ABSTRACT
Whereas Chapter 1 explores the boundary between autobiography and fiction by asking how fictional can autobiography be, this chapter examines the same issue from the opposite perspective: how autobiographical can fiction be. Taking as a case study Bernard Welt’s “A Reply to My Critics” (from the exhibition catalogue Raymond Pettibon: a reader [1998]), this chapter parses the multiple voices that converge in Welt’s protagonist to tease out the extent to which this character ventriloquizes a fictional I, the artist Pettibon, Welt himself—or all three at once.
