From Surgipelago, the Beach Surgery encyclopedia
Autofiction in adaptation
This essay examines how autobiographical fiction (autofiction) operates across Beach Surgery adaptations, especially in relation to C. W. Smith's frame narrative.
Autofiction—the genre in which the autobiographical I enters the fictional frame—is fundamental to how Beach Surgery adaptations negotiate the split between Smith's lived world and the embedded narrative. The novel itself performs this split: the frame narrator (≈ Smith) writes the unfinished outline of Beach Surgery (Leif and Katita); each adaptation then chooses whether to stay inside fantasy or return to the frame.
Adaptations rooted in autofiction (Their Most August Public Organ, the Newcastle walking tours, participatory installations) collapse that boundary. The artist/performer becomes Katita or Leif; the audience recognizes the author's real wife, real streets, real trauma erupting through the story. This eruption is not incidental—it is the mechanism by which the cycle remains unfinished: each adapter must risk their own eruption to keep the story alive.
The essay argues that autofiction is the only honest form adaptation can take, because the glitch refuses the safety of distance.