Are Autofiction and Reality TV the Same?

What do the Real Housewives franchises have in common with Karl Ove Knausgård? According to the critic Anna Kornbluh, they both speak to our century’s dominant aesthetic: immediacy. What Kornbluh is referring to is the project of replicating reality that autofiction and Bravo-style television share. Both promise that some version of what we are reading or watching actually happened, offering the pleasure of feeling like we’re in on a secret—so long as we’re willing to forget how much editing likely took place after the fact.