Monday, July 23, 2012
Steve, you ask about what it is that bothers me about Wallace, or Leyner and Delillo. Lev Grossman (referring back to James Wood's description of this style as 'hysterical realism') captures my own difficulties in this essay, particularly in the quote below. I just want to read a narrative that informs me how to live life more deeply and beautifully and truly, even while I am ensconced in my own life's pastiche.
"Hysterical realism treats the world as an infinite network, but we already have an infinite network, the Internet, and our nose is rubbed in it on an hourly basis. We don’t need more of that—more hysteria. We need novels that help us manage hysteria instead. If the hysterical realist novel is a synecdoche, the unrealist novel is a metaphor: it tries to represent the world as (i.e. it substitutes for it) a shape, a pattern, a dramatic arc, that reveals the simplicity that underlies the complexity. The Mandelbrot set is infinitely complex, its borders ramify without end, but it still has a shape, an outline that’s instantly recognizable. That’s the shape of the Unrealist novel."
http://entertainment.time.com/2012/07/11/what-ever-happened-to-hysterical-realism/
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2 comments:
Just to problementize a bit: the danger of saying that one is looking for a way to live one's life in a novel, is that too often we just find novels, or narratives, that fit comfortably onto the way we already see the world, thus reinscribing our status quo. Look the world is exactly as I imagine, how safe. I like the "hysterical realism" as much as I can like them, because of the divergent thought they often bring. The reason I dislike Dellio et al, is because of their snide pessimism about life. It is the sneer of the hip intellectual, who is more concerned with their place in the cocktail party hierarchy, than in creating a vision of beauty. It is their fear of being mocked because of a sincere belief which causes them to flee into the safety of a false erudite humor.
I completely agree with you: that hyper-realism aggrandizes its erudition, and I can also agree that authors like the one’s mentioned are the antithesis of beauty, to some extent. However, these authors’ intent is not to find the beauty of existence, their intent is to have fun with language, to subsume various forms, textures, and substance in writing, and converge with the reader in a sort of whimsical experience. With Leyner, to start, his images, at the surface level, are only meant to “fuck” with you. In his short stories, his collective of arbitrary images collide with everyday fascinations, to create this senseless panoply of mirages. Taken to meaning, you will fail. It’s the subscription to the text that makes the reader either say “what the hell is this,” or in your case, “this is bullshit.” That’s what the authors want, to extend their craft to a level that, if you do subscribe to it, it is just a game. A game that the author and you play together in each other’s consciousness. The great challenge that the author’s struggle with is how far can they go? Where do the parameters rest? To Wallace, there is only the world that he creates, and that his world only matters. Yes, the caveat about Wallace is that beyond his spectrum of consciousness lies a dark place of loneliness, which I don’t really subscribe to, but that was just his own demons he grappled with his whole life. But the journey of how he extrapolates these observations of life: solipsism, boredom, unfathomable frustrations with society – these things are buried deep in all of our conscious (well, at least in mine.) There is this “force” that these authors attest to, and it comes out in their erudite exhortations, and to me, I see this writing as both a game, and a consolation.
In my opinion, I think that it is our purpose, our intent, when we enter a book, can be disparate; therefore our expectations of books differ. We come from different places, obviously, so therefore we enjoy different books. How simple is that, right? I do enjoy hearing different opinions – it’s good because it is good to see an outside opinion, which strengthens my own voice.
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