AustLit

'In this paper I argue that the combination of fiction and essays across Castro's oeuvre may be read in terms of theorist of autobiography Philippe Lejeune's notion of an 'autobiographical space'. The repetitions and gaps of this space in Castro's writing sketch the life of an 'autobiographical persona', a phantasm of the author, who links the very different publications and is defined in relation to a present-absent mother figure, a character who otherwise plays little part in individual works. The reading practices used here privilege rewriting over individual works, style over substance. This is a hierarchy that deflects our scrutiny from truth claims to poetics and thus from the authorial persona, a significant result for the increasingly public Brian Castro. Identifying a coherent autobiographical persona allows us to acknowledge the emotional investment in autobiography in this writing without making claims on author biography.' (p. 2)