His complaints about the tediousness and terminality of current fictional convention are well-taken: it is always a good time to shred formulas. But the other half of his manifesto, his unexamined promotion of what he insists on calling “reality” over fiction, is highly problematic. A moment’s reflection might prompt the thought, for example, that Tolstoy (who so often reproduced reality directly from life) is the great “reality-artist,” and a powerful argument against Shields’s anti-novelistic religious fury. When one first reads Tolstoy, one feels the bindings being loosed, and the joyful realization is that the novel is stronger without the usual nineteenth-century appurtenances—coincidence, eavesdropping, melodramatic reversals, kindly benefactors, cruel wills, and so on. It is hard to imagine a writer more obviously “about what he’s about.” Strangely enough, using Shields’s aesthetic terms and most of his preferred writers (along with some of those he seems not to prefer), a passionate defense of fiction and fiction-making could easily be made. Perhaps he will write that book next.
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March 11, 2010
MORNING WOOD
David Shields's Reality Hunger has been top of my reading pile for a while now, it even made the trip to Paris with me and yet, somehow, I still haven't cracked it open. But it is surely the most talked about work of the moment, and James Wood has turned his attention to it in the New Yorker.
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WORTHY READINGS
TEV DEFINED
The Elegant Variation is "Fowler’s (1926, 1965) term for the inept writer’s overstrained efforts at freshness or vividness of expression. Prose guilty of elegant variation calls attention to itself and doesn’t permit its ideas to seem naturally clear. It typically seeks fancy new words for familiar things, and it scrambles for synonyms in order to avoid at all costs repeating a word, even though repetition might be the natural, normal thing to do: The audience had a certain bovine placidity, instead of The audience was as placid as cows. Elegant variation is often the rock, and a stereotype, a cliché, or a tired metaphor the hard place between which inexperienced or foolish writers come to grief. The familiar middle ground in treating these homely topics is almost always the safest. In untrained or unrestrained hands, a thesaurus can be dangerous."
RECOMMENDED
- Nobility of Spirit: A Forgotten Ideal by Rob Riemen
This slim volume by the president and founder of the Nexus Institute, a European-based humanist think-tank, stands as the most stirring redoubt against the ascendant forces of know-nothingness that we've come across in a long time. A full-throated, unapologetic defense of the virtues of Western Civ – in which "elite" is not and never should be a dirty word – this inspiring exploration of high art and high ideals is divided into three sections: The first looks at the life of Riemen's great hero Thomas Mann as a model for the examined life. The second imagines a series of conversations from turning points in European intellectual history, populated with the likes of Socrates, Nietzsche and others. The final section, "Be Brave," is nothing less than an exhortation to dig deep, especially in times of risk. The notion of nobility of the spirit might strike some modern ears as quaint but it seems more desperately necessary than ever before, and there are worse ways to read the accessible Nobility of Spirit than as a crash refresher in the Great Thinkers, free of academic jargon and cant. As a meditation on what is at stake when the pursuit of high ideals is elbowed aside by the pursuit of fleeting material gain, however, Nobility of Spirit might well be the most prescient book we've yet read on what's at stake in the current election cycle and in the developing global situation. Agree or disagree with Riemen's profound, ambitious and high-minded plea, you will be thinking about his words for a long time. It's been ages since a work of non-fiction moved us this way. Read it. Discuss it. Argue about it. - Netherland by Joseph O'Neill
With rave reviews from James Wood, Michiko Kakutani and Dwight Garner, it might not seem like we need to tell you to drop everything and go read Netherland, but we are telling you, and here's why: The way book coverage works these days, everyone talks about the same book for about two or three weeks, and then they move on and the book is more or less forgotten. Whereas a berth here in the Recommended sidebar keeps noteworthy titles in view for a good, long time, which is the sort of sustained attention this marvelous novel deserves. A Gatsby-like meditation on exclusion and otherness, it's an unforgettable New York story in which the post 9/11 lives of Hans, a Dutch banker estranged from his English wife, and Chuck Ramkissoon, a mysterious cricket entrepreneur, intertwine. The New York City of the immigrant margins is unforgettably invoked in gorgeous, precise prose, and the novel's luminous conclusion is a radiant beacon illuminating one of our essential questions, the question of belonging. Our strongest possible recommendation.
- Dictation: A Quartet by Cynthia Ozick
"History," wrote Henry James in a 1910 letter to his amanuensis Theodora Bosanquet, "is strangely written." This casual aside could easily serve as the epigraph of Cynthia Ozick's superb new collection Dictation, which concerns itself with lost worlds evoked by languages -- languages which separate and obscure as readily as they bind. It can be risky to look for connective tissue between stories written years apart and published in magazines ranging from The Conradian to The New Yorker. But themes of deception, posterity, and above all, the glory of language -- at once malleable and intractable -- knit together this quartet, recasting the whole as the harmonious product of Ozick's formidable talent. Read the entire review here
- Diary of a Bad Year by J. M. Coetzee
Now, on the one hand, you scarcely need us to alert you to the existence of a new J.M. Coetzee novel, or even to have us tell you it's worth reading. But we can tell you - we insist on telling you that Diary of a Bad Year is a triumph, easily Coetzee's most affecting and fully wrought work since Disgrace. Formally inventive, the book intertwines two narratives with the author's own Strong Opinions, a series of seemingly discrete philosophical and political essays. The cumulative effect of this strange trio is deeply moving and thought provoking. It's increasingly rare in this thoroughly post-post-modern age to raise the kind of questions in fiction Coetzee handles so masterfully - right down to what is it, exactly, that we expect (or need) from our novels. It's telling that, for all of his serious pronouncements on subjects ranging from censorship to pedophilia to the use of torture, it's finally a few pages from The Brothers Karamazov that brings him to tears. Moving, wise and - how's this for a surprise - funny and lightly self-mocking, Diary of a Bad Year might well be the book of the year and Coetzee is surely our essential novelist. We haven't stopped thinking about it since we set it down.
- The Indian Clerk by David Leavitt
David Leavitt's magnificent new novel tells the story of the unlikely friendship between the British mathematician G.H. Hardy and Srinivasa Ramanujan, mathematical autodidact and prodigy who had been working as a clerk in Madras, and who would turn out to be one of the great mathematical minds of the century. Ramanujan reluctantly joined Hardy in England - a move that would ultimately prove to his detriment - and the men set to work on proving the Riemann Hypothesis, one of mathematics' great unsolved problems. The Indian Clerk, an epic and elegant work which spans continents and decades, encompasses a World War, and boasts a cast of characters that includes Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Lytton Strachey. Leavitt renders the complex mathematics in a manner that resonates emotionally as well as intellectually, and writes with crystalline elegance. The metaphor of the prime number – divisible only by one and itself – is beautifully apt for this tale of these two isolated geniuses. Leavitt's control of this dense, sprawling material is impressive – astonishing, at times – and yet despite its scope, he keeps us focused on his great themes of unknowability and identity. The Indian Clerk might be set in the past but it doesn't resemble most so-called "historical fiction." Rather, it's an ageless meditation on the quests for knowledge and for the self – and how frequently the two are intertwined – that is, finally, as timeless as the music of the primes. (View our full week of coverage here.)
- Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris
Joshua Ferris' warm and funny debut novel is an antidote to the sneering likes of The Office and Max Barry's Company. Treating his characters with both affection and respect, Ferris takes us into a Chicago ad agency at the onset of the dot-bomb. Careers are in jeopardy, nerves are frayed and petty turf wars are fought. But there are bigger stakes in the balance, and Ferris' weirdly indeterminate point of view that's mostly first person plural, underscores the shared humanity of everyone who has ever had to sit behind a desk. It's a luminous, affecting debut and you can read the first chapter right here.
- Christine Falls by Benjamin Black
Coming to these shores at last, John Banville's thriller, written under the nom de plume Benjamin Black, has drawn rave reviews across the pond since it first appeared last October. Those who feared Banville might turn in an overly literary effort needn't worry. Influenced by Simenon's romans durs (hard stories), Banville unspools a dark mystery set in 1950s Dublin concerning itself with, among other things, the church's trade in orphans. At the heart of the book is the coroner Quirke, a Banvillean creation on par with Alex Cleave and Freddie Montgomery. Dublin is rendered with a damp, creaky specificity – you can almost taste the whisky.
- The Paris Review Interviews, I by The Paris Review and Philip Gourevitch
Scanning our Recommended selections, one might conclude we're addicted to interviews, and one would be correct. If author interviews are like crack to us, then the Paris Review author interviews must surely be the gold standard of crack (a comparison Plimpton might not have embraced). The newly issued The Paris Review Interviews, Volume I (Picador) rolls out the heavy hitters. Who can possibly turn away from the likes of Saul Bellow, T.S. Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, Jorge Luis Borges, Dorothy Parker, Robert Gottlieb and others? The interviews are formal and thoughtful but never dry and can replace any dozen "how-to" books on writing. What can be more comforting than hearing Bellow, answering a question on preparations and conception, admit "Well, I don't know exactly how it's done.” The best part of this collection? The "Volume I" in the title, with its promise of more volumes to come.
- The Dead Fish Museum: Stories by Charles D'Ambrosio
The best short story collection we've read since ... well, certainly since we've started this blog. And we might even say "ever" if Dubliners didn't cast such a long shadow. The short story is not our preferred form but D'Ambrosio's eight brilliant stories are almost enough to convert us. Defy the conventional wisdom that short story collections don't sell and treat yourself to this marvel. (We're especially partial, naturally, to "Screenwriter".)
- The Mystery Guest by Grégoire Bouillier *Now in Paperback*
What would you do if the woman who’d left you high and dry ten years ago called out of the blue to invite you to a party without any further explanation? If you’re French, you’d probably spend a lot of time pondering the Deeper Significance Of It All, which is exactly what Grégoire Bouillier does for the 120 hilarious pages of The Mystery Guest. This slim, witty memoir follows Bouillier through the party from hell, and is a case study in Gallic self-abasement. Before it’s all done, you’ll set fire to any turtleneck hanging in your closet and think twice before buying an expensive Bordeaux as a gift. But fear not – just when it seems that all is, indeed, random and pointless and there is no Deeper Significance, salvation arrives in the unlikely form of Virginia Woolf, and the tale ends on a note of unforced optimism. Parfait.
- Ticknor by Sheila Heti
When George Ticknor's Life of William Hickling Prescott was published in 1864, it received rapturous notices, and reviewers were quick to point out that the long-standing friendship between Prescott and Ticknor made the latter an ideal Boswell. Sheila Heti has pulled this obscure leaf from the literary archives and fashioned a mordantly funny anti-history; a pungent and hilarious study of bitterness and promise unfulfilled. As a fretful Ticknor navigates his way through the rain-soaked streets of Boston to Prescott's house ("But I am not a late man. I hate to be late."), he recalls his decidedly one-sided lifelong friendship with his great subject. Unlike the real-life Ticknor, this one is an embittered also-ran, full of plans and intentions never realized, always alive to the fashionable whispers behind his back. Heti seamlessly inhabits Ticknor's fussy 19th-century diction with a feat of virtuoso ventriloquism that puts one in mind of The Remains of the Day. Heti's Ticknor would be insufferable if he weren't so funny, and in the end, the black humor brings a leavening poignancy to this brief tale. But don't let the size fool you — this 109-page first novel is small but scarcely slight; it is as dense and textured as a truffle.
- The Believer Book of Writers Talking to Writers by Vendela Vida
No, your eyes aren't deceiving you and yes, we are recommending a Believer product. Twenty-three interviews (a third presented for the first time) pairing the likes of Zadie Smith with Ian McEwan, Jonathan Lethem with Paul Auster, Edward P. Jones and ZZ Packer, and Adam Thirwell with Tom Stoppard make this collection a must-read. Lifted out of the context of some of the magazine's worst twee excesses, the interviews stand admirably on their own as largely thoughtful dialogues on craft. A handful of interviewers seem more interested in themselves than in their subjects but in the main this collection will prove irresistible to writers of any stripe - struggling or established - and to readers seeking a window into the creative process.
- The Sea by John Banville
John Banville's latest novel returns him to the Booker Prize shortlist for the first time since 1989's The Book of Evidence. In The Sea, we find Banville in transition, moving from the icy, restrained narrators of The Untouchable, Eclipse and Shroud toward warmer climes. Max Morden has returned to the vacation spot of his youth as he grieves the death of his wife. Remembering his first, fatal love, Morden works to reconcile himself to his loss. Banville's trademark linguistic virtuosity is everpresent but some of the chilly control is relinquished and Max mourns and rages in ways that mark a new direction for Banville - and there's at least one great twist which you'll never see coming. Given the politicized nature of the British literary scene, Banville's shot at the prize might be hobbled by his controversial McEwan review but we're rooting for our longtime favorite to go all the way at last. UPDATE: Our man won!
- Here Is Where We Meet by John Berger
We've been fans of Booker Prize winner John Berger for ages, and we're delighted to have received an early copy of his latest work, Here is Where We Meet. In this lovely, elliptical, melancholy "fictional memoir," Berger traverses European cities from Libson to Geneva to Islington, conversing with shades from his past – He encounters his dead mother on a Lisbon tram, a beloved mentor in a Krakow market. Along the way, we're treated to marvelous and occasionally heart-rending glimpses of an extraordinary life, a lyrical elegy to the 20th century from a man who - in his eighth decade - remains committed to his political beliefs and almost childlike in his openness to people, places and experiences. There's no conventional narrative here, and those seeking plot are advised to look elsewhere. But Here is Where We Meet offers a wise, moving and poetic look at the life of an artist traversing the European century from a novelist whose talent remains undimmed in his twilight years.
- Home Land by Sam Lipsyte
In his recent TEV guest review of Home Land, Jim Ruland called Sam Lipsyte the "funniest writer of his generation," and we're quite inclined to agree. We tore through Home Land in two joyful sittings and can't remember the last time we've laughed so hard. Lipsyte's constellation of oddly sympathetic losers is rendered with a sparkling, inspired prose style that's sent us off in search of all his prior work. In Lewis Miner's (a.k.a Teabag) woeful epistolary dispatches to his high school alumni newsletter ("I did not pan out."), we find an anti-hero for the age. Highly, highly recommended.
THIS GUN FOR HIRE: Reviews & Criticism
- A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines & The Man Who Knew Too Much (Philadelphia Inquirer)
- Athena (Boldtype)
- Dictation: A Quartet (Barnes and Noble Review)
- Foreskin's Lament (Philadelphia Inquirer)
- Here Is Where We Meet (Boldtype)
- His Illegal Self (Dallas Morning News)
- Hunk City (New York Times Book Review)
- I Love You, Beth Cooper (New York Times Book Review)
- In the Hot Zone: One Man, One Year, Twenty Wars (Truthdig)
- In the Kitchen (Barnes & Noble Review)
- Indignation (Barnes and Noble Review)
- Out of My Skin (Bookforum)
- Personal Days (New York Times Book Review)
- The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (The Modern Word)
- The End of Mr. Y (Philadelphia Inquirer)
- The God of War (Barnes and Noble Review)
- The Northern Clemency (Barnes & Noble Review)
- The Raw Shark Texts (Philadelphia Inquirer)
- Ticknor (Philadelphia Inquirer)
- Tom Stoppard's Lord Malquist & Mr. Moon (Threepenny Review)
- Where We Are Now: Notes from Los Angeles (Los Angeles Review)
SECOND LOOK
- The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald
Penelope Fitzgerald's second novel is the tale of Florence Green, a widow who seeks, in the late 1950s, to bring a bookstore to an isolated British town, encountering all manner of obstacles, including incompetent builders, vindictive gentry, small minded bankers, an irritable poltergeist, but, above all, a town that might not, in fact, want a bookshop. Fitzgerald's prose is spare but evocative – there's no wasted effort and her work reminds one of Hemingway's dictum that every word should fight for its right to be on the page. Florence is an engaging creation, stubbornly committed to her plan even as uncertainty regarding the wisdom of the enterprise gnaws at her. But The Bookshop concerns itself, finally, with the astonishing vindictiveness of which provincials are capable, and, as so much English fiction must, it grapples with the inevitabilities of class. It's a dense marvel at 123 pages, a book you won't want to – or be able to – rush through.
- The Rider by Tim Krabbe
Tim Krabbé's superb 1978 memoir-cum-novel is the single best book we've read about cycling, a book that will come closer to bringing you inside a grueling road race than anything else out there. A kilometer-by-kilometer look at just what is required to endure some of the most grueling terrain in the world, Krabbé explains the tactics, the choices and – above all – the grinding, endless, excruciating pain that every cyclist faces and makes it heart-pounding rather than expository or tedious. No writer has better captured both the agony and the determination to ride through the agony. He's an elegant stylist (ably served by Sam Garrett's fine translation) and The Rider manages to be that rarest hybrid – an authentic, accurate book about cycling that's a pleasure to read. "Non-racers," he writes. "The emptiness of those lives shocks me."
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Could be an interesting read. I think David Markson beat him to the punch, but I'll still check it out.
Posted by: Neil | March 11, 2010 at 11:52 AM
I haven't read Shields' book, but I've read a fair number of reviews of it and some interviews with him, so I'll chime in anyway. I think Shields is certainly defending "fiction and fiction-making" -- just of a particular kind of those things.
I'm not really a partisan in the James Wood Wars. I like some of his stuff and don't like others. But I do think he can be cold and clinical -- as exemplified by the title of one of his books, "How Fiction Works" -- and sort of aristocratic in his dismissiveness of that which doesn't find favor with him. In the New Yorker piece, he seems to consider Shields' book and conclude "Nice try, but not so much" -- only to briefly invoke Shields again in considering Chang-Rae Lee's new novel, while failing to own up to the fact that he (Wood) is apparently rather sympathetic to Shields' argument. He'll call it a bit of "useful skepticism," but it appears that without Shields' book, Wood would have given Lee's book an unadulterated positive review. "The Surrendered" is, in his view, "commendably ambitious, extremely well written, powerfully moving in places." Would its "utterly conventional" nature have been as apparent to Wood without the influence of "Reality Hunger"? It's unclear, and I don't think Wood fully addresses the issue, though I'm open to debate it, even as I tend to think that the answer is no.
Then there's this example of that condescension I referred to earlier: Wood says that "the placarded datelines ("Korea, 1950"; "New York, 1986") belong to an inferior genre." Two problems here: 1) What's wrong with placarded datelines? I just finished reading a very good novel, Sofi Oksanen's "Purge," that uses placarded datelines throughout, and they're an unobtrusive and handy guide to navigating a text that flits between places and eras. It in no way impoverishes the text or makes it seem like an easy way out for a writer. Not all has to be buried in subtle and telling detail. 2) The "inferior genre" label reeks of haughtiness. The effort to break down genre barriers -- by people like Lethem, Chabon, and a number of other folks -- is ascendant, and I say, why not? How is one genre -- if such distinctions are as monolithic and obvious as sometimes claimed to be -- inherently inferior to another? Must we fight the same silly aesthetic battles over and over again, or do we only allow the rare token (say, Graham Greene or Battlestar Galactica) out of the genre ghetto? This is a separate debate, but it irks me that Wood wears his (aesthetic) prejudices so proudly.
On the other hand, I think the last few paragraphs of the piece are very well done -- clear, even-handed, cogently argued -- the sort of thing Wood generally does best.
Posted by: Jacob Silverman | March 11, 2010 at 06:48 PM
Sorry to scribble all over your blog, Mark, but I wanted to add one more thing. Related to my concerns above, there's an interesting passage from Susan Salter Reynolds' review of "Reality Hunger":
Shields is sick of genre, calling it "a minimum security prison." Once you slap a label on a piece of art, he writes, it loses a lot of life.
Posted by: Jacob Silverman | March 11, 2010 at 07:01 PM
There's nothing like using the word "manifesto" to get publicity. After reading three interviews where Shields came off like a windbag each time, plus reading a ridiculous amount of blog coverage (hi Mark), and two reviews of the book itself that both said the central idea is weakly presented and not at all new, I'm about ready to skip this one. Meet you at the next manifesto.
Posted by: Travis | March 12, 2010 at 05:32 AM
http://therumpus.net/2010/03/reality-boredom-why-david-shields-is-completely-right-and-totally-wrong/
This is a very good piece from The Rumpus, although I liked the Wood piece as well. Shields is just riding a potentially interesting dead-end trend in a particularly self-aggrandizing manner.
Posted by: DJ | March 12, 2010 at 07:33 AM
I found both Woods's and Reynolds's (thanks, Jacob) pieces interesting and full of strong points. What I haven't understood about Shields's manifesto, as presented in reviews (yes, I need to read the book, but I did hear a talk Shields gave on it) is why he considers narrative's "artificiality" somehow evil. Art's conventions are always artificial. The artificiality of plot and coincidence and closure has proved time and again to be a powerful engine to bring readers a deep experience of other minds, lives, and eras. This is wonderful. And it's hard to get that experience any other way. Just because narrative is a made and manipulated thing doesn't mean the results are lacking in honesty, rigor, truth, and passion. Quite the opposite.
Posted by: Pamela | March 12, 2010 at 10:47 AM
Mr. Shields needs to read some Kant, ASAP.
Posted by: Niall | March 12, 2010 at 12:06 PM
The subject may be stale but I'd like to add my two bits. Amazon has an interview of David Shields on his new book. After hearing it I was reminded of Tom Wolfe. Shields seems to share his journalistic approach to novel writing. Not that there's anything wrong with this approach, but it's just that, an approach. Hardly a basis for condemning those of us who write from a different angel.
Posted by: Ward Jones | March 13, 2010 at 11:49 AM
Why must Mr. Shields read some Kant? I suggest he read, uh, Schopenhauer. See, I can name drop German philosophers too! Look at how smart I am!
Posted by: Vic | March 15, 2010 at 05:42 AM
Vic -
Sorry if mentioning Kant made you feel insecure. I was just referencing Kant's belief that we are denied direct access to reality.
Posted by: Niall | March 15, 2010 at 10:02 AM
I don't know - the Kant reference was pretty gratuitous, particularly as it was nonspecific enough to be opaque. I myself thought you were suggesting that Shields read the third critique (on aesthetic judgment), since "Reality Hunger" is, after all, an aesthetic manifesto; my second guess was the second critique (on practical reason and moral law), since maybe you thought Shields should categorically-imperatively consider a universe in which writing collage-based creative nonfiction were elevated to a natural law. It never occurred to me that you were sending him back to the first critique, though I guess I get it, now that you've explained it. Reality, etc. But it's not as if Shields named the book "Thing-In-Itself Hunger"! The connection you were trying to make was far from being self-explanatory, even for people who've read Kant. And, yeah, your post probably would have come across exactly as inscrutable and name-droppy if in fact you had said "Schopenhauer." So consider this a lesson in rhetoric: your readers can't always read your thoughts or follow your references.
Posted by: Kant | March 15, 2010 at 10:32 AM
Ich kann daran einfach nicht glauben. Mein Freund lebt! Ich freue mich darauf, mit Ihnen bald zu sprechen.
Posted by: Niall | March 15, 2010 at 10:44 AM
I'm not sure what my insecurity has to do with you referencing an 18th century German philosopher and assuming everyone here knows precisely what you mean. I'm secure enough to admit I don't know Kant well enough to connect his complex philosophies with Reality Hunger by mere mention of his name. I'm sure you do, but you didn't bother to explain it, which makes you come off as insufferably pretentious.
Posted by: Vic | March 15, 2010 at 11:07 AM
For me argument about the "realistic" conventions of the novel versus the deconstruction of those conventions comes to a simple this: There are many different ways to tell a story just like there are many perceptions of reality. Cinderella tells the tale different than the Fairy Godmother.
Posted by: Kelvin Alejandro | March 16, 2010 at 10:22 PM