Edge of reality: it's a fuzzy boundary between fact and fiction
Sydney Morning Herald
Saturday March 27, 2010
REALITY HUNGER: A MANIFESTODavid ShieldsHamish Hamilton, 219pp, $29.95The last time the contemporary novel took a beating like this was at the hands of Dale Peck, whose reviews for The New Republic between 2001 and 2003 were collected under the apt title Hatchet Jobs. Peck famously assaulted the work of some of the doyens of the literary world, such as Cormac McCarthy, Ian McEwan and Rick Moody. He argued that in the early '70s the novel lost its way and gave in to the temptation to produce either formulaic realism written for a specific market or masterpieces of postmodern self-indulgence. His reviews drew attention for both their wit and the blistering appraisal of the books.And then there's James Wood, who in the past 15 years has probably done more to make us think about fiction than anyone else. In his book How Fiction Works, he outlines his own views on the novel, supporting the realist novel as a deeply serious exercise at the levels attained by Saul Bellow, Jane Austen and Leo Tolstoy. Equally critical of much modern fiction, in an essay written for n+1 magazine he caused no end of controversy by coining the term "hysterical realism" and applying it to contemporary works such as Zadie Smith's White Teeth and Don Delillo's Underworld. He claimed these vast fictions contain plenty of scope but very little in the way of finesse.David Shields takes up the baton, albeit in a different direction. A professor of English at the University of Washington in Seattle, he is also the author of nine other books, including three novels. Shields began to experiment with form in his 1996 work Remote: Reflections on Life in the Shadow of Celebrity and hasn't looked back. He argues that the traditional realist novel, whose form was established in the mid-19th century, is now an anachronism. He prefers hybrid forms comprising both fiction and nonfiction, such as works by the likes of W.G. Sebald.In a society now characterised by artificiality, Shields claims the uncertainty of what is and isn't real in these works is a better reflection of what life is like in the 21st century. This means he tends to favour novels stripped of plot, and the lyric essay. Shields cites Borges here to the effect: if a novel can be summarised in 10 sentences, why shouldn't it be 10 sentences long?This fluctuation between fact and fiction has real significance for memoir. The number of exaggerated or simply fraudulent examples that appeared on the market over the past decade has caused a sensation. It's no surprise that one of the sharpest responses to the fabrications in James Frey's memoir A Million Little Pieces came from Oprah Winfrey. Real-life stories of redemption are integral to her message of optimism and hope. Though the eerie truth may be that people turn to the realist novel, with all its machinery and predictability (triumph over the odds to find true love, etc), because that's how they'd like their own lives to go.It's worth noting that Shields can also be very funny. He pushes the argument over Frey, complaining that his mea culpa on Oprah was a huge disappointment. According to Shields, instead of asking forgiveness, Frey should have said: "Everyone who writes about themselves is a liar. I created a person meaner, funnier, more filled with life than I could ever be." Who'd disagree with that?I rather like the way that Shields puts his money where his mouth is, too. Shunning a linear argument, Reality Hunger comprises 618 sections spread across 26 chapters. Many sections are only a sentence long; a handful are two pages; a great many are unattributed quotes. Shields fesses up in the appendix but only on the advice of Random House's lawyers. He claims the readers' "uncertainty about whose words [they've] just read is not a bug but a feature". Furthermore, Shields entreats the reader to cut these pages out of the book. He probably senses that most of us (well, me) will read the book with one finger lodged in the appendix, checking to see who wrote what after each section.Walter Benjamin, most famously, employed this type of collage in his Arcades Project and Shields extols the form as another way to try to bring text closer to reality. Whether these forms achieve this is a matter of opinion. Certainly, they're a welcome evolution even if some of them feel gimmicky and annoying. Having said that, modern life is annoying but there are many ways to convey this.Certainly, there is a complacency in many of the novels being published now. My own view is that the traditional realist fiction is being let down by its practitioners rather than failing as a mode of creative expression. Although I think Shields's argument is primarily taste-driven, much of it is persuasive. Reality Hunger is a welcome and important wake-up call. Not least, it's refreshing to have someone like Shields step in and get the public thinking and talking about the role of fiction in our lives. He does that rare thing of not just criticising but offering solutions too.
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