Genre Ambiguity and (Ephemeral) Digital Epitexts: Co-Constructing Michael Chabon’s Moonglow

This article presents an analysis of Michael Chabon’s Moonglow (2016) inclusive of the digital epitexts the author shared on his account on social media Instagram (2015-2018). Following a (rhetorical) co-constructive approach, the analysis shows Chabon’s combined use of digital epitexts and genre ambiguity and highlights the relevance of both narrative resources for the co-construction of Moonglow. In particular, I claim that the onomastic connections providing trauma autofictions like Moonglow with authenticity (cf. Worthington 2018) are realized through the digital epitexts on Instagram. These digital epitexts, in turn, come into being in the context of an ephemeral personal narrative, while Chabon’s use of mixed framing clues is linked with the current interest in sincerity and relationality of twenty-first-century American fiction.