I. - Stephen Dixon

In collaboration with the Dennis & Victoria Ross Foundation and the author’s family, McSweeney’s is thrilled to celebrate the life and career of Stephen Dixon.

I. is an aging author, prone in equal measure to fits of anger and remorse, caring for his two daughters and his ailing wife, whose condition worsens as I. struggles with his own sense of mortality. First published by McSweeney’s in 2002, I. is a work of autofiction (written nearly a decade before that was a common term) that grapples both humorously and honestly with the difficulties and regrets of fatherhood, married life, and growing old. Told in prose that is intimate, penetrating, and endlessly digressive, the story recounts Thanksgiving Day parades, meals in Paris, accidents and near accidents, family quarrels, and early romance, all adding up to a searingly powerful portrait.

When Stephen Dixon passed away in 2019, American literature lost, in Jonathan Lethem’s words, “a great secret master.” In a career that spanned six decades, Dixon published over seven hundred short stories and nearly twenty novels, two of which were shortlisted for the National Book Award. Arguably, his innovative work represents the earliest appearance of what we now call autofiction, and many of this generation’s writers count him among their greatest influences.