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Reality Hunger: A Manifesto
A landmark book, “brilliant, thoughtful” ( The Atlantic ) and “raw and gorgeous” ( LA Times ), that fast-forwards the discussion of the central artistic issues of our time, from the bestselling author of The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead .
Who owns ideas? How clear is the distinction between fiction and nonfiction? Has the velocity of digital culture rendered traditional modes obsolete? Exploring these and related questions, Shields orchestrates a chorus of voices, past and present, to reframe debates about the veracity of memoir and the relevance of the novel. He argues that our culture is obsessed with “reality,” precisely because we experience hardly any, and urgently calls for new forms that embody and convey the fractured nature of contemporary experience.
Who owns ideas? How clear is the distinction between fiction and nonfiction? Has the velocity of digital culture rendered traditional modes obsolete? Exploring these and related questions, Shields orchestrates a chorus of voices, past and present, to reframe debates about the veracity of memoir and the relevance of the novel. He argues that our culture is obsessed with “reality,” precisely because we experience hardly any, and urgently calls for new forms that embody and convey the fractured nature of contemporary experience.
221 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2010
188 people are currently reading
5913 people want to read
About the author
David Shields
75 books264 followersDavid Shields is the author of fourteen books, including Reality Hunger (Knopf, 2010), which was named one of the best books of 2010 by more than thirty publications. GQ called it "the most provocative, brain-rewiring book of 2010"; the New York Times called it "a mind-bending manifesto." His previous book, The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead (Knopf, 2008), was a New York Times bestseller. His other books include Black Planet: Facing Race During an NBA Season, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; Remote: Reflections on Life in the Shadow of Celebrity, winner of the PEN/Revson Award; and Dead Languages: A Novel, winner of the PEN Syndicated Fiction Award. His essays and stories have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Harper's, Yale Review, Believer, Village Voice, Salon, Slate, McSweeney's, and Utne Reader; he's written reviews for the New York Times Book Review, Los Angeles Times Book Review, Boston Globe, and Philadelphia Inquirer. His work has been translated into fifteen languages.
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April 25, 2023
Truth in Aphorism
Flash: art, at least since the industrial revolution, is of course a con. It tries to pack reality into itself, which it fails to do miserably. But then so do history, politics and science. Art’s salvation is that it knows its own temporariness. According to Shields, “Art is not truth; art is a lie that enables us to recognize truth.”
Or perhaps more accurately, art is created to be immediately and forever misinterpreted. A sort of cultural sacrificial lamb, the function of which is to keep the gods of certainty at bay. As one of Shield’s aphorisms has it:
This of course progressively has eliminated the distinctions between fiction, essay, memoir, autobiography and factual reporting. All are equally interpretive and equally misinterpretive in their selectivity, authorial interests, and simple error. All are effectively novels. Or perhaps not even that: “My medium is prose, not the novel.” This is not too concerning since “Some of the best fiction is now being written as nonfiction.”
Science is the model for the future of art. For Shields, “Science is on a long-term campaign to bring all knowledge in the world into one vast, interconnected, footnoted, peer-reviewed web of facts.” Scientific ideas are copied and distributed to inform, inspire, change perception, and claim originality. The uniqueness of these ideas lies not in their physical singularity (including the singularity of copyright) but in their effect on the scientific community. Copying in fact makes this impact possible.
So Shields makes a rather bold claim regarding works of art:
Shield’s model is that of cinema distribution rather than book publishing.
If so, we can count on an acceleration of “The process of aggrandizement: relatively ordinary problems are overblown into larger-than-life “literature.” the lie, the con, the hoax will become dominant. Oprah will be their promoter. The truth is you can’t have reality and drama. And we all want drama. Something has to happen not just be. The problem is that there are only so many dramatic stories. So they get repeated endlessly. Titillation is ultimately boring. Hence the craving reality without the “banality of non-fiction.”
Reality has to be appreciated for what it is. “The last Christian died on the cross.” Most people feel bad/sad/disappointed/disappointing most of the time. The rest are probably mentally ill and have checked out altogether. Comedy is probably the only way of dealing with this situation effectively. But the lyrical essay about consciousness confronting the world isn’t a bad alternative. Or maybe the future belongs to aphorism. It depends on what you mean by artistic truth; and Shields’s version is the tiniest bit vague.
Flash: art, at least since the industrial revolution, is of course a con. It tries to pack reality into itself, which it fails to do miserably. But then so do history, politics and science. Art’s salvation is that it knows its own temporariness. According to Shields, “Art is not truth; art is a lie that enables us to recognize truth.”
Or perhaps more accurately, art is created to be immediately and forever misinterpreted. A sort of cultural sacrificial lamb, the function of which is to keep the gods of certainty at bay. As one of Shield’s aphorisms has it:
“It is out of the madness of God, in the Old Testament, that there emerges what we, now, would recognize as the ‘real’; his perceived insanity is its very precondition.”The real is indeed insane. Whether art intends to portray this insanity or ameliorate it as a comforting fetish is up to the artist. Art is not an exception to the general insanity. The only thing it ultimately can do is contest itself, assembling and disassembling images to form new images, claiming originality for the collage it produces. Great artists establish their images as models for future misinterpretation.
This of course progressively has eliminated the distinctions between fiction, essay, memoir, autobiography and factual reporting. All are equally interpretive and equally misinterpretive in their selectivity, authorial interests, and simple error. All are effectively novels. Or perhaps not even that: “My medium is prose, not the novel.” This is not too concerning since “Some of the best fiction is now being written as nonfiction.”
Science is the model for the future of art. For Shields, “Science is on a long-term campaign to bring all knowledge in the world into one vast, interconnected, footnoted, peer-reviewed web of facts.” Scientific ideas are copied and distributed to inform, inspire, change perception, and claim originality. The uniqueness of these ideas lies not in their physical singularity (including the singularity of copyright) but in their effect on the scientific community. Copying in fact makes this impact possible.
So Shields makes a rather bold claim regarding works of art:
“What counts are the ways in which these common copies of a creative work can be linked, manipulated, tagged, highlighted, bookmarked, translated, enlivened by other media, and sewn together in the universal library.”And he certainly has a point. This is a new, perhaps technologically inevitable, way in which to value art; not through the prices set at auction or the royalties collected, but by the effect it has on world culture through direct mass distribution.
Shield’s model is that of cinema distribution rather than book publishing.
If so, we can count on an acceleration of “The process of aggrandizement: relatively ordinary problems are overblown into larger-than-life “literature.” the lie, the con, the hoax will become dominant. Oprah will be their promoter. The truth is you can’t have reality and drama. And we all want drama. Something has to happen not just be. The problem is that there are only so many dramatic stories. So they get repeated endlessly. Titillation is ultimately boring. Hence the craving reality without the “banality of non-fiction.”
Reality has to be appreciated for what it is. “The last Christian died on the cross.” Most people feel bad/sad/disappointed/disappointing most of the time. The rest are probably mentally ill and have checked out altogether. Comedy is probably the only way of dealing with this situation effectively. But the lyrical essay about consciousness confronting the world isn’t a bad alternative. Or maybe the future belongs to aphorism. It depends on what you mean by artistic truth; and Shields’s version is the tiniest bit vague.
April 17, 2010
Last week I posted a pedestrian review of a fairly innocuous book, Zadie Smith's Changing My Mind. After a slow start, the ensuing discussion turned into a bloody street fight: names were called, knives were pulled and, tragically, feelings were hurt. Pretty much everyone involved lost their shit, including me. Good times, good times.
Still, I’m in no hurry to go through all that again. So don’t expect me to mount a fresh defence of my admittedly obnoxious views on the novel (which haven’t changed, by the way). Instead, here’s what I’ve done: aping the collage format of Reality Hunger, I’ve taken some quotes from the book and a few other sources, spliced in some comments of my own from old reviews and threads, and jumbled them all together in a crunkadelic display of literary turntablism. For you sticklers out there, I’ll paste a list of attributions into the comments below.
Don’t hate. Masturbate.
Reality Hunger (dance remix)
1
Whenever I pick up a contemporary novel, I’m nagged by a very simple, very naïve question: “Why did this thing get written?” And usually, I suspect, the answer would be: “Um, well, we’re supposed to write novels, aren’t we?” WRONG. You’re supposed to investigate reality, dumbass, in all of its beautiful and horrible multifariousness, and a tidy little Booker-bait novel isn’t necessarily the best way to go about it.
2
I’ve always had a hard time writing fiction. It feels like driving a car in a clown suit. You’re going somewhere, but you’re in costume, and you’re not really fooling anybody. You’re the guy in costume, and everybody’s supposed to forget that and go along with you.
3
I still read the odd novel, but I'm growing increasingly unwilling to suspend my disbelief. I find myself thinking, "Come on, man, you're just making that shit up."
4
All the technical elements of narrative—the systematic use of the past tense and the third person, the unconditional adoption of chronological development, linear plots, the impulse of each episode toward a conclusion, etc.—tended to impose the image of a stable, coherent, continuous, unequivocal, entirely decipherable universe…Two hundred years later, the whole system is no more than a memory; it’s to that memory, to the dead system, that some seek with all their might to keep the novel fettered.
5
In 1963, Margaret Yourcenar said, “In our time, the novel devours all other forms; one is almost forced to use it as a medium of expression,” No more. Increasingly, the novel goes hand in hand with a certain straightjacketing of the material’s expressive potential. One gets so weary watching writers’ sensations and thoughts get set into the concrete of fiction that perhaps it’s best to avoid the form as a medium of expression.
6
Punk rock died when the first punk said, “Punk’s not dead.”
7
Jazz as jazz—jazzy jazz—is pretty well finished. The interesting stuff is all happening on the fringes of the form where there are elements of jazz and elements of all sorts of other things as well. Something similar is happening in prose. Although great novels—novelly novels—are still being written, a lot of the most interesting things are happening on the fringes of several forms.
8
At this moment, all over the world, nice old men are playing slavish imitations of classic Dixieland jazz. At this moment, all over the world, nice old ladies are painting pretty, neo-Impressionist landscapes and selling them to tourists at the local farmers’ market. And that’s swell. Have fun with that. But let’s not pretend they’re producing vital art.
9
In the beginning was the Word. In the end, there is only Cliché.
10
All novels attempt to cut neural routes through the brain, to convince us that down this road the true future of the novel lies. In healthy times, we cut multiple roads, allowing for the possibility of a Jean Genet as surely as a Graham Greene. These aren't particularly healthy times. A breed of lyrical Realism has had the freedom of the highway for some time now, with most other exits blocked.
11
Some of the most brilliant reviews I’ve read on Goodreads have been genre-benders, mashing up elements of criticism, memoir, personal essay, satire, and whatever else. And a lot of these “reviews”—inadequate term—ring truer to me than the novels they’re (typically) supposed to be about. Anyone else noticed that?
12
In my experience, a good 90% of life is just a bunch of nondescript stuff that won’t fit into a slick narrative, that isn’t even worthy of an anecdote.
13
Story seems to say that everything happens for a reason, and I want to say, No, it doesn’t.
14
Conventional fiction teaches the reader that life is a coherent, fathomable whole that concludes in neatly wrapped-up revelation. Life—standing on a street corner, channel surfing, trying to navigate the web or a declining relationship, hearing that a close friend died last night—flies at us in bright splinters.
15
I do not doubt that there is far more in trivialities,
insects, vulgar persons, slaves, dwarfs, weeds,
rejected refuse, than I have supposed.
16
If you write a novel, you sit and weave a little narrative. If you’re a romantic writer, you write a novel about men and women falling in love, give a little narrative here and there, etc. And it’s okay, but it’s of no account.
17
There is no nobler pursuit than the contemplation of reality.
18
Walker Evans called his photographic style ‘lyric documentary’. When an editor tried to remove some flies from a white bedcover in a photo of a farmer, Evans indignantly demanded they be put back in.
19
We have too many things and not enough forms.
20
Madame de Stael said that the contents of the gutter in the Rue de Brac were of more interest to her than the beautifully-framed landscape paintings in the art galleries.
21
I’m not advocating relentless avant-gardism for its own sake. I don’t even know what I’m advocating. I’m not smart or presumptuous enough to tell writers what they should be doing or to do it myself. But I mean, Christ, look around: we live in a hugely complex, extremely dangerous world, full of technological wonders, political savagery, horrors of all kinds – and these guys are trying to capture it all in their careful little daguerreotypes.
22
Okay, straight up: read whatever you want: literary fiction, TekWar, twincest-themed erotica—whatever turns you on and makes you feel less forsaken in this bitch of a world. If some jaded douche like me happens to think the novel is aesthetically defunct, that doesn’t have to hinder your enjoyment. Besides, I’m not out to kill off the novel: I just want to reduce its carbon footprint. I’m arguing for more forms, not fewer; more freedom, not less. Above all, more kick-ass literature, in whatever genre or medium. That’s not so unreasonable, is it?
Still, I’m in no hurry to go through all that again. So don’t expect me to mount a fresh defence of my admittedly obnoxious views on the novel (which haven’t changed, by the way). Instead, here’s what I’ve done: aping the collage format of Reality Hunger, I’ve taken some quotes from the book and a few other sources, spliced in some comments of my own from old reviews and threads, and jumbled them all together in a crunkadelic display of literary turntablism. For you sticklers out there, I’ll paste a list of attributions into the comments below.
Don’t hate. Masturbate.
Reality Hunger (dance remix)
1
Whenever I pick up a contemporary novel, I’m nagged by a very simple, very naïve question: “Why did this thing get written?” And usually, I suspect, the answer would be: “Um, well, we’re supposed to write novels, aren’t we?” WRONG. You’re supposed to investigate reality, dumbass, in all of its beautiful and horrible multifariousness, and a tidy little Booker-bait novel isn’t necessarily the best way to go about it.
2
I’ve always had a hard time writing fiction. It feels like driving a car in a clown suit. You’re going somewhere, but you’re in costume, and you’re not really fooling anybody. You’re the guy in costume, and everybody’s supposed to forget that and go along with you.
3
I still read the odd novel, but I'm growing increasingly unwilling to suspend my disbelief. I find myself thinking, "Come on, man, you're just making that shit up."
4
All the technical elements of narrative—the systematic use of the past tense and the third person, the unconditional adoption of chronological development, linear plots, the impulse of each episode toward a conclusion, etc.—tended to impose the image of a stable, coherent, continuous, unequivocal, entirely decipherable universe…Two hundred years later, the whole system is no more than a memory; it’s to that memory, to the dead system, that some seek with all their might to keep the novel fettered.
5
In 1963, Margaret Yourcenar said, “In our time, the novel devours all other forms; one is almost forced to use it as a medium of expression,” No more. Increasingly, the novel goes hand in hand with a certain straightjacketing of the material’s expressive potential. One gets so weary watching writers’ sensations and thoughts get set into the concrete of fiction that perhaps it’s best to avoid the form as a medium of expression.
6
Punk rock died when the first punk said, “Punk’s not dead.”
7
Jazz as jazz—jazzy jazz—is pretty well finished. The interesting stuff is all happening on the fringes of the form where there are elements of jazz and elements of all sorts of other things as well. Something similar is happening in prose. Although great novels—novelly novels—are still being written, a lot of the most interesting things are happening on the fringes of several forms.
8
At this moment, all over the world, nice old men are playing slavish imitations of classic Dixieland jazz. At this moment, all over the world, nice old ladies are painting pretty, neo-Impressionist landscapes and selling them to tourists at the local farmers’ market. And that’s swell. Have fun with that. But let’s not pretend they’re producing vital art.
9
In the beginning was the Word. In the end, there is only Cliché.
10
All novels attempt to cut neural routes through the brain, to convince us that down this road the true future of the novel lies. In healthy times, we cut multiple roads, allowing for the possibility of a Jean Genet as surely as a Graham Greene. These aren't particularly healthy times. A breed of lyrical Realism has had the freedom of the highway for some time now, with most other exits blocked.
11
Some of the most brilliant reviews I’ve read on Goodreads have been genre-benders, mashing up elements of criticism, memoir, personal essay, satire, and whatever else. And a lot of these “reviews”—inadequate term—ring truer to me than the novels they’re (typically) supposed to be about. Anyone else noticed that?
12
In my experience, a good 90% of life is just a bunch of nondescript stuff that won’t fit into a slick narrative, that isn’t even worthy of an anecdote.
13
Story seems to say that everything happens for a reason, and I want to say, No, it doesn’t.
14
Conventional fiction teaches the reader that life is a coherent, fathomable whole that concludes in neatly wrapped-up revelation. Life—standing on a street corner, channel surfing, trying to navigate the web or a declining relationship, hearing that a close friend died last night—flies at us in bright splinters.
15
I do not doubt that there is far more in trivialities,
insects, vulgar persons, slaves, dwarfs, weeds,
rejected refuse, than I have supposed.
16
If you write a novel, you sit and weave a little narrative. If you’re a romantic writer, you write a novel about men and women falling in love, give a little narrative here and there, etc. And it’s okay, but it’s of no account.
17
There is no nobler pursuit than the contemplation of reality.
18
Walker Evans called his photographic style ‘lyric documentary’. When an editor tried to remove some flies from a white bedcover in a photo of a farmer, Evans indignantly demanded they be put back in.
19
We have too many things and not enough forms.
20
Madame de Stael said that the contents of the gutter in the Rue de Brac were of more interest to her than the beautifully-framed landscape paintings in the art galleries.
21
I’m not advocating relentless avant-gardism for its own sake. I don’t even know what I’m advocating. I’m not smart or presumptuous enough to tell writers what they should be doing or to do it myself. But I mean, Christ, look around: we live in a hugely complex, extremely dangerous world, full of technological wonders, political savagery, horrors of all kinds – and these guys are trying to capture it all in their careful little daguerreotypes.
22
Okay, straight up: read whatever you want: literary fiction, TekWar, twincest-themed erotica—whatever turns you on and makes you feel less forsaken in this bitch of a world. If some jaded douche like me happens to think the novel is aesthetically defunct, that doesn’t have to hinder your enjoyment. Besides, I’m not out to kill off the novel: I just want to reduce its carbon footprint. I’m arguing for more forms, not fewer; more freedom, not less. Above all, more kick-ass literature, in whatever genre or medium. That’s not so unreasonable, is it?
August 15, 2012
ORIGINAL REVIEW:
(1) Why not live a little? Mimesis isn’t so bad. (2) Huh. OK, I’ll bite. (3) Shields’ main argument is that the lyric essay is better able to represent reality than narrative fiction, because reality is far more fragmented and less constructed than a linear plot. (4) Whatever Shields might choose to call this, the book is a work of criticism, and Shields is the critic. (5) I sort of enjoyed how the book’s assertions, self-indulgences, and occasional arrogances irritated and annoyed me. (6) Frammentazione e ubiquità dell'informazione spingono ineluttabilmente verso il mash-up (più che il collage) e la letteratura non può sottrarsi a questa tendenza. (7) Walter Benjamin’s “The Arcades Project” is similarly structured (not that I've read the copy I’ve owned for almost ten years). (8) Some of the most brilliant reviews I’ve read on Goodreads have been genre-benders, mashing up elements of criticism, memoir, personal essay, satire, and whatever else. (9) “Is the novel dead? Can you copyright reality? Is art theft?” (10) The more I think about this book, the less I like it. (11) Art is “art” when it impacts, when it challenges accepted norms, and when it denies culpability. (12) LIFE CHANGING MANIFESTO . . . A VERY IMPORTANT BOOK YOU SHOULD READ RIGHT NOW. (13) I imagine David Shields wants to stab a whole lot of old things, living, dead, or abstract in the eye for the sake of it. (14) If you have any thoughts on this book or this idea, please jump in with them. Thanks, April. (15) He makes his points in a bulleted list, creating a collage of quotation, misattribution, lyric, parable, and just about anything else he feels like throwing in there. (16) Look, this book sucks.
(1) Why not live a little? Mimesis isn’t so bad. (2) Huh. OK, I’ll bite. (3) Shields’ main argument is that the lyric essay is better able to represent reality than narrative fiction, because reality is far more fragmented and less constructed than a linear plot. (4) Whatever Shields might choose to call this, the book is a work of criticism, and Shields is the critic. (5) I sort of enjoyed how the book’s assertions, self-indulgences, and occasional arrogances irritated and annoyed me. (6) Frammentazione e ubiquità dell'informazione spingono ineluttabilmente verso il mash-up (più che il collage) e la letteratura non può sottrarsi a questa tendenza. (7) Walter Benjamin’s “The Arcades Project” is similarly structured (not that I've read the copy I’ve owned for almost ten years). (8) Some of the most brilliant reviews I’ve read on Goodreads have been genre-benders, mashing up elements of criticism, memoir, personal essay, satire, and whatever else. (9) “Is the novel dead? Can you copyright reality? Is art theft?” (10) The more I think about this book, the less I like it. (11) Art is “art” when it impacts, when it challenges accepted norms, and when it denies culpability. (12) LIFE CHANGING MANIFESTO . . . A VERY IMPORTANT BOOK YOU SHOULD READ RIGHT NOW. (13) I imagine David Shields wants to stab a whole lot of old things, living, dead, or abstract in the eye for the sake of it. (14) If you have any thoughts on this book or this idea, please jump in with them. Thanks, April. (15) He makes his points in a bulleted list, creating a collage of quotation, misattribution, lyric, parable, and just about anything else he feels like throwing in there. (16) Look, this book sucks.
May 9, 2021
This is an example of the kind of overtly self-congratulatory deconstructionist bunk that really irritates me about post-modernist writers. Shields comes across as very pompous, insincere, and out of touch, making many broad assumptions about what the reading public "wants" and what writers "should do." As one Amazon reviewer noted, this is mostly a book about "the kind of writing Shields likes," namely lyric essays and books that deconstruct the wall between author and subject matter. Reality Hunger does nothing that writers haven't ALREADY been doing since the 1950s, and many of the quotes Shields uses about the "death of fiction" are out of context and out of date.
So that's the gimmick of this book. It's comprised mostly of quotations, sound bites and collected info from other sources. Shields does this, he says, to challenge our views of copyright and idea ownership, admitting to us that his editor had to pretty much force his hand to include an appendix citing original sources. We were SUPPOSED to read the book not knowing which were Shields' words and which words belonged to far better writers. Ironically, as much as Shields seems to dislike copyright, Reality Hunger itself IS COPYRIGHTED and sold for a profit to graduate workshops all across the country. If Shields had truly wanted to counteract our views of copyright and idea ownership, he should have published this book online with free access -- then he wouldn't have had to worry with an appendix at all.
Aside from the parts of the book where Shields essentially discounts storytelling as no longer relevant to us (narrative conventions like plot and character, he claims, "bore" him), the book is self-aggrandizing in a way that really got under my skin. There is an entire "chapter" dedicated to the collage form, where Shields amalgamates a bunch of quotes about how awesome collage is (of course, this is the form Shields has chosen for the book -- it would apparently be too status quo to allow the form to speak for itself). Shields is trying to do what visual collage artists do, making art with a mix of magazine images and old textbook diagrams, superimposing Donald Duck onto a Hieronymus Bosch painting, whatever. But Shields fails to acknowledge the gap between the mediums of visual and literary collage. The overall effect of the book is that Shields is using these sources to reiterate his argument or flat-out speak for him. I'm sorry man. I know it's a bur in your side, but you have to cite the original author.
In all, I found Shields' philosophy toward writing to be sterile, tedious and unproductive. The book's only benefit was that it got me formulating arguments in my head about how wrong I think Shields is, and how strongly I think that narrative and storytelling DO matter to us still.
So that's the gimmick of this book. It's comprised mostly of quotations, sound bites and collected info from other sources. Shields does this, he says, to challenge our views of copyright and idea ownership, admitting to us that his editor had to pretty much force his hand to include an appendix citing original sources. We were SUPPOSED to read the book not knowing which were Shields' words and which words belonged to far better writers. Ironically, as much as Shields seems to dislike copyright, Reality Hunger itself IS COPYRIGHTED and sold for a profit to graduate workshops all across the country. If Shields had truly wanted to counteract our views of copyright and idea ownership, he should have published this book online with free access -- then he wouldn't have had to worry with an appendix at all.
Aside from the parts of the book where Shields essentially discounts storytelling as no longer relevant to us (narrative conventions like plot and character, he claims, "bore" him), the book is self-aggrandizing in a way that really got under my skin. There is an entire "chapter" dedicated to the collage form, where Shields amalgamates a bunch of quotes about how awesome collage is (of course, this is the form Shields has chosen for the book -- it would apparently be too status quo to allow the form to speak for itself). Shields is trying to do what visual collage artists do, making art with a mix of magazine images and old textbook diagrams, superimposing Donald Duck onto a Hieronymus Bosch painting, whatever. But Shields fails to acknowledge the gap between the mediums of visual and literary collage. The overall effect of the book is that Shields is using these sources to reiterate his argument or flat-out speak for him. I'm sorry man. I know it's a bur in your side, but you have to cite the original author.
In all, I found Shields' philosophy toward writing to be sterile, tedious and unproductive. The book's only benefit was that it got me formulating arguments in my head about how wrong I think Shields is, and how strongly I think that narrative and storytelling DO matter to us still.
July 25, 2021
Bir okuma değil bir boks maçı gibiydi. Sürekli gardını alan pozisyonundaydım. Üst üste gelen yumrukları savuştururken bir kaç tane de ben savurdum fırsat buldukça, hedefi bulup bulmadığımdan emin olmadan. Kurmaca yazmış ama kurmacadan nefret eden, kurmacayı neredeyse bir bataklık gibi gören, kurmaca yazarına bir şizofren muamelesi yapan biri (yazar) ile kurmaca yazmamış ama kurmacaya aşık birinin müsabakası çok çetin geçti gerçekten. Hiç bir zaman sinmedim, geri adım atmadım anti-tezler geliştirerek karşı taarruza geçiyordum. Söylenenleri dikkate alıyordum, önemsiyordum ama benim de söyleyeceklerim vardı.
April 12, 2018
ilginç bir kitap. ilginç olsun, tartışılsın ve tabii çok satsın diye yazılmış ve başarılı da olmuş.
kitabın tartışma yarattığı ana konu: telif hakları. gerçekliğin telif hakkı alınamaz, diye başlıyor. kültürün herkese ait olduğunu vurguluyor. sonra sanatın alıntılarla, çalıntılarla ilerlediğini belirtiyor. serbest alıntıla ya da çal çırp kolajla, yeniden yarat…gibi sonuçlara varıyor. (derinlik bu paragraftakinden fazla değil.)
ikinci konu, kitaba adını veren, gerçeklik açlığı: günümüzde kurmacanın önemini kaybettiği tespiti var tabii. geleneksel roman öldü. hikaye temelli roman öldü. roman öldü….ilginin artık ham-kaba içeriğe yöneldiğini anlatıyor. gerçek gibi olan, gerçek gibi yapılan içerik. televizyondan örnekler veriyor, reality show’lardan, internetten. edebiyatta da bunun karşılığının doğası gereği hem gerçek hem kurmaca ya da ne gerçek ne kurmaca olan hatıratlar ve lirik denemeler olduğunu belirtiyor. kurtuluş, diyor, bunlarda. belki.
özü, özeti böyle kitabın. özel ve güzel tarafı ise biçimi. ana meselesini biçimle sağlam destekliyor yazar. biçimle tezlerine örnek, hatta ispat oluyor. yazarın türkçeye yeni çevrilen diğer kitabını da okumaya karar verdim bu yüzden. kitabın adı: “edebiyat hayatımı nasıl kurtardı” ve yazar tam da bu başlıkla “oynayabilecek” nitelikte sanki.
kitabın tartışma yarattığı ana konu: telif hakları. gerçekliğin telif hakkı alınamaz, diye başlıyor. kültürün herkese ait olduğunu vurguluyor. sonra sanatın alıntılarla, çalıntılarla ilerlediğini belirtiyor. serbest alıntıla ya da çal çırp kolajla, yeniden yarat…gibi sonuçlara varıyor. (derinlik bu paragraftakinden fazla değil.)
ikinci konu, kitaba adını veren, gerçeklik açlığı: günümüzde kurmacanın önemini kaybettiği tespiti var tabii. geleneksel roman öldü. hikaye temelli roman öldü. roman öldü….ilginin artık ham-kaba içeriğe yöneldiğini anlatıyor. gerçek gibi olan, gerçek gibi yapılan içerik. televizyondan örnekler veriyor, reality show’lardan, internetten. edebiyatta da bunun karşılığının doğası gereği hem gerçek hem kurmaca ya da ne gerçek ne kurmaca olan hatıratlar ve lirik denemeler olduğunu belirtiyor. kurtuluş, diyor, bunlarda. belki.
özü, özeti böyle kitabın. özel ve güzel tarafı ise biçimi. ana meselesini biçimle sağlam destekliyor yazar. biçimle tezlerine örnek, hatta ispat oluyor. yazarın türkçeye yeni çevrilen diğer kitabını da okumaya karar verdim bu yüzden. kitabın adı: “edebiyat hayatımı nasıl kurtardı” ve yazar tam da bu başlıkla “oynayabilecek” nitelikte sanki.
Read
October 2, 2019Interesting. I love quotations, I love reality, I love unconventional prose styles. So I'm the target audience for this.
April 18, 2010
This book made me angry. Shields's "manifesto" is a numbered collection of 618 thoughts and quotes of varying lengths united by one common principle: We no longer have time for anything but "reality" in our literature, the old standbys of plot and character are as useful as the horse and buggy. Did you know the novel was dead? In its place Shields prefers memoir, or rather a "reframing of the real." That's the way Shields describes Tina Fey's SNL portrayal of Sarah Palin, and it's also a useful description of the kind of writing that excites him. There aren't too many examples provided, but broadly stated Shields seems to be looking for a kind of vigorous autobiographical writing that seeks to get some kind of essential truth or insight but where literal truth isn't something anyone is too concerned about. Shields isn't that bothered by James Frey, the disgraced author of A Million Little Pieces. (I'm not going to bother to find out whether Shields actually wrote the stuff about Frey. The comments in the book are presented without attribution or context until a closing appendix which Shields says he was forced to include.) It seems that Frey's problem wasn't making things up but rather not being vigorous enough in defense of his inventions, since the elements of the book Frey fictionalized represented what was true for him.
There is no room in Reality Hunger for the social novel, experimental fiction,or anything other than big fat page turners with those weird portraits of the characters on the inside cover that you find on mass market paperbacks in used bookstores. Metaphor, symbolism, indeed any literary technique is vaguely prissy here; Shields instead calls for a robust engagement with oneself, flowery prose and factual accuracy be damned. What's wrong with all of this reality? Shields misunderstands a couple of simple things about readers and writers. Readers first: If Frank McCourt or Mary Karr is a friend asking to borrow 20 bucks, then Frey is a stranger asking you to float him a hundred because his car broke down and his kid is sick. We understand narrative compression and editorial allowances for length and flow instinctively as readers, but we have a problem with someone saying they've been in jail when they haven't. Shields finds it delicious that A Million Little Pieces was almost sold as a novel, I'd argue it demonstrates just how badly Frey wanted attention. As for writers, Shields (who has published two novels) can't understand why a writer might need to filter autobiographical elements through a "story" in order to make sense of them to themselves, let alone readers. There are as many reasons to tell a story as there are ways to tell it, but Shields can't conceive of even something so obvious.
Reality Hunger comes loaded with blurbs from the likes of Jonathan Lethem, Jonathan Raban, and Amy Hempel. Endorsements aside, a book so urgent and tiresome can't be anything more than a momentary distraction in the culture. The next time Shields wants to take on centuries of literary tradition he might go to the trouble of constructing an argument.
There is no room in Reality Hunger for the social novel, experimental fiction,or anything other than big fat page turners with those weird portraits of the characters on the inside cover that you find on mass market paperbacks in used bookstores. Metaphor, symbolism, indeed any literary technique is vaguely prissy here; Shields instead calls for a robust engagement with oneself, flowery prose and factual accuracy be damned. What's wrong with all of this reality? Shields misunderstands a couple of simple things about readers and writers. Readers first: If Frank McCourt or Mary Karr is a friend asking to borrow 20 bucks, then Frey is a stranger asking you to float him a hundred because his car broke down and his kid is sick. We understand narrative compression and editorial allowances for length and flow instinctively as readers, but we have a problem with someone saying they've been in jail when they haven't. Shields finds it delicious that A Million Little Pieces was almost sold as a novel, I'd argue it demonstrates just how badly Frey wanted attention. As for writers, Shields (who has published two novels) can't understand why a writer might need to filter autobiographical elements through a "story" in order to make sense of them to themselves, let alone readers. There are as many reasons to tell a story as there are ways to tell it, but Shields can't conceive of even something so obvious.
Reality Hunger comes loaded with blurbs from the likes of Jonathan Lethem, Jonathan Raban, and Amy Hempel. Endorsements aside, a book so urgent and tiresome can't be anything more than a momentary distraction in the culture. The next time Shields wants to take on centuries of literary tradition he might go to the trouble of constructing an argument.
September 8, 2015
I avoided reading this for a long time because I couldn't stand this guy in interviews. He sounds glib and uses words like "cognoscenti" to refer to himself. That said, I've enjoyed a quite a few of the books he raves about, most recently Terry Castle's The Professor, so I broke down.
It's basically a lengthier version of Steal Like an Artist and Jonathan Lethem's essay mashup in Harpers a few years back. The novel is over. Jazz is so over--unless it's being edgy, then it's okay. Henry James is a dastardly devil for trying to take everything from the imagination. James Frey was only trying to get closer to his feels (Yes, the man who started a YA sweatshop where he pays ghost authors a few hundred dollars a novel has feels). But it's this quote that set my teeth on edge. As it's taken from William Gibson and right out of context, I doubt it sounds as sinister as it does here. Note: Shields bellyaches on the last page for being forced to cite the work.
"What counts are the ways in which these common copies of a creative work can be linked, manipulated, tagged, highlighted, bookmarked, translated, enlivened by other media, and sewn together in the universal library."
The key word is manipulated. And cherry-picked. And robbed of meaning altogether. I wish he'd added a little Lanier in with his Gibson. Now that would be real.
Pleasant bathroom reading though, and he did make me argue with him.
It's basically a lengthier version of Steal Like an Artist and Jonathan Lethem's essay mashup in Harpers a few years back. The novel is over. Jazz is so over--unless it's being edgy, then it's okay. Henry James is a dastardly devil for trying to take everything from the imagination. James Frey was only trying to get closer to his feels (Yes, the man who started a YA sweatshop where he pays ghost authors a few hundred dollars a novel has feels). But it's this quote that set my teeth on edge. As it's taken from William Gibson and right out of context, I doubt it sounds as sinister as it does here. Note: Shields bellyaches on the last page for being forced to cite the work.
"What counts are the ways in which these common copies of a creative work can be linked, manipulated, tagged, highlighted, bookmarked, translated, enlivened by other media, and sewn together in the universal library."
The key word is manipulated. And cherry-picked. And robbed of meaning altogether. I wish he'd added a little Lanier in with his Gibson. Now that would be real.
Pleasant bathroom reading though, and he did make me argue with him.
January 22, 2012
I've been meaning to read this for a while, but seeing David Shields speak at MLA was the thing that finally pushed me to actually do it. This is an amazingly fun book to read, debate with, dip in and out of . . . Every few pages contains something golden:
"I love literature, but not because I love stories per se. I find nearly all the moves the traditional novel makes unbelievably predictable, tired, contrived, and essentially purposeless. I can never remember characters' names, plot developments, lines of dialogue, details of setting. It's not clear to me what such narratives are supposedly revealing about the human condition. I'm drawn to literature instead as a form of thinking, consciousness, wisdom-seeking. I like work that's focused not only page by page but line by line on what the writer really cares about as opposed to work that assumes that what the writers cares about will magically creep through the cracks of the narrative, which is the way I experience most stories and novels. Collage works are nearly always 'about what they're about'--which may sound a tad tautological--but when I read a book that I really love, I'm excited because I can feel the writer's excitement that in every paragraph he's manifestly exploring his subject."
"Is it possible that contemporary literary prizes are a bit like the federal bailout package, subsidizing work that is no longer remotely describing reality?"
All so good . . . And I think the furor over his "death of the contemporary novel" and homage to plagiarism stuff is a bit misguided. Shields's argument is more subtle and textured than that, and the whole book reads like what it is: a manifesto for more thinking literature, as compared to that Franzen shit.
"I love literature, but not because I love stories per se. I find nearly all the moves the traditional novel makes unbelievably predictable, tired, contrived, and essentially purposeless. I can never remember characters' names, plot developments, lines of dialogue, details of setting. It's not clear to me what such narratives are supposedly revealing about the human condition. I'm drawn to literature instead as a form of thinking, consciousness, wisdom-seeking. I like work that's focused not only page by page but line by line on what the writer really cares about as opposed to work that assumes that what the writers cares about will magically creep through the cracks of the narrative, which is the way I experience most stories and novels. Collage works are nearly always 'about what they're about'--which may sound a tad tautological--but when I read a book that I really love, I'm excited because I can feel the writer's excitement that in every paragraph he's manifestly exploring his subject."
"Is it possible that contemporary literary prizes are a bit like the federal bailout package, subsidizing work that is no longer remotely describing reality?"
All so good . . . And I think the furor over his "death of the contemporary novel" and homage to plagiarism stuff is a bit misguided. Shields's argument is more subtle and textured than that, and the whole book reads like what it is: a manifesto for more thinking literature, as compared to that Franzen shit.
November 11, 2015
Read in the interest of "responsibly" building a CNF syllabus but: I'll pass. This book rankled me not because of its citationality but because of its refusal to [sic], especially when it comes to all the references to "Man" and "He" as artist. Strong case for [sic]s all over. Can't help thinking about how Shields' position as cis white man enabled this project -- who else would be entitled to inherit all of these ideas to "remix" in this smugly floating way? But also I think it would be more interesting if the author were, say, a woman, and/or of color, and disidentification were assumed.
And I wrote a better essay adopting this kind of form in 2005, so...unimpressed.
Tbh I read like four pages and skimmed the rest, so maybe I am missing big exciting things. I hope you'll tell me if that's the case!
And I wrote a better essay adopting this kind of form in 2005, so...unimpressed.
Tbh I read like four pages and skimmed the rest, so maybe I am missing big exciting things. I hope you'll tell me if that's the case!
dnf
August 15, 2016I was really enjoying it, and then around page 110 suddenly I hated it, and every word seemed smug. I'll try again another time
Read
March 16, 2020The Challenges of Writing a Collaged Text
Why revisit "Reality Hunger"? The book's central argument is that the devices of the novel, including plot or narrative, character, voice, and genre, are obsolete, and that appropriation, randomness, fragmentation, and other strategies of collage can restore a sense of the "real." In its general form, that question is still open in contemporary fiction. Yet I still find "Reality Hunger" unconvincing. Here I will try to pose two questions.
1. What counts as "collage" in Shields's book?
As Wojciech Drąg has pointed out, Shields's principal models were the concept of the lyric essay and collage or "mosaic." The former is an unevenly theorized form. It is associated with John d'Agata, and carries associations of first-person or lyric address, but for Shields it was apparently mostly a matter of "eclecticism, heterogeneity and fragmentation." The latter, collage or "mosaic," is the subject of Drąg's book. In his words:
Collage embodies most aspects of the idea of art advocated in Shields’s manifesto, including the central proposition of drawing on "reality" in the form of "raw," unprocessed material. As he explains in the collage section, borrowing the words of the poet Charles Simic, "found objects [and] ready-mades . . . abolish the separation between art and life" (340). Their familiarity helps create "an immediate identification . . . between the viewer and the work of art" (364).
Drąg suggests that Shields's main points of reference are D’Agata, Jonathan Lethem (especially his essay "The Ecstasy of Influence: A Plagiarism," 2007), Jonathan Raban, and Dave Eggers. What Shields has in mind is perhaps clearest in this passage:
A deliberate unartiness: “raw” material, seemingly unprocessed, unfiltered, uncensored, and unprofessional. . . . Randomness, openness to accident and serendipity, spontaneity; artistic risk, emotional urgency and intensity, reader/viewer participation; an overly literal tone, as if a reporter were viewing a strange culture; plasticity of form, pointillism; criticism as autobiography; self-reflexivity, self-ethnography, anthropological autobiography; a blurring (to the point of invisibility) of any distinction between fiction and nonfiction: the lure and blur of the real.
["Reality Hunger," 3; Drąg, "Collage in Twenty-First-Century Literature in English," 87]
It's interesting that Shields likes the word "mosaic," because it imples the fragments add to form a single continuous image. Tesserae would have been nearer the mark. What he is aiming at is in irrecuperable state of fragmentation, because the operation of fragmentating is itself what will restore "reality" and expunge the obsolete elements of the novel. This kind of collage needs to avoid being a single coherent image, a mosaic.
(Parenthetically: the identification of fragments, appropriation, and discontinuity with the "real" makes Shields's argument susceptible to James Wood's objection that Shields poses reality in an overly facile way against fiction. Writers like Reznikoff and Metcalf might well have agreed with what Wood implies: fragmentation and appropriation, in their work, hardly make the texts more "real." (See Wood, "Keeping It Real," The New Yorker, 7 March 2010). Benjamin, here, is the better example, but even his work is not intended to produce a heightened effect of reality: he might have found that an amusing symptom of a certain bourgeois longing in relation to literature. His own project was about assembling a dossier to exhibit certain thoughts about culture.)
2. Is "Reality Hunger" original?
Why does Lydia Davis think "every page abounds with fresh observations"? In Drąg's count, over two-thirds of the entries are exact or modified quotations from other writers. Shields says his editors told him he had to acknowledge his sources, and as a result it's possible to see which entries he wrote himself. The original sections make disappointing reading. They tend to be either cliches of literary criticism and history, or undeveloped literary theory.
Section 58 reads, in its entirety, "My medium is prose, not the novel." Why, I wonder, doesn't he feel it is necessary to look more closely at the word "prose" here, since it is doing so much work for him?
Section 140 reads: "Plot, like erected scaffolding, is torn down, and what stands in its place is the thing itself." This is part truism, and part surprisingly naive realism. Perec, for example, could be said to have wanted to "tear down" plot, but he wouldn't have said that what remains is "the thing itself": that almost sounds like George Steiner in "Real Presences" (1986).
Section 457 is another example of a one-sentence manifesto that doesn't quite get to the end without a twist into ambiguity or obscurity. It reads: "So: no more masters, no more masterpieces. What I want (instead of God the novelist) is self-portrait in a convex mirror." This is over-complicated: the first part is against the naturalistic novel and the traditional role of the author, as in Foucault's or Barthes's critiques; but the last clause is an allusion to John Ashbery's "Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror," and to the Parmigianino original: and those allusions are semi-opaque, unnecessarily metaphorical, and unaccountably coy.
Section 307 reads (also in its entirety): "There's no longer any such thing as fiction or nonfiction; there's only narrative. (Is there even narrative?)" No graduate student would be allowed to write like this: his leading terms, in this case "narrative," are allowed to stand without explanation, and his positions are at once polemical and vague.
Sections 234 to 236 are also original; they are unremarkable observations about popular culture. Section 236, for example, begins: "What does it mean to set another person before the camera, trying to extract something of his or her soul? When are we exploiting? When are we caressing?" Other people have said these things so much more exactly, at such length, so much more eloquently.
Section 310 is another original section, on popular reality TV. It breezes over themes that need to be more closely articulated: "The bachelorette on the brink of true love with one of several men she has known for seven hours; the cad who manipulates his beloved on cue--two narratives: false actualization and authentic shame. The success of the genre [of reality TV] reflects our lust for emotional meaning." Does Lydia Davis really admire criticism like this?
There are more sections similar to these; section 428, for example, is a page-long contribution on Nabokov, which is used to make an unremarkable point about autobiography and its independence from plot. Section 456 is also a relatively long passage on how "plot isn't a tool: intelligence is." Section 473 is autobiography: it's informative but nearly free of interest.
Snide literary jokes are also scattered through the sections of the book that Shields wrote. Section 458 quotes Nabokov, but in the footnote Shields says that "in honor of the author's Olympian hauteur" he "corrected" Nabokov's grammar.
Section 139 begins, "In the end, I missed the pleasure of a fully imagined work..."; this turns out to be a quotation from a review of one of Shields's books.
Section 145, another original section, is a mean-spirited listing of a "Verboten thematic: secular Jews, laureates of the real, tend to be better at analyzing reality than re-creating it:... Harold Brodkey, most of the essays; Philip Lopate's introduction to "The Art of the Personal Essay"; Vivian Gornick, pretty much everything..." At the end of this list he tries to patch things up by associating these authors with certifiably important people: "And, of course, less recently, Marx, Proust, Freud, Wittgenstein, Einstein." That gambit, of putting someone down and then trying to make it sound like a compliment, never works: it betrays a superficial sense of rhetoric. And the passage is painted with such a broad brush that it's impossible to make much sense of it anyway.
The original texts in "Reality Hunger" don't strike me as original. (Benjamin's original interpolations in the "Arcades Project" can be much more thoughtful.) In a certian sense they shouldn't, because they argue for unoriginality. But there is a crucial difference between arguing for a practice of unoriginal writing, and claiming that the argument itself does not need to be original. Shields's book presents itself as a polemic: i.e., a timely and therefore original intervention.
There is a historical problem with the implicit claim that collage or "mosaic" are needed now. In one sense this is unproblematic. Perloff's book "Unoriginal Genius" traces a history of collaged texts to Benjamin, and she includes postmodern texts like Anne Carson, Kenny Goldsmith, and Jan Baetens. (I wish she'd said more about Charles Reznikoff and especially Paul Metcalf, whom I've written about on this site: their senses of what to do with collaged texts are among the most interesting.) Collage, as a literary strategy, has a genealogy in early 20th century modernism. But in what sense, then, is it a postmodern or contemporary gesture?
In fact, "shards" (another of Shields's many terms) and fragmentation are not only not specifically postmodern: they are premodern. First-generation German romantics like Novalis explored fragments as ways of discovering a new kind of unity. Novalis's "Notes for a Romantic Encyclopedia" is still amazing, and it is not a realist manifesto. There is also scholarship on the romantic nature of the shard, for example by the philosopher Guy Sircello. So what's at stake in Shields's book is a particular reaction against a particular sense of the novel, one that draws selectively on a restricted history.
Conclusion
If I read "Reality Hunger" straight through, without looking at the notes, I do get a collage, but then there's the question of what kind of collage it is: whether it is disruptive, dissociative, genuinely and constitutionally fragmented, or whether it develops and depends on resonances and unexpected harmonies between its isolated entries. I don't mind genuinely random assemblies of fragments, as in Burroughs, but most literary collages, from Pound and Eliot to Benjamin, Reznikoff, Metcalf, and Markson work by implying or proposing new forms of order. In that sense "Reality Hunger" is an uninteresting collage: its thesis is simple, and so are its ideas about what counts as interesting juxtaposition.
Why revisit "Reality Hunger"? The book's central argument is that the devices of the novel, including plot or narrative, character, voice, and genre, are obsolete, and that appropriation, randomness, fragmentation, and other strategies of collage can restore a sense of the "real." In its general form, that question is still open in contemporary fiction. Yet I still find "Reality Hunger" unconvincing. Here I will try to pose two questions.
1. What counts as "collage" in Shields's book?
As Wojciech Drąg has pointed out, Shields's principal models were the concept of the lyric essay and collage or "mosaic." The former is an unevenly theorized form. It is associated with John d'Agata, and carries associations of first-person or lyric address, but for Shields it was apparently mostly a matter of "eclecticism, heterogeneity and fragmentation." The latter, collage or "mosaic," is the subject of Drąg's book. In his words:
Collage embodies most aspects of the idea of art advocated in Shields’s manifesto, including the central proposition of drawing on "reality" in the form of "raw," unprocessed material. As he explains in the collage section, borrowing the words of the poet Charles Simic, "found objects [and] ready-mades . . . abolish the separation between art and life" (340). Their familiarity helps create "an immediate identification . . . between the viewer and the work of art" (364).
Drąg suggests that Shields's main points of reference are D’Agata, Jonathan Lethem (especially his essay "The Ecstasy of Influence: A Plagiarism," 2007), Jonathan Raban, and Dave Eggers. What Shields has in mind is perhaps clearest in this passage:
A deliberate unartiness: “raw” material, seemingly unprocessed, unfiltered, uncensored, and unprofessional. . . . Randomness, openness to accident and serendipity, spontaneity; artistic risk, emotional urgency and intensity, reader/viewer participation; an overly literal tone, as if a reporter were viewing a strange culture; plasticity of form, pointillism; criticism as autobiography; self-reflexivity, self-ethnography, anthropological autobiography; a blurring (to the point of invisibility) of any distinction between fiction and nonfiction: the lure and blur of the real.
["Reality Hunger," 3; Drąg, "Collage in Twenty-First-Century Literature in English," 87]
It's interesting that Shields likes the word "mosaic," because it imples the fragments add to form a single continuous image. Tesserae would have been nearer the mark. What he is aiming at is in irrecuperable state of fragmentation, because the operation of fragmentating is itself what will restore "reality" and expunge the obsolete elements of the novel. This kind of collage needs to avoid being a single coherent image, a mosaic.
(Parenthetically: the identification of fragments, appropriation, and discontinuity with the "real" makes Shields's argument susceptible to James Wood's objection that Shields poses reality in an overly facile way against fiction. Writers like Reznikoff and Metcalf might well have agreed with what Wood implies: fragmentation and appropriation, in their work, hardly make the texts more "real." (See Wood, "Keeping It Real," The New Yorker, 7 March 2010). Benjamin, here, is the better example, but even his work is not intended to produce a heightened effect of reality: he might have found that an amusing symptom of a certain bourgeois longing in relation to literature. His own project was about assembling a dossier to exhibit certain thoughts about culture.)
2. Is "Reality Hunger" original?
Why does Lydia Davis think "every page abounds with fresh observations"? In Drąg's count, over two-thirds of the entries are exact or modified quotations from other writers. Shields says his editors told him he had to acknowledge his sources, and as a result it's possible to see which entries he wrote himself. The original sections make disappointing reading. They tend to be either cliches of literary criticism and history, or undeveloped literary theory.
Section 58 reads, in its entirety, "My medium is prose, not the novel." Why, I wonder, doesn't he feel it is necessary to look more closely at the word "prose" here, since it is doing so much work for him?
Section 140 reads: "Plot, like erected scaffolding, is torn down, and what stands in its place is the thing itself." This is part truism, and part surprisingly naive realism. Perec, for example, could be said to have wanted to "tear down" plot, but he wouldn't have said that what remains is "the thing itself": that almost sounds like George Steiner in "Real Presences" (1986).
Section 457 is another example of a one-sentence manifesto that doesn't quite get to the end without a twist into ambiguity or obscurity. It reads: "So: no more masters, no more masterpieces. What I want (instead of God the novelist) is self-portrait in a convex mirror." This is over-complicated: the first part is against the naturalistic novel and the traditional role of the author, as in Foucault's or Barthes's critiques; but the last clause is an allusion to John Ashbery's "Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror," and to the Parmigianino original: and those allusions are semi-opaque, unnecessarily metaphorical, and unaccountably coy.
Section 307 reads (also in its entirety): "There's no longer any such thing as fiction or nonfiction; there's only narrative. (Is there even narrative?)" No graduate student would be allowed to write like this: his leading terms, in this case "narrative," are allowed to stand without explanation, and his positions are at once polemical and vague.
Sections 234 to 236 are also original; they are unremarkable observations about popular culture. Section 236, for example, begins: "What does it mean to set another person before the camera, trying to extract something of his or her soul? When are we exploiting? When are we caressing?" Other people have said these things so much more exactly, at such length, so much more eloquently.
Section 310 is another original section, on popular reality TV. It breezes over themes that need to be more closely articulated: "The bachelorette on the brink of true love with one of several men she has known for seven hours; the cad who manipulates his beloved on cue--two narratives: false actualization and authentic shame. The success of the genre [of reality TV] reflects our lust for emotional meaning." Does Lydia Davis really admire criticism like this?
There are more sections similar to these; section 428, for example, is a page-long contribution on Nabokov, which is used to make an unremarkable point about autobiography and its independence from plot. Section 456 is also a relatively long passage on how "plot isn't a tool: intelligence is." Section 473 is autobiography: it's informative but nearly free of interest.
Snide literary jokes are also scattered through the sections of the book that Shields wrote. Section 458 quotes Nabokov, but in the footnote Shields says that "in honor of the author's Olympian hauteur" he "corrected" Nabokov's grammar.
Section 139 begins, "In the end, I missed the pleasure of a fully imagined work..."; this turns out to be a quotation from a review of one of Shields's books.
Section 145, another original section, is a mean-spirited listing of a "Verboten thematic: secular Jews, laureates of the real, tend to be better at analyzing reality than re-creating it:... Harold Brodkey, most of the essays; Philip Lopate's introduction to "The Art of the Personal Essay"; Vivian Gornick, pretty much everything..." At the end of this list he tries to patch things up by associating these authors with certifiably important people: "And, of course, less recently, Marx, Proust, Freud, Wittgenstein, Einstein." That gambit, of putting someone down and then trying to make it sound like a compliment, never works: it betrays a superficial sense of rhetoric. And the passage is painted with such a broad brush that it's impossible to make much sense of it anyway.
The original texts in "Reality Hunger" don't strike me as original. (Benjamin's original interpolations in the "Arcades Project" can be much more thoughtful.) In a certian sense they shouldn't, because they argue for unoriginality. But there is a crucial difference between arguing for a practice of unoriginal writing, and claiming that the argument itself does not need to be original. Shields's book presents itself as a polemic: i.e., a timely and therefore original intervention.
There is a historical problem with the implicit claim that collage or "mosaic" are needed now. In one sense this is unproblematic. Perloff's book "Unoriginal Genius" traces a history of collaged texts to Benjamin, and she includes postmodern texts like Anne Carson, Kenny Goldsmith, and Jan Baetens. (I wish she'd said more about Charles Reznikoff and especially Paul Metcalf, whom I've written about on this site: their senses of what to do with collaged texts are among the most interesting.) Collage, as a literary strategy, has a genealogy in early 20th century modernism. But in what sense, then, is it a postmodern or contemporary gesture?
In fact, "shards" (another of Shields's many terms) and fragmentation are not only not specifically postmodern: they are premodern. First-generation German romantics like Novalis explored fragments as ways of discovering a new kind of unity. Novalis's "Notes for a Romantic Encyclopedia" is still amazing, and it is not a realist manifesto. There is also scholarship on the romantic nature of the shard, for example by the philosopher Guy Sircello. So what's at stake in Shields's book is a particular reaction against a particular sense of the novel, one that draws selectively on a restricted history.
Conclusion
If I read "Reality Hunger" straight through, without looking at the notes, I do get a collage, but then there's the question of what kind of collage it is: whether it is disruptive, dissociative, genuinely and constitutionally fragmented, or whether it develops and depends on resonances and unexpected harmonies between its isolated entries. I don't mind genuinely random assemblies of fragments, as in Burroughs, but most literary collages, from Pound and Eliot to Benjamin, Reznikoff, Metcalf, and Markson work by implying or proposing new forms of order. In that sense "Reality Hunger" is an uninteresting collage: its thesis is simple, and so are its ideas about what counts as interesting juxtaposition.
January 11, 2013
Finally, a writer from inside my own head. A writer getting into why I like to read; a writer who attempts to explain the power that words on a page can have over each of us, the how and why literature is important, why writers are so powerful. And if Shields is a love-or-hate-him kind of writer (which is exactly how I've heard him described), I'm in the "love" category.
"I love literature, but not because I love stories per se. I find nearly all the moves the traditional novel makes unbelievably predictable, tired, contrived, and essentially purposeless. I can never remember characters' names, plot developments, lines of dialogue, details of setting. It's not clear to me what such narratives are supposedly revealing about the human condition. I'm drawn to literature instead as a form of thinking, consciousness, wisdom-seeking. I like work that's focused not only page by page but line by line on what the writer really cares about rather than hoping that what the writer cares about will somehow mysteriously creep through the cracks of narrative, which is the way I experience most stories and novels."
I spent 2012 reading, reading more than I have in my entire life. And some of my favorite books were the ones I read that I could not easily describe...novels, sure, but something more, and not quite at the same time. Maidenhair, The Lover, Agua Viva--all life-changing books, but all existed on a plane wholly outside of traditional novels. Plot was meaningless, yet I was held fast to every word in every line on every page, because the authors, all geniuses, let their experiences mingle with every form human language has ever recorded, with all the beauty of poetry mixed with spiritual soul-searching and philosophical meanderings, and all changed my life. They are the kinds of writers I want, the kinds of books I want to devour, live inside, revisit again and again and feel my life touched differently every time I turn the page, because I will never be the same reader twice.
"The kinds of novels I like are ones which bear no trace of being novels."
Shields gets this. Shields is into this. Shields's manifesto is a manifesto I can feel much truth in, and that's what art is: "Art is not truth; art is a lie that enables us to recognize truth."
Shields may call his perfect form of literary expression the "lyric essay," and that's fine. I don't really care what he calls it, because it can be called anything or nothing at all, so long as it exists in form, which it does, it has, and it will. The future of our written word is in what he calls the "lyric essay," it is in the exploration of the human condition by humans, wordsmiths who excise writing out of the realm of "craft" and insert it into "art."
And at the same time, it's funny how I started reading Swann's Way for Proust 2013 last week and he and his writing style have popped up in everything I've read or watched since then.
"I love literature, but not because I love stories per se. I find nearly all the moves the traditional novel makes unbelievably predictable, tired, contrived, and essentially purposeless. I can never remember characters' names, plot developments, lines of dialogue, details of setting. It's not clear to me what such narratives are supposedly revealing about the human condition. I'm drawn to literature instead as a form of thinking, consciousness, wisdom-seeking. I like work that's focused not only page by page but line by line on what the writer really cares about rather than hoping that what the writer cares about will somehow mysteriously creep through the cracks of narrative, which is the way I experience most stories and novels."
I spent 2012 reading, reading more than I have in my entire life. And some of my favorite books were the ones I read that I could not easily describe...novels, sure, but something more, and not quite at the same time. Maidenhair, The Lover, Agua Viva--all life-changing books, but all existed on a plane wholly outside of traditional novels. Plot was meaningless, yet I was held fast to every word in every line on every page, because the authors, all geniuses, let their experiences mingle with every form human language has ever recorded, with all the beauty of poetry mixed with spiritual soul-searching and philosophical meanderings, and all changed my life. They are the kinds of writers I want, the kinds of books I want to devour, live inside, revisit again and again and feel my life touched differently every time I turn the page, because I will never be the same reader twice.
"The kinds of novels I like are ones which bear no trace of being novels."
Shields gets this. Shields is into this. Shields's manifesto is a manifesto I can feel much truth in, and that's what art is: "Art is not truth; art is a lie that enables us to recognize truth."
Shields may call his perfect form of literary expression the "lyric essay," and that's fine. I don't really care what he calls it, because it can be called anything or nothing at all, so long as it exists in form, which it does, it has, and it will. The future of our written word is in what he calls the "lyric essay," it is in the exploration of the human condition by humans, wordsmiths who excise writing out of the realm of "craft" and insert it into "art."
And at the same time, it's funny how I started reading Swann's Way for Proust 2013 last week and he and his writing style have popped up in everything I've read or watched since then.
Read
April 15, 2022At the beginning this book was amazing, though then as now I was unconvinced that the novel is dead. Somewhere along the way I got bored and pissed off, not so much with this book as with what people on here were saying about its subject matter. I almost gave up at w, but forged on to z. Didn't see that there was anything more to say.
________________________________
I note that The Master was nominated for a Man Booker.
________________________________
I don't really understand what's so threatening about the idea of the novel being out of date.
________________________________
I'm surprised by how many of my own thoughts show up in this book. Not that I've ever articulated them as clearly as they are articulated here, but the bare outlines pf many have been there in my mind for years.
I remember reading Colm Toibin's The Master, a fictionalised biography of Henry James, and being disappointed by the lack of a grand unifying narrative. Or not so much disappointed, as confused. I wrote "Some novel-reading part of me wanted it to have some common thread arching throughout... [but:] it is true to life. Life is episodic. We have our temporary preoccupations, our transient obsessions. Something that seems monumental at the time will have receded into the minutiae of the past after a few days, weeks, months, years."
I was talking a few weeks ago to someone about the death of their father ten years ago, and I asked if they still felt sad about it. They said they did if they really thought about it, but mostly they had "assimilated it into the narrative". At the time I was tremendously excited by the use of this phrase; I thought it was utterly perfect for the situation. It's very interesting: why was I so excited by it? I think it's because I realised instinctively that we do think of our life as a narrative, even though it is anything but, as Toibin's novel illustrates so well. Why then do we think of our life in terms of a narrative? I think it must just be the craving that we all have for there to be some sort of meaning in our lives. Existentialism, in other words. Connected, possibly, to the great sense of comfort many derive from religion.
I think it is possible that David Shields would thoroughly approve of Toibin's biography of Henry James.
________________________________
I'm realising now that much of the confusion (at least my confusion; I can't speak for anyone else's) resulting from Buck's review of Zadie Smith's essays is due to semantics. I assumed when Buck said that "the novel is dead", it meant that no one was writing novels any more. Which is clearly not true. What I think he meant (what I think Smith meant) was that the novel as a means of genuine, original, truthful expression is dead, though do correct me if I'm wrong. Which is a point that can be argued, though I'm not entirely convinced that it's true.
Semantics rears its ugly, dull head once again in Shields' (Buck's/Smith's?) definition of the word 'novel'. A couple of the authors people held up in defence of the continuing potential for originality of the novel were David Mitchell (presumably referring to Cloud Atlas's interlocking, interrelated stories) and Margaret Atwood (Cat's Eye's non-chronological plot and use of the present tense). Although I see both of those books as novels, I suspect that Sheilds for one would argue that they are not, or at least that they are books in transition from the 'novel' of the past to something newer, pieces of art whose artists have "broken ever larger chunks of 'reality'" into them. Shields' definition of the novel is a very traditional, chronological, narrative-driven story, not at all resembling the reality of life.
_____________________________
"The earliest uses of writing were list-making and account-keeping." (Reality Hunger, page 6)
However many years later, the list is not dead, even though we are also writing novels. Original and excellent lists are being written all the time. Ergo, the novel is not dead, despite the existence of fancruft.*
I know no one was arguing that this book argues that the novel is dead, but whatever. Duh! The novel is not dead, even if it is often boring. Let's see if me reading this makes me change my mind.
* fancruft: (often super-complex) backstories created to explain why stuff happens the way it does in games. i.e., reasons other than "the designer thought it would make the game better that way".
________________________________
I note that The Master was nominated for a Man Booker.
________________________________
I don't really understand what's so threatening about the idea of the novel being out of date.
________________________________
I'm surprised by how many of my own thoughts show up in this book. Not that I've ever articulated them as clearly as they are articulated here, but the bare outlines pf many have been there in my mind for years.
I remember reading Colm Toibin's The Master, a fictionalised biography of Henry James, and being disappointed by the lack of a grand unifying narrative. Or not so much disappointed, as confused. I wrote "Some novel-reading part of me wanted it to have some common thread arching throughout... [but:] it is true to life. Life is episodic. We have our temporary preoccupations, our transient obsessions. Something that seems monumental at the time will have receded into the minutiae of the past after a few days, weeks, months, years."
I was talking a few weeks ago to someone about the death of their father ten years ago, and I asked if they still felt sad about it. They said they did if they really thought about it, but mostly they had "assimilated it into the narrative". At the time I was tremendously excited by the use of this phrase; I thought it was utterly perfect for the situation. It's very interesting: why was I so excited by it? I think it's because I realised instinctively that we do think of our life as a narrative, even though it is anything but, as Toibin's novel illustrates so well. Why then do we think of our life in terms of a narrative? I think it must just be the craving that we all have for there to be some sort of meaning in our lives. Existentialism, in other words. Connected, possibly, to the great sense of comfort many derive from religion.
I think it is possible that David Shields would thoroughly approve of Toibin's biography of Henry James.
________________________________
I'm realising now that much of the confusion (at least my confusion; I can't speak for anyone else's) resulting from Buck's review of Zadie Smith's essays is due to semantics. I assumed when Buck said that "the novel is dead", it meant that no one was writing novels any more. Which is clearly not true. What I think he meant (what I think Smith meant) was that the novel as a means of genuine, original, truthful expression is dead, though do correct me if I'm wrong. Which is a point that can be argued, though I'm not entirely convinced that it's true.
Semantics rears its ugly, dull head once again in Shields' (Buck's/Smith's?) definition of the word 'novel'. A couple of the authors people held up in defence of the continuing potential for originality of the novel were David Mitchell (presumably referring to Cloud Atlas's interlocking, interrelated stories) and Margaret Atwood (Cat's Eye's non-chronological plot and use of the present tense). Although I see both of those books as novels, I suspect that Sheilds for one would argue that they are not, or at least that they are books in transition from the 'novel' of the past to something newer, pieces of art whose artists have "broken ever larger chunks of 'reality'" into them. Shields' definition of the novel is a very traditional, chronological, narrative-driven story, not at all resembling the reality of life.
_____________________________
"The earliest uses of writing were list-making and account-keeping." (Reality Hunger, page 6)
However many years later, the list is not dead, even though we are also writing novels. Original and excellent lists are being written all the time. Ergo, the novel is not dead, despite the existence of fancruft.*
I know no one was arguing that this book argues that the novel is dead, but whatever. Duh! The novel is not dead, even if it is often boring. Let's see if me reading this makes me change my mind.
* fancruft: (often super-complex) backstories created to explain why stuff happens the way it does in games. i.e., reasons other than "the designer thought it would make the game better that way".
September 13, 2016
I've become much more of a non-fiction reader in these past two years, and apparently, I'm part of a larger trend. Whether it's creative non-fiction/memoir or reality TV, true stories are "in." So when I heard a radio interview in which a West Coast creative writing professor declared the novel "dead," saying the only thing worth reading is how a real human being solves the problems of being a real human being, I was so curious that not only did I put his book on my "to read" list, I tried to see him live at a lecture that night. (It was too far downtown, so I didn't make it.)
The book turns out to debunk much more than the novel. This author is down on the whole narrative form. His book is a verbal collage, a collection of quotes from varied sources that appear in a numbered list. Copying another reviewer who copied his form, the book reads something like this:
1. No human can really present the truth objectively, so fiction and non-fiction are more of a spectrum than polar opposites.
2. Laws against plagiarism ought not to exist, and people ought to be free to quote others as much as they like. Art always builds on someone else's art.
3. Real life doesn't happen in a plot format, so why should writers use it?
4. The best kinds of books are the philosophical and reflective ones where not much "happens."
It's a more interesting read than that because the author borrows from such a variety of sources - from rap stars to Nabokov. One thing I can definitely say: the author is consistent. His collage is a perfect illustration of the kind of writing he describes as ideal.
Well, I agree with him on some points, but not on throwing out the whole narrative form. I like narrative. I want my stories to have a beginning, a middle, and an end, and I want the ending to wrap everything up. I know I'm not the only one.
As to "reality hunger," I relate, but if anything, I like non-fiction to read like fiction: character-focused and with as much dialogue as possible. As the author correctly points out, novels are meant primarily to entertain while non-fiction is meant to educate. But when non-fiction uses the fictional/narrative model, it becomes more entertaining and will therefore educate more effectively. How many of us were turned off to history and science by all those boring textbooks we had to read in school? I wonder what the author would say to the melding of fiction and fact in George's Secret Key to the Universe? Is that a new form or is it just the same old, same old? I'm tempted to Google him and ask.
I'm glad I read this book, and I recommend it to anyone who's serious about writing, especially creative non-fiction. Like me, you probably won't agree with the author on everything, and he wouldn't expect you to. He knows what he's saying is "out there," and he knows the novel form is too popular to disappear. But he's got plenty to say against it, and he's done it in a unique and thought-provoking way.
The book turns out to debunk much more than the novel. This author is down on the whole narrative form. His book is a verbal collage, a collection of quotes from varied sources that appear in a numbered list. Copying another reviewer who copied his form, the book reads something like this:
1. No human can really present the truth objectively, so fiction and non-fiction are more of a spectrum than polar opposites.
2. Laws against plagiarism ought not to exist, and people ought to be free to quote others as much as they like. Art always builds on someone else's art.
3. Real life doesn't happen in a plot format, so why should writers use it?
4. The best kinds of books are the philosophical and reflective ones where not much "happens."
It's a more interesting read than that because the author borrows from such a variety of sources - from rap stars to Nabokov. One thing I can definitely say: the author is consistent. His collage is a perfect illustration of the kind of writing he describes as ideal.
Well, I agree with him on some points, but not on throwing out the whole narrative form. I like narrative. I want my stories to have a beginning, a middle, and an end, and I want the ending to wrap everything up. I know I'm not the only one.
As to "reality hunger," I relate, but if anything, I like non-fiction to read like fiction: character-focused and with as much dialogue as possible. As the author correctly points out, novels are meant primarily to entertain while non-fiction is meant to educate. But when non-fiction uses the fictional/narrative model, it becomes more entertaining and will therefore educate more effectively. How many of us were turned off to history and science by all those boring textbooks we had to read in school? I wonder what the author would say to the melding of fiction and fact in George's Secret Key to the Universe? Is that a new form or is it just the same old, same old? I'm tempted to Google him and ask.
I'm glad I read this book, and I recommend it to anyone who's serious about writing, especially creative non-fiction. Like me, you probably won't agree with the author on everything, and he wouldn't expect you to. He knows what he's saying is "out there," and he knows the novel form is too popular to disappear. But he's got plenty to say against it, and he's done it in a unique and thought-provoking way.
Read
July 4, 2010I absolutely refuse to try to rate this. It made me think, a lot. It pissed me off to no end. I really like the kind of writing he's advocating, and I kind of hate the way he goes about advocating it. I also think it's one thing to say that there's a new kind of writing that is emerging which you find really exciting, but another thing altogether to suggest that this new kind of writing should replace all others, or is an evolution of all others. People LIKE narrative. There's a cognitive science argument that narrative appeals to us because it is deeply connected to how our brains work. I'm completely on board with the idea that not everything has to be a linear, straightforward narrative, but I also completely reject that idea that there is nothing of value-- and, even more, nothing "real"-- in such narratives.
Yes, you should read this, if you are interested in literature and what it looks like right now. But not because it will lead the way into a better future.
Yes, you should read this, if you are interested in literature and what it looks like right now. But not because it will lead the way into a better future.
March 4, 2010
A collated series of musings and aphorisms, I think this tome was supposed to be some kind of shot across the bow to the literary establishment. It reminds me of "Thus Spake Zarathustra", but without the depth, the balls, or the vision. It it full of pronouncments that somehow manage to be both wrong-headed and bland. Shields is essentially speaking for the new literary guard here. None of his ideas are that original. They range from the unsubstantiated ("plagiarism is organically connected to creativity" - aphorism 102 for those of you keeping score at home) to the absurd ("the writer of the false memoir simply cares too much" - aphorism 97).
Shields' main point is that the traditional novel and the short story are dead literary forms, which is all fine and good. I also find most contemporary fiction to be wanting, and the novel does seem a little anachronistic. But what Shields advocates as a replacement is kind of lame, and much of the book is just a series of unsupported generalizations about the culture.
Shields' main point is that the traditional novel and the short story are dead literary forms, which is all fine and good. I also find most contemporary fiction to be wanting, and the novel does seem a little anachronistic. But what Shields advocates as a replacement is kind of lame, and much of the book is just a series of unsupported generalizations about the culture.
Read
November 30, 2020Ah shit, it's another one of those “if I indulged every tendency I had” books that makes me reflexively cringe in self-recognition. There's a core message here, and Shields references and builds upon a great many of my favorite writers (or just quotes them outright), but it's terribly depressing to realize how many people will read this – admiringly or disgustedly – and, given the lack of humanistic education in my fatherland, fail to engage with the ideas he's building on. If Jordan Peterson spends his days raping the corpse of Carl Jung, David Shields spends his days raping the corpse of Walter Benjamin.
March 14, 2017
Saggio sulla differenza tra fiction e non-fiction, pubblicato nel 2010. È un dibattito ancora validissimo, anche se potrebbe suonare vecchio, perché caratterizzava più quegli anni che questi. O meglio: i trend letterari di oggi sono influenzati anche dai frutti di quel dibattito; la non-fiction è più sdoganata rispetto ad allora, Emmanuel Carrère e Karl Ove Knausgård vendono carrettate di libri; una rivista come Prismo ha pubblicato la classifica dei libri migliori del 2016 con una buona metà di non-fiction in tutte le sue declinazioni (autofiction, memoir, saggistica e via dicendo).
Si può dire allora che quello di cui parla David Shields in Fame di realtà sia utile anche oggi, ma che probabilmente l’avrete già sentito. La lettura rimane interessantissima per gli spunti di riflessione che offre su scrittura e romanzo.
Qui sui social letterari ho notato una certa acredine nei commenti al libro. Io l’ho trovato un saggio meritevole, sia per come è assemblato (collage di citazioni apocrife e inserti originali dell’autore), sia per come scorre, esponendo le sue idee con grande chiarezza, lontanissimo dalle pippe accademiche. Forse l’acredine è suscitata proprio da questa lontananza, il cui tono risulta per molti arrogante; ma io credo che la vera provocazione di Shields, quella che fa incazzare la gente, sia l’insistenza con cui afferma che il romanzo di fiction è una cosa morta e priva di qualsiasi interesse. Affermazione che molti non si sentiranno di condividere, ma che Shields per lo meno argomenta davvero bene. E il suo saggio, infatti, è una lettura piacevole.
Si può dire allora che quello di cui parla David Shields in Fame di realtà sia utile anche oggi, ma che probabilmente l’avrete già sentito. La lettura rimane interessantissima per gli spunti di riflessione che offre su scrittura e romanzo.
Qui sui social letterari ho notato una certa acredine nei commenti al libro. Io l’ho trovato un saggio meritevole, sia per come è assemblato (collage di citazioni apocrife e inserti originali dell’autore), sia per come scorre, esponendo le sue idee con grande chiarezza, lontanissimo dalle pippe accademiche. Forse l’acredine è suscitata proprio da questa lontananza, il cui tono risulta per molti arrogante; ma io credo che la vera provocazione di Shields, quella che fa incazzare la gente, sia l’insistenza con cui afferma che il romanzo di fiction è una cosa morta e priva di qualsiasi interesse. Affermazione che molti non si sentiranno di condividere, ma che Shields per lo meno argomenta davvero bene. E il suo saggio, infatti, è una lettura piacevole.
January 28, 2013
I avoided this book when it first came out because of the amount of hype it got and because I was at a point in college when I still intensely believed in the novel as a form. But recently I saw David Shields read in a bar and he was sincere and charming, so I figured I had to give him a chance.
Initially, I was suspicious of Shield's assertion that the lyric essay is the answer to the question of where is literature going, and I'm still not totally convinced of it, but it is certain that the next-big-thing in literature lies in something more formally complex and ambiguous than what writers like Jonathan Franzen are offering. The modern novel has ceased to be captivating, productive, or true, and it must evolve in order to captivate a new generation of readers.
Some favorite sections:
"53
Suddenly everyone's tale is tellable, which seems to me a good thing, even if not everyone's story turns out to be fascinating or well told.
54
Plot is a way to stage and dramatize reality, but when the presentation is too obviously formulaic, as it so often is, the reality is perceived as false. Skeptical of the desperation of the modernist embrace of art as the only solution, and hyperaware of all artifices of genre and form, we nevertheless seek new means of creating the real."
"311
Forms serve the culture; when they die, they die for a good reason: they're no longer embodying what it's like to be alive. If reality TV manages to convey something that a more manifestly scripted and plotted show doesn't, that's less of an affront to writers than a challenge."
"361
You don't need a story. The question is How long do you not need a story?"
This book gets a lot of flack for being mostly quotations, but I found myself flipping back to the index to find the source most often to discover that the passage was a David Shields original.
I'm looking forward to mining the index for further reading.
Initially, I was suspicious of Shield's assertion that the lyric essay is the answer to the question of where is literature going, and I'm still not totally convinced of it, but it is certain that the next-big-thing in literature lies in something more formally complex and ambiguous than what writers like Jonathan Franzen are offering. The modern novel has ceased to be captivating, productive, or true, and it must evolve in order to captivate a new generation of readers.
Some favorite sections:
"53
Suddenly everyone's tale is tellable, which seems to me a good thing, even if not everyone's story turns out to be fascinating or well told.
54
Plot is a way to stage and dramatize reality, but when the presentation is too obviously formulaic, as it so often is, the reality is perceived as false. Skeptical of the desperation of the modernist embrace of art as the only solution, and hyperaware of all artifices of genre and form, we nevertheless seek new means of creating the real."
"311
Forms serve the culture; when they die, they die for a good reason: they're no longer embodying what it's like to be alive. If reality TV manages to convey something that a more manifestly scripted and plotted show doesn't, that's less of an affront to writers than a challenge."
"361
You don't need a story. The question is How long do you not need a story?"
This book gets a lot of flack for being mostly quotations, but I found myself flipping back to the index to find the source most often to discover that the passage was a David Shields original.
I'm looking forward to mining the index for further reading.
Want to read
March 3, 2010Huh. Ok, I'll bite.
From Boldtype:
David Shields' Reality Hunger is a glorious mash-up of provocative quotations, theories, anecdotes, and observations, all unattributed and from a variety of corners. James Frey tangos with Alain Robbe-Grillet, who switches partners with Jay-Z, reading ad copy from Curb Your Enthusiasm. Loosening the restrictions on attribution, calling BS on the novel's adherence to tired, old formats, and tsk-tsking the outcry when memoirs prove to be "fake" liberates Shields, and in turn liberates the reader. By mixing the obvious with a first scratchy, then beautiful tone that hums, then overrides what we think we already know about writing, Shields zeroes in on what really matters: empathy, emotional truth, and ideas that crackle and pop.
From Boldtype:
David Shields' Reality Hunger is a glorious mash-up of provocative quotations, theories, anecdotes, and observations, all unattributed and from a variety of corners. James Frey tangos with Alain Robbe-Grillet, who switches partners with Jay-Z, reading ad copy from Curb Your Enthusiasm. Loosening the restrictions on attribution, calling BS on the novel's adherence to tired, old formats, and tsk-tsking the outcry when memoirs prove to be "fake" liberates Shields, and in turn liberates the reader. By mixing the obvious with a first scratchy, then beautiful tone that hums, then overrides what we think we already know about writing, Shields zeroes in on what really matters: empathy, emotional truth, and ideas that crackle and pop.
February 13, 2014
Mr. Shields suggests:
In the arena of communication we should stop being so concerned about what is true. Nothing is true; not a history, not a memoir, not an autobiography, not a documentary, not a news report, not even a memory. Everything contains an element of imaginative construction.
Mr. Shields asserts:
No one owns their work product. Plagiarism is simply an assist to the furtherance of a valid artistic endeavor.
Mr. Shields maintains:
Narrative is inorganic and, therefore, unauthentic. He has no interest in it and believes it will be outgrown soon.
Mr. Shields hopes:
Someday he will be able to pare his creative communication down from book-sized to a few compact sentences.
I say:
Done.
In the arena of communication we should stop being so concerned about what is true. Nothing is true; not a history, not a memoir, not an autobiography, not a documentary, not a news report, not even a memory. Everything contains an element of imaginative construction.
Mr. Shields asserts:
No one owns their work product. Plagiarism is simply an assist to the furtherance of a valid artistic endeavor.
Mr. Shields maintains:
Narrative is inorganic and, therefore, unauthentic. He has no interest in it and believes it will be outgrown soon.
Mr. Shields hopes:
Someday he will be able to pare his creative communication down from book-sized to a few compact sentences.
I say:
Done.
March 23, 2017
This book gets a lot of shade thrown its way. Some of it is justified. Shields can be an asshole. He revels in his assholery at times. There's also a fair amount of oversell on the cover and blurbs. This book is certainly not, as advertised, "A literary battle cry for the creation of a new genre..." etc. This is not the Bible he's written, but it does have some interesting ideas. If nothing else, think of it as a compendium of views on the subject of literature of fiction and unfiction. Because that is, literally, what this is.
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September 6, 2025This book didn't feel like a literary work to me. It felt more like an installation art. The author wasn't trying to write. He was trying to show that he could create a book by putting together quotes blurred in with some of his Twitter-style thoughts.
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April 15, 2023I predict that William Shakespeare will be widely read, performed, and appreciated for centuries after no living human remembers, or cares, that David Shields ever existed.
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February 26, 2025there’s a line in this book where shields (well, was it shields? i didn’t check the attribution section) says something about wanting to write a book of only epiphanies, to cut through all the noise and to present only the revelations that we hope to find whenever we encounter art. this is the best and worst thing about the book.
there are pages of this book that feel genuinely revelatory — a series of epiphanies, overwhelming you again with every line. these sections made me think differently about art, self, life, and i found them genuinely moving. but there are also pages of this book that are (or were for me at least) genuinely boring. epiphanies, i think, have to be earned, and it’s difficult to lay the groundwork for an intellectual revelation when you want every sentence to be an intellectual revelation. without that groundwork, there are stretches of this book that feel repetitive, tired, a little flat.
overall though, i liked this far more than i disliked it. i’m intrigued by the way he “samples” from other writers, and by his argument that we should be free to make art with whatever cultural resources are available to us, copyrighted or not. i also love how much he loves confessional writing and, crucially, the ability to lie in confessional writing. as an autofiction fan, this totally resonates. i think this book is really doing something interesting, especially in a 2010 context, and i’m glad to have read it.
there are pages of this book that feel genuinely revelatory — a series of epiphanies, overwhelming you again with every line. these sections made me think differently about art, self, life, and i found them genuinely moving. but there are also pages of this book that are (or were for me at least) genuinely boring. epiphanies, i think, have to be earned, and it’s difficult to lay the groundwork for an intellectual revelation when you want every sentence to be an intellectual revelation. without that groundwork, there are stretches of this book that feel repetitive, tired, a little flat.
overall though, i liked this far more than i disliked it. i’m intrigued by the way he “samples” from other writers, and by his argument that we should be free to make art with whatever cultural resources are available to us, copyrighted or not. i also love how much he loves confessional writing and, crucially, the ability to lie in confessional writing. as an autofiction fan, this totally resonates. i think this book is really doing something interesting, especially in a 2010 context, and i’m glad to have read it.
November 9, 2025
If nonfiction is reliant on memory and creative decisionmaking, can it really be called nonfiction?
Fascinating but occasionally hard to understand -- I bet I could have appreciated the references to various medias more had I known the majority of them.
The general sentiment however is quite interesting. I really appreciated his writings about the human memory and how it can deceive so-called nonfiction writers into thinking what they've written is factually accurate. I read this book for a class on documentary, and this book gave an intriguing framework to understanding documentaries in a different light, too.
Shields' anti-story form was interesting too. Would I be reading several pages at a time, or would I be reading a single sentence? Did the meaning change whether it be 200 or 20 words to express the idea?
Definitely recommend to readers, watchers and all consumers of media.
Fascinating but occasionally hard to understand -- I bet I could have appreciated the references to various medias more had I known the majority of them.
The general sentiment however is quite interesting. I really appreciated his writings about the human memory and how it can deceive so-called nonfiction writers into thinking what they've written is factually accurate. I read this book for a class on documentary, and this book gave an intriguing framework to understanding documentaries in a different light, too.
Shields' anti-story form was interesting too. Would I be reading several pages at a time, or would I be reading a single sentence? Did the meaning change whether it be 200 or 20 words to express the idea?
Definitely recommend to readers, watchers and all consumers of media.
November 4, 2023
3
Had truly intriguing information. Another great book for a class on fact/fiction, particularly discussing pretty much every genre of literature. Although not dull, it really didn't have a plot or storyline to follow. It got redundant to read and confusing. It was even hard to even find the main point or even where it was truly going. However, it had beyond great references, and to quote/paraphrase and use for a class essay, it was fabulous.
Had truly intriguing information. Another great book for a class on fact/fiction, particularly discussing pretty much every genre of literature. Although not dull, it really didn't have a plot or storyline to follow. It got redundant to read and confusing. It was even hard to even find the main point or even where it was truly going. However, it had beyond great references, and to quote/paraphrase and use for a class essay, it was fabulous.
Read
August 16, 2017La quarta di copertina recita:
“Una della opere più importanti di teoria letteraria pubblicate negli ultimi anni”.
Capisco le esigenze commerciali però sarei decisamente più cauta. Proseguendo nel sentiero tracciato dall’”autore”:
1
Una sorta di metodo aforismatico immerso in salsa pop; o forse, meglio, una parodia warholiana del Tractatus di Wittgenstein, col rischio che ciò che si guadagna in dinamismo lo si perda in profondità; risulta innanzitutto apprezzabile il postulato da cui il discorso prende le mosse: la letteratura è viva, ed è in continua evoluzione.
2
le pecche più evidenti si ritrovano probabilmente nell’eccessivo (nord)americanocentrismo, in una leggerezza che a volte sfiora la monodimensionalità del ready-made, e nella convinzione che in un certo metodo combinatorio usato per la costruzione del volume oltre che qualcosa di accattivante ci sia qualcosa di veramente nuovo e fresco (proprio nel momento in cui la radice post-moderna da cui esso nasce o si rigenera sembra essersi ultimamente un po’ disseccata).
3
Ciò che dice Walter Benjamin è vero per tutte le arti tranne che per la letteratura. La letteratura è sempre stata al di qua e al di là della riproducibilità tecnica. Il papiro, la pietra, l’acqua, la carta, lo schermo… sono semplici stampelle dell’unico hardware di cui il linguaggio necessiti: un cervello di sapiens sapiens. La letteratura è l’opera d’arte nel regno della sua riproducibilità biologica.
4
E’ stato detto che la Recherche sarebbe un’opera di saggistica letteraria sostanzialmente priva di trama. Ritengo che pochi saggi indaghino i meccanismi della gelosia amorosa come fa Proust nel suo romanzo. Ma per farlo con quella profondità e quella perizia non servono forse due personaggi come Charles e Odette, due personaggi come Marcel e Albertine, una città come Parigi, un salotto come quello dei Guermantes? E non è questa una trama? Non è l’insostenibile leggerezza di questi dettagli a separare fiction da non fiction?
5
Non si hanno notizie di uomini trasformati in scarafaggi nella Praga degli anni Dieci, e tuttavia nessun racconto è più autobiografico della Metamorfosi di Kafka.
6
L’amore ai tempi di Saffo è diverso dall’amore ai tempi del colera è diverso dall’amore ai tempi di Amici di Maria De Filippi. Non tutte le storie sono state già scritte.
7
leggendo viene spesso la tentazione di appuntarsi a margine: “beh, se magari desse un’occhiata a una buona metà della letteratura europea dall’alto medioevo in qua…”
8
Mi spiace quando si vuole cavalcare l’onda delle mode e si strombazzano rivoluzioni inesistenti. Visto che tutti o molti pratichiamo l’arte del copia incolla, allora vuol dire che la scrittura tradizionale è morta, mi pare come quando in tv minacciano che tutti moriremo di tunnel carpale e tutte le terribili nuove sindromi di chi usa il computer…Mi viene da ridere quando qualcuno sbandiera la morte di un media. La crisi o la fine di qualcosa in modo così millenaristico: la verità è che oggi non muore più niente, dopo pochi anni tutto torna a galla. Tra un po’ rifaremo il minuetto e il sonetto. Innovazione e rimasticazione sono quasi sinonimi ormai.
9
Non vedo nulla di così innovativo, piuttosto mi sembra una bella furbata da parte dell’autore che, in mancanza di genio creativo, ha ben pensato di confezionare un qualcosa usando il frutto del genio letterario altrui.
10
Per dirla chiara e tonda, da lettore onnivoro e da scribacchino: non me ne frega niente di niente di leggere pretenziosi manifesti sui romanzi e sulle parole decontestualizzate (a parte quando fanno pubblicità).
Shields dichiara: “La vostra incertezza sugli autori delle parole che avete appena letto non è un difetto ma una virtù”
Io non sono per nulla d’accordo con questa sua rivendicazione di ignoranza pop-post-postmoderna. Anzi, la penso esattamente al contrario. E cito (facendone nome, cognome, data e luogo) il viennese Karl Kraus, che attorno al 1916 disse: “Non contano solo le cose dette ma anche chi le dice”
11
Il fatto che un libro come questo sia capace di far discutere in un modo così acceso giustifica già la sua esistenza. Farei piuttosto volentieri a meno dei libri che lasciano indifferenti, ovvero la maggior parte dei romanzi che vengono pubblicati oggi.
Per quanto mi riguarda il giudizio è altalenante: da una lato ho apprezzato il tentativo di interrogarsi sul futuro della letteratura, dall’altro però non condivido nulla di quanto affermato in proprio dall’autore: le uniche volte che andavo a vedere chi diceva cosa, per quelle che mi sembravano colossali sciocchezze, scoprivo che non erano citazioni ma pensieri in proprio.
1/6 Lagioia
7 Stefano Doponotaro
8 Daniele Marotta
9 Antonella Beccari
10/11 qui e là
“Una della opere più importanti di teoria letteraria pubblicate negli ultimi anni”.
Capisco le esigenze commerciali però sarei decisamente più cauta. Proseguendo nel sentiero tracciato dall’”autore”:
1
Una sorta di metodo aforismatico immerso in salsa pop; o forse, meglio, una parodia warholiana del Tractatus di Wittgenstein, col rischio che ciò che si guadagna in dinamismo lo si perda in profondità; risulta innanzitutto apprezzabile il postulato da cui il discorso prende le mosse: la letteratura è viva, ed è in continua evoluzione.
2
le pecche più evidenti si ritrovano probabilmente nell’eccessivo (nord)americanocentrismo, in una leggerezza che a volte sfiora la monodimensionalità del ready-made, e nella convinzione che in un certo metodo combinatorio usato per la costruzione del volume oltre che qualcosa di accattivante ci sia qualcosa di veramente nuovo e fresco (proprio nel momento in cui la radice post-moderna da cui esso nasce o si rigenera sembra essersi ultimamente un po’ disseccata).
3
Ciò che dice Walter Benjamin è vero per tutte le arti tranne che per la letteratura. La letteratura è sempre stata al di qua e al di là della riproducibilità tecnica. Il papiro, la pietra, l’acqua, la carta, lo schermo… sono semplici stampelle dell’unico hardware di cui il linguaggio necessiti: un cervello di sapiens sapiens. La letteratura è l’opera d’arte nel regno della sua riproducibilità biologica.
4
E’ stato detto che la Recherche sarebbe un’opera di saggistica letteraria sostanzialmente priva di trama. Ritengo che pochi saggi indaghino i meccanismi della gelosia amorosa come fa Proust nel suo romanzo. Ma per farlo con quella profondità e quella perizia non servono forse due personaggi come Charles e Odette, due personaggi come Marcel e Albertine, una città come Parigi, un salotto come quello dei Guermantes? E non è questa una trama? Non è l’insostenibile leggerezza di questi dettagli a separare fiction da non fiction?
5
Non si hanno notizie di uomini trasformati in scarafaggi nella Praga degli anni Dieci, e tuttavia nessun racconto è più autobiografico della Metamorfosi di Kafka.
6
L’amore ai tempi di Saffo è diverso dall’amore ai tempi del colera è diverso dall’amore ai tempi di Amici di Maria De Filippi. Non tutte le storie sono state già scritte.
7
leggendo viene spesso la tentazione di appuntarsi a margine: “beh, se magari desse un’occhiata a una buona metà della letteratura europea dall’alto medioevo in qua…”
8
Mi spiace quando si vuole cavalcare l’onda delle mode e si strombazzano rivoluzioni inesistenti. Visto che tutti o molti pratichiamo l’arte del copia incolla, allora vuol dire che la scrittura tradizionale è morta, mi pare come quando in tv minacciano che tutti moriremo di tunnel carpale e tutte le terribili nuove sindromi di chi usa il computer…Mi viene da ridere quando qualcuno sbandiera la morte di un media. La crisi o la fine di qualcosa in modo così millenaristico: la verità è che oggi non muore più niente, dopo pochi anni tutto torna a galla. Tra un po’ rifaremo il minuetto e il sonetto. Innovazione e rimasticazione sono quasi sinonimi ormai.
9
Non vedo nulla di così innovativo, piuttosto mi sembra una bella furbata da parte dell’autore che, in mancanza di genio creativo, ha ben pensato di confezionare un qualcosa usando il frutto del genio letterario altrui.
10
Per dirla chiara e tonda, da lettore onnivoro e da scribacchino: non me ne frega niente di niente di leggere pretenziosi manifesti sui romanzi e sulle parole decontestualizzate (a parte quando fanno pubblicità).
Shields dichiara: “La vostra incertezza sugli autori delle parole che avete appena letto non è un difetto ma una virtù”
Io non sono per nulla d’accordo con questa sua rivendicazione di ignoranza pop-post-postmoderna. Anzi, la penso esattamente al contrario. E cito (facendone nome, cognome, data e luogo) il viennese Karl Kraus, che attorno al 1916 disse: “Non contano solo le cose dette ma anche chi le dice”
11
Il fatto che un libro come questo sia capace di far discutere in un modo così acceso giustifica già la sua esistenza. Farei piuttosto volentieri a meno dei libri che lasciano indifferenti, ovvero la maggior parte dei romanzi che vengono pubblicati oggi.
Per quanto mi riguarda il giudizio è altalenante: da una lato ho apprezzato il tentativo di interrogarsi sul futuro della letteratura, dall’altro però non condivido nulla di quanto affermato in proprio dall’autore: le uniche volte che andavo a vedere chi diceva cosa, per quelle che mi sembravano colossali sciocchezze, scoprivo che non erano citazioni ma pensieri in proprio.
1/6 Lagioia
7 Stefano Doponotaro
8 Daniele Marotta
9 Antonella Beccari
10/11 qui e là
Displaying 1 - 30 of 443 reviews