The way the portal writes: the effect of the internet on language and genre in lockwood's no one is talking about this
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Abstract
This essay argues that Patricia Lockwood’s 2021 novel No One Is Talking About This is a depiction of true events from the author’s life that have become fictionalized through the form and language of the novel, or the way of telling, which mimics that of the internet. I loosely define Lockwood’s depiction of the internet, or the “portal,” as a space containing a consciousness using a language, and it is with this language, which is extremely ironic, fragmentary, and incohesive, that the portal is able to consume the unnamed protagonist’s time, lived experiences, and identity. This both examines the genre of autofiction and attempts to locate a definition which best suits Lockwood’s novel, finally resting on a description of the genre that emphasizes its use of factual events within an otherwise fictional form or method of telling. Some of the poststructuralist concepts from Jacques Derrida, namely his popular claim “il n’y a pas de hors-text” and différance are introduced to further investigate the genre of autofiction and the word “portal,” as well as provide a framework for understanding language itself. The goal of this essay is to reveal how Lockwood’s novel depicts the language of the internet; how that language is perfectly suited to steal time, experience, and attention; how it uses personal information to create cartoons and even ghosts of its users, potentially opening them up to a kind of violence veiled in humor; and, how the language of the internet can successfully fictionalize true events from a person’s life.