Cover; Title; Series; Title; Copyright; Contents; 1 Introduction: From the Late to the Retrospective; Rethinking lateness, the belated and the retrospective; Rethinking the literary career; A narrative process; Meta-consciousness and Meta-reflection; Micro-narratives and career stages; Life themes; Career construction and/.as theories of authorship; Notes; 2 The Dialogic Self and the Vocation of the Storyteller; The dialogical self; Before reading; Graham Swift's authorial self; Notes; 3 Imaginary Authors of Real Books; On portraiture as art and science

The critical self-awareness of the researcherThe potential for self-transformation by the subject; From social science to career construction: theorizing life portraits; Tim Lott's self-portrait of the other; Julian Barnes's self-portrait as other; Shusaku Endo's self-portrait by the other; Notes; 4 Intimate Paratexts; Triangulation and narratability; Triangulating the career of A. S. Byatt; Intimate paratexts; V. S. Naipaul's intimate paratext; The figural consciousness of the narrator; Ian McEwan's meta metafiction; Notes; 5 Cultural Narratives and the Collective Library

Cultural narratives and/.as forms of intertextThe collective library; Cultural narrative in Angela Carter and Salman Rushdie; A. S. Byatt's return of the repressed; Notes; 6 Feeding Fiction Forward: Anxieties of Influence; Harold Bloom's poetic self; Subject identity formation in an authorial career; From daemonization to the return of the dead; The retrospective ratio; Notes; 7 Autofiction in Theory and Practice; Origin, development and definitions; Connections between autofiction and fictions of self-retrospect; Provisional observations; Notes; 8 Conclusion: Advancing the Occupational Plot

Extending the occupational plotLimitations and potential extensions; Notes; Bibliography; Index