The books to read list just gets bigger. David Shields has compiled a reading list, made up of "books, each of which asks what is for me the only serious question: given that we die, and given that there is no god, how do we find purpose in existence?" He "seem[s] to like books that help you get out of bed, but just barely. These books do that, with ferocious and, for me, life-affirming honesty."
We are re-watching the West Wing at the moment, so those quotes are ringing in my ears like the mawkish/inspirational round-up lines at the end of each episode, but if you can ignore that, then they might be useful. Or failing that, the actual books might well be.
Showing posts with label contemporary literature. Show all posts
Showing posts with label contemporary literature. Show all posts
21.3.10
Time for a Manifesto?
I've noticed of late a little spike in things - books, ideas - being described as manifestos. This observation is entirely non-scientific, and I don't have any figures to back it up, but it seems as if the manifesto is having something of a mini-renaissance.
Firstly, there's David Shield's Reality Hunger, which seems to be causing quite the controversy a manifesto is supposed to, although it does appear to be a rather subdued controversy, mainly concerning the viewpoint that it's not-really-very-radical and thus not-really-a-manifesto. I am yet to read it, though rather itching to, as it will no doubt form quite a large part of my future studies, and more pressingly I gather there's a mention of cellphone novels in there somewhere that I have to dig out.
Secondly, there's this - You are Not a Gadget (: A Manifesto) in which the inventor of Virtual Reality Jaron Lanier decides the internet's rubbish now. I think Michael Agger may have it right in his review: "The Web hasn't lost flavor; you've lost flavor."
Thirdly - and this is what made me think there was something worth noting here - is Tony Judt's piece in the Guardian on Saturday, which in the paper version was called A Manifesto for a Brighter Future but on the net is called A Manifesto for a New Politics, which is strange, given that it's a manifesto for a traditional social democracy that realises that "radicalism has always been about conserving valuable pasts". Which may or may not be true - the piece is generally good, I think, even if it places a little too much faith in the idea of social democracy - but what is interesting is how it's called a "manifesto". Why? It isn't really, or if it is then a whole host of opinion pieces in newspapers around the world can be called manifestos. And the two books above seem to have added their colonic subtitles for reasons of provocation rather than a genuinely held belief that they are putting across something new. David Shields, perhaps, thinks he's doing that, but if some reviews are to go by, his something new is to say that non-fiction or the tinkering between it and fiction is the way forward, which isn't particularly new. And Lanier's book appears to be a collection of column articles. Which isn't new or even a coherent single piece!
And of course there's the altermodern, which had a manifesto, even if it did seem to be going through the motions somewhat.
So why manifestos? Times are rough/tough/uncertain etc, and in these sorts of times people are supposedly open to big ideas (although none so big as to actually make a difference: hence the use of the word "recovery" so often in relation to the economy), and big ideas need big statements to get them across and that means a manifesto. But it's a particularly postmodern idea of a manifesto that seems to be doing the rounds - call it a manifesto but actually aim to change very little.
Having said that, it would be exciting if we had a new age of manifestos by radical artists being published on the front page of the Daily Telegraph.
Firstly, there's David Shield's Reality Hunger, which seems to be causing quite the controversy a manifesto is supposed to, although it does appear to be a rather subdued controversy, mainly concerning the viewpoint that it's not-really-very-radical and thus not-really-a-manifesto. I am yet to read it, though rather itching to, as it will no doubt form quite a large part of my future studies, and more pressingly I gather there's a mention of cellphone novels in there somewhere that I have to dig out.
Secondly, there's this - You are Not a Gadget (: A Manifesto) in which the inventor of Virtual Reality Jaron Lanier decides the internet's rubbish now. I think Michael Agger may have it right in his review: "The Web hasn't lost flavor; you've lost flavor."
Thirdly - and this is what made me think there was something worth noting here - is Tony Judt's piece in the Guardian on Saturday, which in the paper version was called A Manifesto for a Brighter Future but on the net is called A Manifesto for a New Politics, which is strange, given that it's a manifesto for a traditional social democracy that realises that "radicalism has always been about conserving valuable pasts". Which may or may not be true - the piece is generally good, I think, even if it places a little too much faith in the idea of social democracy - but what is interesting is how it's called a "manifesto". Why? It isn't really, or if it is then a whole host of opinion pieces in newspapers around the world can be called manifestos. And the two books above seem to have added their colonic subtitles for reasons of provocation rather than a genuinely held belief that they are putting across something new. David Shields, perhaps, thinks he's doing that, but if some reviews are to go by, his something new is to say that non-fiction or the tinkering between it and fiction is the way forward, which isn't particularly new. And Lanier's book appears to be a collection of column articles. Which isn't new or even a coherent single piece!
And of course there's the altermodern, which had a manifesto, even if it did seem to be going through the motions somewhat.
So why manifestos? Times are rough/tough/uncertain etc, and in these sorts of times people are supposedly open to big ideas (although none so big as to actually make a difference: hence the use of the word "recovery" so often in relation to the economy), and big ideas need big statements to get them across and that means a manifesto. But it's a particularly postmodern idea of a manifesto that seems to be doing the rounds - call it a manifesto but actually aim to change very little.
Having said that, it would be exciting if we had a new age of manifestos by radical artists being published on the front page of the Daily Telegraph.
27.1.10
The Interrogative Mood
I finished Padgett Powell's novel (?) The Interrogative Mood the other day. It's rather good, and I'll definitely use it in my PhD, (if the bloody application gets in, but that's a whole other story).
It's constructed entirely out of questions, 165 pages of them, divided not into chapters but roughly 10-page sections. There's no ostensible order to the questions (no theme ties together each section for instance), and they range in style and content from "Do you like paint?" to "Is there a future?" - those two appear right next to each other.
For the first ten or twenty pages, you're figuring out how you're going to read it; the rhythm, the pace, the emphases. The more you read, the more you find your way, and the more you build up a head of steam. You start noticing how the construction and placement of the questions means that you don't read it as a mere interrogative list, that each question has a different tone or timbre to it. Powell mixes it up.
Then you start noticing how questions re-appear in slightly different formations. But they're not "big themes", they're about your love of blue-jays, the fear of a hernia, the comparative beauties of a sunset and a sunrise, whether little rubber army men are still made as toys. They're the type of questions that "characterise", and you begin to wonder about the identity of the questioner. They're the apparently small things that an individual notices or is preoccupied with, and it's in this sense that Powell is very much like Nicholson Baker, (who's new book I'm currently reading). Like Baker, Powell loves those idiosyncracies - "Are you a sweater person?" "Do you take pleasure in cleaning and repacking wheel bearings?" - that always seem to 'say so much' about a person.
This questioner keeps formulating escape plans ("If you were told you could move to a cabin in the Andes, yours for the taking and with some servants on the grounds ready to work for you and that the farm was self-sufficient with their labour, would you go?") and you wonder whether these questions are a self-questioning, some sort of examination. Perhaps this book is an (auto-)biography of sorts, all the questions one asks oneself put together. But perhaps it's not a biography of a person per se, but a psyche, a society, a country even, and perhaps it's not a biography in the sense of a linear narrative from birth to death but a biography in a portrait, a snapshot, and perhaps that snapshot is of contemporary America. I think it is.
It's constructed entirely out of questions, 165 pages of them, divided not into chapters but roughly 10-page sections. There's no ostensible order to the questions (no theme ties together each section for instance), and they range in style and content from "Do you like paint?" to "Is there a future?" - those two appear right next to each other.
For the first ten or twenty pages, you're figuring out how you're going to read it; the rhythm, the pace, the emphases. The more you read, the more you find your way, and the more you build up a head of steam. You start noticing how the construction and placement of the questions means that you don't read it as a mere interrogative list, that each question has a different tone or timbre to it. Powell mixes it up.
Then you start noticing how questions re-appear in slightly different formations. But they're not "big themes", they're about your love of blue-jays, the fear of a hernia, the comparative beauties of a sunset and a sunrise, whether little rubber army men are still made as toys. They're the type of questions that "characterise", and you begin to wonder about the identity of the questioner. They're the apparently small things that an individual notices or is preoccupied with, and it's in this sense that Powell is very much like Nicholson Baker, (who's new book I'm currently reading). Like Baker, Powell loves those idiosyncracies - "Are you a sweater person?" "Do you take pleasure in cleaning and repacking wheel bearings?" - that always seem to 'say so much' about a person.
This questioner keeps formulating escape plans ("If you were told you could move to a cabin in the Andes, yours for the taking and with some servants on the grounds ready to work for you and that the farm was self-sufficient with their labour, would you go?") and you wonder whether these questions are a self-questioning, some sort of examination. Perhaps this book is an (auto-)biography of sorts, all the questions one asks oneself put together. But perhaps it's not a biography of a person per se, but a psyche, a society, a country even, and perhaps it's not a biography in the sense of a linear narrative from birth to death but a biography in a portrait, a snapshot, and perhaps that snapshot is of contemporary America. I think it is.
9.1.10
Possible Precariousnesses
In a recent review, Stephanie Merritt picks out a line from Javier Marias's Poison, Shadow and Farewell, the third part of his Your Face Tomorrow series. Bertram Tupra, a member of MI6, explains to a recent recruit, Spanish academic Jacques Deza, his view of death: ""We've become very soft, very thin-skinned, we think we should last for ever," he tells Deza. "We ought to be accustomed to the temporary nature of things, but we're not. We insist on not being temporary, which is why it's so easy to frighten us, as you've seen, all one has to do is unsheathe a sword.""
Now, my eyes and ears opened and pricked up at this, because that sounds a lot like precariousness. What's more, it is a particularly contemporary view that is both being attacked and being put forward. The idea being attacked is the contemporary desire to extend life, to make it more solid, to protect ourselves against threats. You may wonder exactly how contemporary that is - surely it's human nature? - but I think what Marias is getting at is the particular fetishisation of permanence that an increasingly decadent capitalism creates. The equally contemporary idea being put forward by Tupra - who has just attacked a young diplomat with the aforementioned sword - is a reaction to these capitalist certainties, an embrace of the precarious which is in Tupra's case both a reactionary turning back of the clock to an age both more primitive and in touch with death as well as a more positive embrace of life in that seemingly solid capitalism which works on a valorisation of solidity whilst simultaneously destablising everyone and everything.
Another recent potential precariousness is Padgett Powell's The Interrogative Mood: A Novel?, a book composed entirely of questions - how much more precarious can you get? The question itself, as a concept, is precarious - it pitches something out into the ether, the dark, the unknown, without any guarantee of it coming back in the form of an answer. It is a leap of faith, it is uncertain and unstable. Here is a quick snippet of Powell reading from it. It sounds really funny if nothing else!:
Now, my eyes and ears opened and pricked up at this, because that sounds a lot like precariousness. What's more, it is a particularly contemporary view that is both being attacked and being put forward. The idea being attacked is the contemporary desire to extend life, to make it more solid, to protect ourselves against threats. You may wonder exactly how contemporary that is - surely it's human nature? - but I think what Marias is getting at is the particular fetishisation of permanence that an increasingly decadent capitalism creates. The equally contemporary idea being put forward by Tupra - who has just attacked a young diplomat with the aforementioned sword - is a reaction to these capitalist certainties, an embrace of the precarious which is in Tupra's case both a reactionary turning back of the clock to an age both more primitive and in touch with death as well as a more positive embrace of life in that seemingly solid capitalism which works on a valorisation of solidity whilst simultaneously destablising everyone and everything.
Another recent potential precariousness is Padgett Powell's The Interrogative Mood: A Novel?, a book composed entirely of questions - how much more precarious can you get? The question itself, as a concept, is precarious - it pitches something out into the ether, the dark, the unknown, without any guarantee of it coming back in the form of an answer. It is a leap of faith, it is uncertain and unstable. Here is a quick snippet of Powell reading from it. It sounds really funny if nothing else!:
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Me
- Mark
- I am writing a PhD at the University of Glasgow entitled "The Poetics of Time in Contemporary Literature". My writing has been published in Type Review, Dancehall, Puffin Review and TheState. I review books for Gutter and The List. I am also an editor and reviewer at the Glasgow Review of Books.