concerning the way she respected game rules[7].

Vice, published by Hervé Guibert in 1991, is also based on the diary that he kept in his youth. This novel is composed by two principal parts, and between these two parts Hervé Gubert inserted pictures he took and associated with the story. The page arrangement of Vice shares a significant characteristic with the illustrated agenda or diary decorated with pictures. Guibert inserted pictures as if composing photo album pages with text and pictures. What he achieved in Vice brings to mind works of his friend, Sophie Calle. Sophie Calle staged her own life in a theatrical manner, especially her intimate memory based on real stories. She concretized her work like Guibert with sentimental and poetic texts as well as self-portraits. Des histoires vraies contains one episode (or her message to Guibert) showing their friendship.

4.1.1. A bed sheet in « Des histoires vraies » by Sophie Calle

Ma grand-tante s'appelait Valentine. Elle était née le 4 février 1888. A l'âge de quatre-vingt-seize ans elle se sentit fatiguée de vivre. Mais elle s'était fixé un but : devenir centenaire. A l'agonie peu avant ses cent ans, elle revint à la vie pour demander : « Combien de jours reste-t-il ? » Il restait six jours. Elle a murmuré : « Je tiendrai. Je tiendrai. »  Elle est morte le 4 février 1988. Pour son faire-part de décès, elle avait choisi ce verset de la Bible : « Elle a fait ce qu'elle a pu. » Avant de mourir elle avait brodé un drap à mes initiales. Je l'offris à mon ami Hervé, alors gravement malade, en souvenir de cette nuit, lointaine déjà, où il avait refusé de partager mon lit. Je l'invitai ainsi à dormir un peu avec moi. Et puis, j'aimais à croire qu'ayant été brodé par une femme devenue centenaire grâce à une volonté farouche, ce drap, auréolé de foi, lui transmettrait sa force. (Des histoires vraies, p. 46–47)

[My great-aunt’s name was Valentine. She was born on February 4^th 1888. At 96 years old, she felt tired of living. But she decided on goal: to become a centenarian. At death’s door shortly before her one-hundredth birthday, she returned to the life by asking: “How many days are left?” There were six days. She mumbled: “I will endure. I will endure.” She died on February 4^th 1988. For her obituary, she chose this Bible verse: “She did what she could do.” Before dying, she had hand-embroidered my initials in a bed sheet. I gave it to my friend Hervé, then critically ill, as a souvenir of a night, already faraway, where he had refused to share my bed. I also invited him to sleep a little with me. And then, I loved to believe that the bed sheet, hand-embroidered by an one-hundred-year-old thanks to fierce will-power, haloed by faith, could transmit to him her force. ]

Even before this work, Sophie Calle appeared Guibert’s novel À l’ami qui ne m’a pas sauvé la vie. In Sophie Calle’s autobiographical novel titled Douleur exquise (p. 72–73 and p. 82–85), she reveals the story of an evening where she attempted to see Hervé Guibert in nude, pretexting the usage of his bath in a hotel. Her plan was failed because of Guibert’s shouting. Fortunately they remained friends.

On Hervé Guibert’s side, in À l’ami qui ne m’a pas sauvé la vie, he wrote about Sophie Calle and their promenade in Kyoto with his friend Aki, a Japanese painter.

J’avais retrouvé Anna par hasard dans le hall de l’Hôtel Imperial à Tokyo, où Albert lui avait fixé rendez-vous. Nous nous battions froid. (…) Je l’avais interviewée avant son départ, pour illustrer l’article elle m’avait confié une photo d’elle à l’âge de sept ans prise par son père, un exemplaire unique auquel elle tenait, m’avait-elle dit, comme à la prunelle de son cœur. (…) la fameuse photo s’était égarée. Anna me l’avait réclamée de façon très désagréable, allant jusqu’à me menacer, alors que j’avais retournée sens dessus dessous les cinq étages du journal dans l’espoir de la retrouver. Nous venions d’entrer avec Anna dans le temple d’Asakusa ; soudain, plantée devant un tabernacle translucide en forme de pyramide où scintillaient des lueurs, Anna me tendit un minuscule cierge en me disant : « Vous ne voulez pas faire un vœu, Hervé ? » A la seconde un gong retentissait, la foule sortait avec précipitation, le Bouddha en or s’éteignait dans sa cage luminescente, une barre de fer s’encastrait en claquant pour souder les deux battants de l’entrée monumentale, nous n’avions pas eu le temps d’échapper à l’évidence que nous étions enfermés dans le temple. Un bronze nous fit sortir par une petite porte de derrière qui donnait sur une fête foraine. J’avais été interrompu dans la formulation de mon vœu, mais ce n’était que partie remise, et l’événement dans son étrangeté avait scellé notre amitié avec Anna. (p.122–124)

[I had met Anna again by chance in the hall of the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, where Albert fixed an appointment. We disputed coldly. (…) I interviewed her before her departure, to illustrate an article she had trusted to me, a portrait of her at the age of seven years old, taken by her father, one single original photo of which she cared a lot about, as she told me that this picture was the apple of her eye. (…) the said photo was missing. Anna reclaimed it from me in a terrible way, to the point of threatening me, although I had gone back, going up and down fives floors of the newspaper company in hope of rediscovering it.

We had just entered the temple of Asakusa with Anna; suddenly, immobilized in front of a semitransparent tabernacle shaped like a pyramid where a faint light was scintillating, Anna held out a tiny candle while saying: “Why don’t you make a wish, Hervé?” The second a gong was vibrated, the crowd went out with precipitation, the Buddha of gold spread out in his luminescent cage, an iron bar fit into the gates of the monumental entrance with a bang.  We had little time to escape, being locked in the temple. A bronze let us out by a small back door which led to a fair. I was interrupted while making-up my wish, but it was just postponed, and the strange event sealed my friendship with Anna. ]

Anna, the nuisance (enquiquineuse), was therefore Sophie Calle, with a substituted name.

In Sophie Calle and Hervé Guibert’s writing experiments, we notice the use of bricolage and recycle. These are particularities of autobiographical or autofictional stories, that are based on a diary consisting of diverse fragments from different universes. We can conclude that the limit of autofiction comes from the fact that an individual cannot experience so many different worlds. However, this literature is marked by a characteristic transitional phase: the passage to the “character novel”. The character novel is a recyclable creation where characters and stories are partially or totally repeated, recycled and developed in other romans written by the same author or different authors. This new “open” writing style, producing writing exchanges as carried out by Hervé Guibert and Sophie Calle, encourages interactive modification in literature, renouncing traditional linear intrigue.

4.2. Influences from “Nouveau Roman”

The “experimental” writing of Hervé Guibert certainly relates to the Nouveau Roman. The Nouveau Roman, according to a journalistic definition, means a movement overturning the “traditional” dramaturgic structure. As opposed to traditional novels (“romans” in French) a Nouveau Roman author plays in the absence of linear intrigue, on sentimental description and the reduced role of characters. In Kafka’s writing (especially in Le Procès), the main characters lose their important position, are pushed to the background and named only by their initials. We can assume that these features in Hervé Guibert’s works are inspired by Kafka, but Hervé Guibert highlighted the diary by inversing the hierarchy between the diary and the novel, so that it was considered as a real work. He radically modified the meaning of self-representation through writing.

5. Conclusion – Autofiction or talking about the “self”: aesthetic elements in new literature creation

Let’s return to the descriptive introduction of Hervé Guibert in the beginning of Le Mausolée des amants, Journal 1976–1991.

 [I wrote letters to T., without sending him these letters, but noted his name and placed envelops secretly in a white wood box. When he came to read, they are available to him in a box, (…). Now, I open the box in public, I open the notebook and I left it opened, exposed: I can easily imagine myself dead.] (reference)

After reading Le Mausolée des amants, Journal 1976–1991, we understand Hervé Guibert’s views on his own diary. He considered his diary to be as important as those of famous, respected writers in literature history, including his idol Franz Kafka, conserving secrets and introspective thoughts in their pages, thoughts later disguised in plain sight in their published works.

Mana Naito[8], researcher of European literature, remarked the particular conscience of Hervé Guibert in the face of the act of writing his diary. She quotes certain symbolic phrases that prove that Hervé Guibert always possesses saw himself as a serious writer, and that he believed that his diary would be published and read by people after his death, exactly as that of Kafka.

Quand il m’arrive de relire ce journal, j’ai déjà une impression posthume. (p.86)

[When I reread this diary, I already have a posthumous impression.]

L’idée d'une page parfaite du journal (celle-ci ne l’est pas bien sûr) qui finirait par tout dire, et qui reverrait, comme un miroir, à la place du visage, l’évidence de la mort. (p150)

[The idea of a perfect diary entry (which of course, isn’t) which ends up explaining everything, and which should repeat, like a mirror, in the place of a face, the evident nature of the death.]

“Can not we write a novel without inventing a dramatic death (as invented in Mes parents and Fou de Vincent)?[9]” This question asked by Hervé Guibert himself allows us to share a dilemma that concerns all manners of expression. Contrary to his definition of “photographic writing”[10], Guibert recognizes the importance of fictive events to construct a coherent intrigue.

Take into consideration the works of Haruki Murakami[11], Japanese writer. His works are translated into many foreign languages. They are generally defined as autofiction. His protagonist reflects Murakami himself during his teenage years and his stories are staged in a realist manner. However, the events that happen in his works are completely made-up, imaginary to the point of being fantasy. Look at one of his last works titled 1Q84 published in 2009 and 2010 (consisting of three volumes). By minutely reconstructing the contemporary life and Japanese society, the presence of two moons immediately let us thinking of the possible fiction.

Is it absolutely necessary to put spectacular events into a novel? Take for example La modification of Michel Butor published in 1957 (considered a chefs-d’oeuvre of the Nouveau Roman). In this novel, La modification, any event happens, his story of 286 pages tells of nothing but the personal thoughts of the protagonist traveling by train. Without spectacles, without theatrical narrations but banal and realist, this Nouveau Roman anticipates the arrival of a new literary creation like ours, that is at once autobiographical and autofictional. Contemporary authors are the successors of authors such as Hervé Guibert, or of his Nouveau Roman predecessors or even of Kafka.

I would like to conclude this article by evoking a fact that opposes what Hervé Guibert himself declares about his journal. Guibert considered his journal as “photographic writing”, a method that allowed him to write about things exactly as they are, exactly as in reality. He distinguishes this characteristic with that of novels. For Hervé Guibert, the diary is therefore “first surge writing” (écriture de premier jet) (Philippe Lejeune called it “a traditional image of the diary”). However, what this author missed in his hypothesis, produced a confusion in the definition of the literature, obscuring the frontier between the novel and the diary. Narcissist, sentimental and theatrical, Guibert wrote his diary anticipating its future publication. Expressing oneself in the writing, without hiding anything, being conscious the reader, are attitudes shared by today’s writers including bloggers and social media users. The origin of “open-minded” writing is evident in Hervé Guibert’s work.

In my opinion, he was conscious of the nature of diary writing. Otherwise, he would not have said:

Pour moi, en fabriquant un livre, c'est souvent quand le récit prend l'allure d'un journal qu'il est le plus fictionnel. (p.528)

[For me, while fabricating a book, it is often when the story takes on the mood of a diary that it becomes the most fictional.]

The fruit of his experimentation is a new overture to the act of diary-keeping, opening a door to future “open,” exhibitionist writing of “the self.”

References:

BUTOR, Michel. 1957. La modification [The modification], Paris: Éditions de minuit.

CALLE, Sophie. 2002. Des histoires vraies [True stories]. Arles: Éditions Actes Sud.

CALLE, Sophie. 2003. Douleur exquise [Exquisite pain]. Arles: Éditions Actes Sud.

CAUQUELIN, Anne. 2003. L’exposition de soi : Du journal intime aux Webcams. [Self representation: From the diary to the webcams]. Paris: Editions Eshel.

DIDIER, Béatrice. 1976. Le journal intime [The diary]. Paris: Presses universitaires de France.

DOUBROVSKY, Serge. 1977. Fils [My son]. Paris: Éditions Galilée.

GUIBERT, Hervé. 1986. Mes parents [My parents]. Paris: Gallimard.

GUIBERT, Herve. 1989. Fou de Vincent [Crazy for Vincent]. Paris: Editions de minuit.

GUIBERT, Hervé. 1990. À l’ami qui ne m’a pas sauvé la vie [To my friend who didn’t save my life]. Paris: Gallimard.

GUIBERT, Hervé. 2001. Le mausolée des amants: Journal 1976-1991[The lovers’ mausoleum: Diary 1976-1991]. Paris: Gallimard.

KAFKA, Franz. 1945. Journal intime [Diary]. Paris: Rivages poche Petite Bibliothèque.

LEJEUNE, Philippe. 1975. Le pacte autobiographique [The autobiographical pact]. Paris: Éditions du seuil.

LEJEUNE, Philippe & Catherine BOGAERT. 2003. Un journal à soi : Histoire d’une pratique, [A diary to the self: Hitory of a practice]. Paris: Éditions Texuel.

LEJEUNE, Philippe. Signes de vie: Le pacte autobiographique 2, [Signs of life: The autobiographical pact 2]. Paris: Éditions du seuil, 2005.

MURAKAMI, Haruki. 2009-2010. 1Q84. Tokyo: Shincho-sha.

Thesis/ dissertation:

NAITO, Mana. 2011. Univers d’intimité: écrits autobiographiques d’Hervé Guibert [Universe of intimacy: Hervé Guibert’s autobiographical writing]. France, Université de Paris 8 dissertation.