Does Annie Ernaux count as autofiction? If so, she's probably one of the GOATs of the genre. Her stuff's fantastic imo.

Old wine, new bottle. We've had something similar for decades if not centuries. Proust? Kerouac? Burroughs? Celine? Baldwin? The form has always been there, and it has always been there. "Autofiction" seems to be less a descriptor of a type or genre of work than a descriptor of said work's cultural and arguably political valence. Portraits of the artist as a young self-harmer.

I don't know if I agree with hieratichead, but I'm not far. Autofiction does look like a stage an author 'should' work through, but it is mostly one of the various ego traps any artist can fall into. Some manage to make good stuff out of it (Annie Ernaux), but even then, it feels to me, somehow, like small literature. Maybe it is too (one)-human-sized.

I don't think it will have much enduring influence. All writers draw on their personal experience. In the preface to the english translation of his first book "Mary" Nabokov talks about how some of the recollections of by the protagonist Ganin of his life in Russia were more accurate recollections of Nabokov's youth in Russia than the ones he wrote for "Speak, Memory". He attributes this to the closeness in time to his youth when he was writing Mary. Which is something Knausgård talks about where he can write much more detail on a specific interaction if he writes about it right after than if he were to wait a few months. I really dont think there will be much lasting impact on literature from autofiction. I think it was an identification of the necessity of drawing on personal experience when writing and people took it as the ultimate end goal of writing fiction. To get as close to the actual lived experience of the writer as possible. But that isnt really the goal or purpose of fiction and I think it is in the way out. Ther eis no goal or purpose of fiction or art. I have the same reaction when people discuss the necessity of religion to artistic creation. It isnt true that you need religion to make great art. It only seems like that because the religious and artistic impulse are closely linked, but the impulse is not inherently religious. Auto fiction should be a stage the writer works through and not their "style" of writing. There are great writers of auto fiction but I cant imagine it having a lasting influence for the simple fact that it's boring as shit.