Reality Hunger: A Manifesto Book

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?