James Sallis's Autoscopic Fiction: The Lew Griffin Novels

Abstract

James Sallis's six Lew Griffin narratives (1992–2001) comprise a remarkable innovation on the crime novel. Abjuring temporally sequential plots, Sallis's installments challenge traditional ideas about agency, causation, and historicity in their accounts of a New Orleans black man who becomes by turns a loan collector, freelance investigator, part-time college lecturer, and successful novelist. The metafictional series revolves around its protagonist's ongoing efforts, after enduring various setbacks, to reconstruct his life. Through the autoscopic project of artistic endeavor, Griffin arrives at some measure of self-understanding, but Sallis's saga underscores the radical contingency of such an ontological wager.