Craft Notes
what is the relationship between your work and theory?
So yesterday I was doing some research to find out if anything has been written on the intersection of Deleuzian studies & Finnegans Wake. (Turns out, not much!) Anyway, I came across this public dialog between Jean-Michel Rabaté and Gregg Lambert called “The Future of Theory?” from 2002, occasioned by the publication of Rabaté’s book The Future of Theory.
Among other things, it got me thinking about the relationship between theory and creative writing. Do contemporary creative writers read theory, think about theory, use theory in their creative work? If so, how?
As an added bonus, here’s the intro to their conversation:
Lambert: To begin with I want to recall a line from Difference and Repetition, which forecasts a style of philosophy for the future, regarding what Deleuze describes as “a bearded Mona Lisa and a clean shaven Marx.” This line returned to me, Jean-Michel, as I read your account in The Future of Theory, particularly regarding your description of what you call “an hysterical Hegel.” Now, I always thought Marx was the hysterical one in relationship with Hegel, but here you seem to be saying something different. In the book there is a very dominant thesis that that Theory constantly risks becoming a little bit hysterical, or that its discourse itself is, in some way, hystericizing. Can you talk a bit about your use of the term “hysterical” with regard to the discourse of theory?
You can listen to the whole conversation here.
Tags: deleuze, finnegans wake
I think it’s impossible to go through school these days without being introduced in some way to at least rudimentary literary theory, and unless you’re able to block it out, it’s impossible, thereafter, to remain unaffected by it (specifically, because there are bodies of thought which describe and seek to explain the various personal responses one might have). I was drawn to theory back in high school (particularly certain post structuralists), and was so because I found the language beautiful. Or at least interesting. But as I became more interested in writing (composition), I found my interest in theory organically waned.
I think it’s impossible to go through school these days without being introduced in some way to at least rudimentary literary theory, and unless you’re able to block it out, it’s impossible, thereafter, to remain unaffected by it (specifically, because there are bodies of thought which describe and seek to explain the various personal responses one might have). I was drawn to theory back in high school (particularly certain post structuralists), and was so because I found the language beautiful. Or at least interesting. But as I became more interested in writing (composition), I found my interest in theory organically waned.
The Queer and feminist theory I studied undergrad sometimes influences my work, I think more in terms of content than language. I don’t really know much abt literary theory, except the little bit that influences queer theory, like the psychoanalytic stuff and discourse analysis and linguistics… little bit of Freud, Foucalt, Saussure and other folks who influence Judith Butler, Eve Sedgwick, etc.
The Queer and feminist theory I studied undergrad sometimes influences my work, I think more in terms of content than language. I don’t really know much abt literary theory, except the little bit that influences queer theory, like the psychoanalytic stuff and discourse analysis and linguistics… little bit of Freud, Foucalt, Saussure and other folks who influence Judith Butler, Eve Sedgwick, etc.
Most of the theory you study in college is boring, fairly silly and irrelevant to the concerns that should trouble a writer IMHO.
There is good lit theory out there, of course, but I don’t think you get much of it in a modern American university.
Most of the theory you study in college is boring, fairly silly and irrelevant to the concerns that should trouble a writer IMHO.
There is good lit theory out there, of course, but I don’t think you get much of it in a modern American university.
I try to approach literary theory, and philosophy, like they’re fiction.
The more theory I read, the harder I find it to write.
2cents
I try to approach literary theory, and philosophy, like they’re fiction.
The more theory I read, the harder I find it to write.
2cents
the better the theory the more it resembles poetry. perfect theory from poetry’s indiscernible
the better the theory the more it resembles poetry. perfect theory from poetry’s indiscernible
theory is the minute hand, poetry is the hour
theory is the minute hand, poetry is the hour
“I try to approach literary theory, and philosophy, like they’re fiction.”
“the better the theory the more it resembles poetry. perfect theory from poetry’s indiscernible.”
I’m completely down with these two statements by Ken & mark. (Blanchot, par example, most def a poet).
Also I like to think of “theory” pretty broadly, as whatever kind of ‘second-order’ or ‘meta’ reflection on your process helps that process along. I get more writing-mojo from reading about, say, architecture or cinema or surveillance theory than from strictly “literary” theory….
“I try to approach literary theory, and philosophy, like they’re fiction.”
“the better the theory the more it resembles poetry. perfect theory from poetry’s indiscernible.”
I’m completely down with these two statements by Ken & mark. (Blanchot, par example, most def a poet).
Also I like to think of “theory” pretty broadly, as whatever kind of ‘second-order’ or ‘meta’ reflection on your process helps that process along. I get more writing-mojo from reading about, say, architecture or cinema or surveillance theory than from strictly “literary” theory….
But are there still marvelous theorist/poets like Blanchot today?
I feel that for some authors theory has been an imaginative burden at times. Off the top of my head, I’d say the first Coetzee, Dusklands, Foe, ect.
But are there still marvelous theorist/poets like Blanchot today?
I feel that for some authors theory has been an imaginative burden at times. Off the top of my head, I’d say the first Coetzee, Dusklands, Foe, ect.
Can you provide examples?
Can you provide examples?
I’d like to gauge – like what good theory are you reading that’s not being read in the modern (contemporary?) American university?
I’d like to gauge – like what good theory are you reading that’s not being read in the modern (contemporary?) American university?
Sure, I’m not talking anything secret. I mean that in English departments of American universities the theory taught seems to be focused on what Harold Bloom called The School of Resentment (see, I’m gonna try to make this thread blow up), instead of people like Blanchot or Foucault or what not.
Philosophy departments are a different story though.
Sure, I’m not talking anything secret. I mean that in English departments of American universities the theory taught seems to be focused on what Harold Bloom called The School of Resentment (see, I’m gonna try to make this thread blow up), instead of people like Blanchot or Foucault or what not.
Philosophy departments are a different story though.
It is of course possible I’m extrapolating from my own experience too much though, maybe?
It is of course possible I’m extrapolating from my own experience too much though, maybe?
I’m not sure about this – I can’t speak for all universities, but where I teach we are down with Blanchot and Foucault. I’m not sure undergrads can jump right into this stuff, but we (as grad students) read that shit along with the stuff Bloom’s talking about, although I see that reading as more education than indoctrination – meaning that as educators, it’s useful to have a wide background in theory if ultimately you disagree with it. I might be lucky though, in that I haven’t encountered too many scholars who are adherents to any one school.
I’m not sure about this – I can’t speak for all universities, but where I teach we are down with Blanchot and Foucault. I’m not sure undergrads can jump right into this stuff, but we (as grad students) read that shit along with the stuff Bloom’s talking about, although I see that reading as more education than indoctrination – meaning that as educators, it’s useful to have a wide background in theory if ultimately you disagree with it. I might be lucky though, in that I haven’t encountered too many scholars who are adherents to any one school.
Does that mean there’s nothing straightforward to be said about writing and reading?
I really like Erich Auerbach and Franco Moretti.
Does that mean there’s nothing straightforward to be said about writing and reading?
I really like Erich Auerbach and Franco Moretti.
Yeah! I love Moretti.
Yeah! I love Moretti.
critical theory has led me to think more complexly and clearly. that said, it has no place in my fiction writing. it did at one point. i guess maybe levinas’s work trickles in there a little. i have begun to drift away from the vocabulary–last year, my first year of college, i was fully and pretentiously entrenched in it–as fiction writing has gradually taken command of my thinking and reading. reading a lot of “philosophy” usually stunts my growth as a writer.
that said, i am hugely interested in philosophy as its own discourse. however, philosophy written plainly bears no interest to me. like ken and mark have said, i am most intrigued by theorists for whom the borders between fiction, poetry, and philosophy have been eroded. i am probably going to major in philosophy.
i mostly like blanchot, levinas, rorty, irigaray.
critical theory has led me to think more complexly and clearly. that said, it has no place in my fiction writing. it did at one point. i guess maybe levinas’s work trickles in there a little. i have begun to drift away from the vocabulary–last year, my first year of college, i was fully and pretentiously entrenched in it–as fiction writing has gradually taken command of my thinking and reading. reading a lot of “philosophy” usually stunts my growth as a writer.
that said, i am hugely interested in philosophy as its own discourse. however, philosophy written plainly bears no interest to me. like ken and mark have said, i am most intrigued by theorists for whom the borders between fiction, poetry, and philosophy have been eroded. i am probably going to major in philosophy.
i mostly like blanchot, levinas, rorty, irigaray.
simon critchley is actually a poet, though his recent prose has been unimpressive. while i haven’t read all of it, because it’s extremely expensive, his earlier book “very little, almost nothing” has a blanchot-ish quality to it (and it deals heavily with blanchot) .
simon critchley is actually a poet, though his recent prose has been unimpressive. while i haven’t read all of it, because it’s extremely expensive, his earlier book “very little, almost nothing” has a blanchot-ish quality to it (and it deals heavily with blanchot) .
Do you think you can consciously keep what you’ve read (theory or otherwise) out? I don’t consciously try to work theory into my fiction, but I think it’s an influence no matter what, because its in my head with all the other shit.
Do you think you can consciously keep what you’ve read (theory or otherwise) out? I don’t consciously try to work theory into my fiction, but I think it’s an influence no matter what, because its in my head with all the other shit.
I have sometimes used theory that seemed to me to be essentially fiction — simulacra, Donna Haraway, and so forth.
Most other theory seems to kill writing for me. I don’t respect most of it very much.
I have sometimes used theory that seemed to me to be essentially fiction — simulacra, Donna Haraway, and so forth.
Most other theory seems to kill writing for me. I don’t respect most of it very much.
Thanks, I will look “Very Little, Almost Nothing” up, as the “Book of Dead Philosophers” did not impress me, and I couldn’t really understand all the media buzz about him.
Thanks, I will look “Very Little, Almost Nothing” up, as the “Book of Dead Philosophers” did not impress me, and I couldn’t really understand all the media buzz about him.
do you mean thematically or stylistically? when i said “it has no place,” i mostly meant in terms of the latter. thematically, i think it would be a tragedy to keep philosophical concerns entirely separate from fiction. while writing, i am a lot of the time thinking about sexuality, faith, death, etc. as they’ve been laid out for me by the philosophy i’ve encountered. but, you know, the metafictionists of the 60s-90s were writing with literary theory on the brain, and what of it they tried to incorporate i believe was grounded by an essential misreading. if you’re going to allow this stuff to thematize your work, i think you have to regard it as “your” concern, and not the concern of your “voice,” if that makes sense. like, it has to be a very personal exploration of “ideas” for you, otherwise, to borrow some terminology from blake, ideas precede sentences, and the sentences lose their lives. i know this is probably working against the grains of various theoretical assumptions, but then again, the act or possibility of writing itself does.
what do you think?
do you mean thematically or stylistically? when i said “it has no place,” i mostly meant in terms of the latter. thematically, i think it would be a tragedy to keep philosophical concerns entirely separate from fiction. while writing, i am a lot of the time thinking about sexuality, faith, death, etc. as they’ve been laid out for me by the philosophy i’ve encountered. but, you know, the metafictionists of the 60s-90s were writing with literary theory on the brain, and what of it they tried to incorporate i believe was grounded by an essential misreading. if you’re going to allow this stuff to thematize your work, i think you have to regard it as “your” concern, and not the concern of your “voice,” if that makes sense. like, it has to be a very personal exploration of “ideas” for you, otherwise, to borrow some terminology from blake, ideas precede sentences, and the sentences lose their lives. i know this is probably working against the grains of various theoretical assumptions, but then again, the act or possibility of writing itself does.
what do you think?
he seems to be turncoating all pop-philosophy on us. but then again, verso just put out a book of his on “ethics, politics and subjectivity,” and i think the INS and what they’re doing is way cooler than, say, zizek.
he seems to be turncoating all pop-philosophy on us. but then again, verso just put out a book of his on “ethics, politics and subjectivity,” and i think the INS and what they’re doing is way cooler than, say, zizek.
don’t know what you mean by straightforward.. if you mean ‘not art’ by it, then there’s plenty to be said.. but it’s just not the whole picture.. as when it is art
theory is like when someone talks about sex – there is lots to say about it – but it’s nothing compared to sex itself – which is much more ‘straightforward’
don’t know what you mean by straightforward.. if you mean ‘not art’ by it, then there’s plenty to be said.. but it’s just not the whole picture.. as when it is art
theory is like when someone talks about sex – there is lots to say about it – but it’s nothing compared to sex itself – which is much more ‘straightforward’
Whenever I hear this question, I think of a scene from the movie The Devil Wears Prada where Meryl Streep’s character is trying to explain to Anne Hathaway’s skeptical fashion-ignorant character how she is affected by high fashion.
http://www.hulu.com/watch/13046/the-devil-wears-prada-cerulean-sweater
That’s how I feel about the ways in which theory influence creative writing.
Whenever I hear this question, I think of a scene from the movie The Devil Wears Prada where Meryl Streep’s character is trying to explain to Anne Hathaway’s skeptical fashion-ignorant character how she is affected by high fashion.
http://www.hulu.com/watch/13046/the-devil-wears-prada-cerulean-sweater
That’s how I feel about the ways in which theory influence creative writing.
Damnit, Meryl Streep is so good. My face hurts.
Damnit, Meryl Streep is so good. My face hurts.
I agree with everything you said, but for me I’m not sure I can really articulate – that’s not to say that I don’t think about it, but I think that everything we read makes it into our work unconsciously – so for me I wouldn’t say it’s as overt as saying “I’m going to write about x” but that my reading informs my writing.
I agree with everything you said, but for me I’m not sure I can really articulate – that’s not to say that I don’t think about it, but I think that everything we read makes it into our work unconsciously – so for me I wouldn’t say it’s as overt as saying “I’m going to write about x” but that my reading informs my writing.
I run a theory-based reading group at my university, and we were talking last week about how theory is “used” in relation to studying and writing. One of the points that was raised was about the use of that word “used” – as if theory was a tool that is either the “key” to a work or legitimises it or “helps” in other ways. We wondered if the idea of theory as a tool is perhaps too dominant and sets it apart from other writing and means questions like this post are asked. You wouldn’t necessarily talk about “using” the writers you admire and are inspired by in your own writing, they’re just there. I think I’m basically agreeing with the comments here that talk about it as a creative writing like any other! Although I don’t necessarily think that the theory has to be poetic in its language in order to be read as creative writing…
I run a theory-based reading group at my university, and we were talking last week about how theory is “used” in relation to studying and writing. One of the points that was raised was about the use of that word “used” – as if theory was a tool that is either the “key” to a work or legitimises it or “helps” in other ways. We wondered if the idea of theory as a tool is perhaps too dominant and sets it apart from other writing and means questions like this post are asked. You wouldn’t necessarily talk about “using” the writers you admire and are inspired by in your own writing, they’re just there. I think I’m basically agreeing with the comments here that talk about it as a creative writing like any other! Although I don’t necessarily think that the theory has to be poetic in its language in order to be read as creative writing…
Roxane: Isn’t that, though, kind of a ‘trickle-down’ theory, which is to say Fashion Designer A at a middling company is looking to the Fashion Designer Z at someplace like YSL or Versace, and that the decisions/style of the High Fashion people informs all the fashion at a lower level? I don’t think that’s true for most writers, because most writers are storytellers, and look to the style/decisions made by masters of their own form, and not that of theoreticians…
Roxane: Isn’t that, though, kind of a ‘trickle-down’ theory, which is to say Fashion Designer A at a middling company is looking to the Fashion Designer Z at someplace like YSL or Versace, and that the decisions/style of the High Fashion people informs all the fashion at a lower level? I don’t think that’s true for most writers, because most writers are storytellers, and look to the style/decisions made by masters of their own form, and not that of theoreticians…
I took the clip as analogy to be suggesting that we are influenced by the forces outed and analyzed by theory regardless of whether we choose to “theorize” them, i.e. acknowledge and openly scrutinize them or not. The alternative, to say, “I am just being intuitive and going with my gut and not influenced by the lofty abstractions of theory” is to be akin to the character who thinks she’s not impacted by the world of fashion and so believes herself to be a full agent in an insignificant individual decision when in fact she is implicated in a whole network of decisions, power relations, and so forth. I’m not sure how much I agree with that, nor that I’ve interpreted Roxane’s intent rightly, but I love the clip.
I took the clip as analogy to be suggesting that we are influenced by the forces outed and analyzed by theory regardless of whether we choose to “theorize” them, i.e. acknowledge and openly scrutinize them or not. The alternative, to say, “I am just being intuitive and going with my gut and not influenced by the lofty abstractions of theory” is to be akin to the character who thinks she’s not impacted by the world of fashion and so believes herself to be a full agent in an insignificant individual decision when in fact she is implicated in a whole network of decisions, power relations, and so forth. I’m not sure how much I agree with that, nor that I’ve interpreted Roxane’s intent rightly, but I love the clip.
Tim, that’s exactly what I was suggesting. I think we as writers are kidding ourselves if we think that our stylistic decisions have not been, in some form or fashion influenced by theory. That is only my opinion but the longer I both write and study theory as part of my day job, the more I feel that theory and creative writing have many implicit connections.
Tim, that’s exactly what I was suggesting. I think we as writers are kidding ourselves if we think that our stylistic decisions have not been, in some form or fashion influenced by theory. That is only my opinion but the longer I both write and study theory as part of my day job, the more I feel that theory and creative writing have many implicit connections.
I was thinking about this very topic as the other day I picked up Jacques Attali’s Noise, which had been dust-gathering on my shelf for years, with a cover sporting Brueghel bacchanalia–diabolical hats and fish on oars and one fellow who looks like a medieval Magritte. And the opening sentences, ah, how promising: “For twenty-five centuries, Western knowledge has tried to look upon the world. It has failed to understand that the world is not there for the beholding. It is for hearing. It is not legible, but audible….life is full of noise and…death alone is silent: work noise, noise of man, and noise of beast. Noise bought, sold, or prohibited. Nothing essential happens in the absence of noise.” I was all ready to kick back and read it as a novel. But within pages the argument turned economic–the idea that music alters fundamentally when money is exchanged for it. I wanted a noisier argument, something with more feedback and, minimum, a bassline.
The lit theory that I find to be most compelling nowadays is that which ties together evolutionary theory and neuroscience with literature, although these connections are still in their infancy. Brian Boyd’s On the Origins of Stories, which looks at the Odyssey and Horton Hears a Who, is state-of-the-art in trying to stack together a bunch of different layers of explanation.
What about flipping the relationship on its head and treating works of literature as philosophy? Not of the variety “this is true” or live your life according to the ethics of this character/author/etc. More dynamic, as in this–undergoing literary experience–is a way of philosophizing about the world, thinking it through concretely, wrangling with it, putting to it questions that theory does overtly…
I was thinking about this very topic as the other day I picked up Jacques Attali’s Noise, which had been dust-gathering on my shelf for years, with a cover sporting Brueghel bacchanalia–diabolical hats and fish on oars and one fellow who looks like a medieval Magritte. And the opening sentences, ah, how promising: “For twenty-five centuries, Western knowledge has tried to look upon the world. It has failed to understand that the world is not there for the beholding. It is for hearing. It is not legible, but audible….life is full of noise and…death alone is silent: work noise, noise of man, and noise of beast. Noise bought, sold, or prohibited. Nothing essential happens in the absence of noise.” I was all ready to kick back and read it as a novel. But within pages the argument turned economic–the idea that music alters fundamentally when money is exchanged for it. I wanted a noisier argument, something with more feedback and, minimum, a bassline.
The lit theory that I find to be most compelling nowadays is that which ties together evolutionary theory and neuroscience with literature, although these connections are still in their infancy. Brian Boyd’s On the Origins of Stories, which looks at the Odyssey and Horton Hears a Who, is state-of-the-art in trying to stack together a bunch of different layers of explanation.
What about flipping the relationship on its head and treating works of literature as philosophy? Not of the variety “this is true” or live your life according to the ethics of this character/author/etc. More dynamic, as in this–undergoing literary experience–is a way of philosophizing about the world, thinking it through concretely, wrangling with it, putting to it questions that theory does overtly…
Roxane: that is a superb example, and highlights the fluid and ever-changing presence of theoretical ideas already in activity, in formation, of traditions, of history, working on the real, soliciting the real etc etc. It takes a theorist to put in the work, and by doing the work there is, on the one hand, a rigorous, analytical mobilisation of the idea, and on the other hand, productivity of new connections, new transversals, and new questions. A theoretical idea is never quite the same when it comes out of you after being invoked by you. I don’t think Tim follows through exactly with his thesis of “more dynamic” in a working-through ideas with literature when speaking of a “way of philosophizing about the world,” but it is in the direction of the notion of an interventional literature, a literature with consequences for reality. For understandings. For ideas. Though I don’t condone literature as philosophy, I do appreciate philosophy with the imagination – and the audacity – of fiction. But this might be my theoretical problem, my mistake, for me it isn’t a question I’ve resolved for myself. I can see that I privilege philosophers like Deleuze who invoke schizophrenia as profoundly significant for disrupting notions of subjectivity, of univocity, of universality, who allow schizophrenia as a concept ramified into genres of art, literature and music, psychopathology, sociology etc etc which, although rigorously considered psychoanalytically and philosophically, is instantiated to far lesser degrees in institutions of psychiatry, ethics, popular sociology, and news media. Naturally, I am attracted to this because it agrees with general prejudices of mine as well as being considered by years of the best of my reading and analytical abilities. So perhaps we should consider Badiou and consolidate the disciplines, in the service of the disciplines, certainly there’d be less dodgy philosophical literature out there. Doesn’t it make you cringe when you GET the philosophical notion an author has set out to investigate in their fiction? I think cringing is the right response. So, in conclusion, I think the dialectics between art and theory should be continually re-negotiated, criticism should be suped-up, the horizons should be stretched and stretched and stretched, and literature should respond to the new ontological and epistemological paradigms in formation, in action, in the world. But when literature starts to represent these paradigms, that’s when I start to wonder why I’m reading these one-dimensional characters playing out scripts in the service of a philosopher I could instead be reading.
Roxane: that is a superb example, and highlights the fluid and ever-changing presence of theoretical ideas already in activity, in formation, of traditions, of history, working on the real, soliciting the real etc etc. It takes a theorist to put in the work, and by doing the work there is, on the one hand, a rigorous, analytical mobilisation of the idea, and on the other hand, productivity of new connections, new transversals, and new questions. A theoretical idea is never quite the same when it comes out of you after being invoked by you. I don’t think Tim follows through exactly with his thesis of “more dynamic” in a working-through ideas with literature when speaking of a “way of philosophizing about the world,” but it is in the direction of the notion of an interventional literature, a literature with consequences for reality. For understandings. For ideas. Though I don’t condone literature as philosophy, I do appreciate philosophy with the imagination – and the audacity – of fiction. But this might be my theoretical problem, my mistake, for me it isn’t a question I’ve resolved for myself. I can see that I privilege philosophers like Deleuze who invoke schizophrenia as profoundly significant for disrupting notions of subjectivity, of univocity, of universality, who allow schizophrenia as a concept ramified into genres of art, literature and music, psychopathology, sociology etc etc which, although rigorously considered psychoanalytically and philosophically, is instantiated to far lesser degrees in institutions of psychiatry, ethics, popular sociology, and news media. Naturally, I am attracted to this because it agrees with general prejudices of mine as well as being considered by years of the best of my reading and analytical abilities. So perhaps we should consider Badiou and consolidate the disciplines, in the service of the disciplines, certainly there’d be less dodgy philosophical literature out there. Doesn’t it make you cringe when you GET the philosophical notion an author has set out to investigate in their fiction? I think cringing is the right response. So, in conclusion, I think the dialectics between art and theory should be continually re-negotiated, criticism should be suped-up, the horizons should be stretched and stretched and stretched, and literature should respond to the new ontological and epistemological paradigms in formation, in action, in the world. But when literature starts to represent these paradigms, that’s when I start to wonder why I’m reading these one-dimensional characters playing out scripts in the service of a philosopher I could instead be reading.
This is so very well articulated, Corey. I too cringe when I see an author writing in overtly philosophical ways. If I can see the philosophy or theory, something has gone awry but as you say, there is some really audacious theoretical work out there. The example of Deleuze is a really great one. I think texts like A Thousand Plateaus or Capitalism and Schizophrenia have a lot to offer writers as does Deleuze and Gauttari’s concept of the rhizome. I also think of someone like Bakhtin and his Dialogic Imagination. Anyway, I found your comment very interesting.
This is so very well articulated, Corey. I too cringe when I see an author writing in overtly philosophical ways. If I can see the philosophy or theory, something has gone awry but as you say, there is some really audacious theoretical work out there. The example of Deleuze is a really great one. I think texts like A Thousand Plateaus or Capitalism and Schizophrenia have a lot to offer writers as does Deleuze and Gauttari’s concept of the rhizome. I also think of someone like Bakhtin and his Dialogic Imagination. Anyway, I found your comment very interesting.
Yeah, great response, Corey. I’m no proponent of authors using characters as mouthpieces or baldly philosophizing. I was thinking more along the lines of how Saramago’s The Double or Ondaatje’s Divisadero address questions of identity, or Franzen’s The Corrections ruminates over materialism, or the way Delillo’s work considers “the real” as effectively, and in some ways more so, than works falling under the genre of philosophy do.
Yeah, great response, Corey. I’m no proponent of authors using characters as mouthpieces or baldly philosophizing. I was thinking more along the lines of how Saramago’s The Double or Ondaatje’s Divisadero address questions of identity, or Franzen’s The Corrections ruminates over materialism, or the way Delillo’s work considers “the real” as effectively, and in some ways more so, than works falling under the genre of philosophy do.
No worries, Tim, I’m with you. Cheers guys.
No worries, Tim, I’m with you. Cheers guys.