July 10th, 2010 / 1:09 am
Snippets
Snippets
Blake Butler—
1. At Examiner, an interview with Vanessa Place on L.A., Stein, La Medusa, etc.
2. At Flatmancrooked, an interview with Brian Evenson on nihilism, Kafka, film, etc.
Vanessa Place seems weird.
i think she seems very astute.
her assessment of LA is enlightening. i’ve often wondered how writers operating in a more experimental vein reconcile themselves to the poppy vacuum there, interesting to see that the expansive culture blasé leaves a good chunk of canvas to work on uninterrupted. + the stein language-as-mass quote is one to remember, opened something up for me reading VP’s work with that in mind. blocks of prose are bricks of flesh.
also check out same examiner bro’s interview with my buddy ira murfin, who is very quiet and corpulent but writes like hugo ball on pcp:
http://www.examiner.com/x-53028-Experimental-Arts-Examiner~y2010m6d17-Ira-Murfin
Brian Evenson is a good egg. His argument against realism as a foundation for writers, questioning the supremacy of realism — that is something a fucking lot of people need to fucking hear, i think. done with realism. done with it. ugh.
Vanessa Place seems weird.
i think she seems very astute.
her assessment of LA is enlightening. i’ve often wondered how writers operating in a more experimental vein reconcile themselves to the poppy vacuum there, interesting to see that the expansive culture blasé leaves a good chunk of canvas to work on uninterrupted. + the stein language-as-mass quote is one to remember, opened something up for me reading VP’s work with that in mind. blocks of prose are bricks of flesh.
also check out same examiner bro’s interview with my buddy ira murfin, who is very quiet and corpulent but writes like hugo ball on pcp:
http://www.examiner.com/x-53028-Experimental-Arts-Examiner~y2010m6d17-Ira-Murfin
Brian Evenson is a good egg. His argument against realism as a foundation for writers, questioning the supremacy of realism — that is something a fucking lot of people need to fucking hear, i think. done with realism. done with it. ugh.
Oftentimes, the only difference between a realist story and an experimental story is the experimental story has little ironic titles preceding the double-space breaks. All in all, not enough difference to make one leave LA.
Oftentimes, the only difference between a realist story and an experimental story is the experimental story has little ironic titles preceding the double-space breaks. All in all, not enough difference to make one leave LA.
i like this ira murfin
i like this ira murfin
ira is peachpie. and this dan godston fellow is interviewing many of my favorite people of the windy city.
“Oftentimes, the only difference between a realist story and an experimental story is the experimental story has little ironic titles preceding the double-space breaks”
oh noes. here we go again? BRING IT, PEMMIE.
ira is peachpie. and this dan godston fellow is interviewing many of my favorite people of the windy city.
“Oftentimes, the only difference between a realist story and an experimental story is the experimental story has little ironic titles preceding the double-space breaks”
oh noes. here we go again? BRING IT, PEMMIE.
Dude, sorry, it’s true. Check out McSweeney’s 16 (the one with the comb). Adam Levin’s story “The Bittersweet End of Susan Falls” is a perfect example. Standard narrative, but oh, wait! He titled each section with cutesy shit like, “Chapter 130,023, CONSIDERING THE UTILITY OF BLUE SNOWPANTS”.
Omg! Experimental! Fuck those realists. They don’t have cutesy titles that will embarrass the author in ten years!
Even the *Whoah, it’s so wacky…* story-poems (like what Fence publishes) is not experimental. I love me some Joyelle McSweeney, but her novels (and a lot of her poetry) is Burroughs, Burroughs, Burroughs. (And Burroughs was just popularizing stuff he learned from the French. Hm.)
Just a couple reasons I cringe whenever I hear these fuck realism rants. Plus I’m sure if you talked to someone like Brian Evenson, you’d learn he has a deep respect for all kinds of writing. Why limit yourself?
(I don’t think I sufficiently brought it, but there you go…)
;)
Part of the problem is with the terms ‘experimental’ (or innovative, or whatever) and ‘realism’ – they’re difficult to define rigidly – is Moby Dick experimental? realist? innovative realism? not realistic at all? what about Don Quixote? Sometimes it feels like realism, but at other times it’s so experimental!! I don’t see the terms as binaries – the opposite of ‘realism’ isn’t ‘experimental.’ I know some who will throw the word ‘experimental’ or ‘innovative’ at anything that’s not commercial, meaning any writing that’s not minimal realist literary or genre fiction, or that’s not realism, but I think it has more to do with form than content (about the form of the story versus a story about ‘real’ things.) That’s why I’m not sure that a lot of writers who get labeled as ‘experimental’ aren’t something else – fabulists, for example, or something else, because while they’re writing stuff outside the ‘mainstream’ what’s interesting about their writing has more to do with content than form.
Dude, sorry, it’s true. Check out McSweeney’s 16 (the one with the comb). Adam Levin’s story “The Bittersweet End of Susan Falls” is a perfect example. Standard narrative, but oh, wait! He titled each section with cutesy shit like, “Chapter 130,023, CONSIDERING THE UTILITY OF BLUE SNOWPANTS”.
Omg! Experimental! Fuck those realists. They don’t have cutesy titles that will embarrass the author in ten years!
Even the *Whoah, it’s so wacky…* story-poems (like what Fence publishes) is not experimental. I love me some Joyelle McSweeney, but her novels (and a lot of her poetry) is Burroughs, Burroughs, Burroughs. (And Burroughs was just popularizing stuff he learned from the French. Hm.)
Just a couple reasons I cringe whenever I hear these fuck realism rants. Plus I’m sure if you talked to someone like Brian Evenson, you’d learn he has a deep respect for all kinds of writing. Why limit yourself?
(I don’t think I sufficiently brought it, but there you go…)
;)
Part of the problem is with the terms ‘experimental’ (or innovative, or whatever) and ‘realism’ – they’re difficult to define rigidly – is Moby Dick experimental? realist? innovative realism? not realistic at all? what about Don Quixote? Sometimes it feels like realism, but at other times it’s so experimental!! I don’t see the terms as binaries – the opposite of ‘realism’ isn’t ‘experimental.’ I know some who will throw the word ‘experimental’ or ‘innovative’ at anything that’s not commercial, meaning any writing that’s not minimal realist literary or genre fiction, or that’s not realism, but I think it has more to do with form than content (about the form of the story versus a story about ‘real’ things.) That’s why I’m not sure that a lot of writers who get labeled as ‘experimental’ aren’t something else – fabulists, for example, or something else, because while they’re writing stuff outside the ‘mainstream’ what’s interesting about their writing has more to do with content than form.
‘Experimental’ is just this gross, unwieldy pan-term that should be done away with entirely because – in my humble, oft misinformed opinion – ’tis rather dismissive and contingent upon an increasingly labyrinthine and irrelevant network of criteria. yet i use it all the time to describe work in any discipline that is markedly progressive, and i shouldn’t. it’s reductive and ultimately dismissive. mittens, you have a point there.
i think that cute titles are more aptly described as ‘twee’ or ‘whimsical’ a la owen fucking wilson’s smushed-ass face pressed into a bemused grimace against a vibrant, symmetrical tableau of a period interior or something accompanied by obscure 60s britpop in a wes anderson ass-horn. no offense to adam levin.
p.s. thou shalt not take the name of Joyelle McSweeney in vain. that woman pushes the word to weird places like nobody’s business.
Yes! To all of it!
People-called-Dude: the Imagination is a Mansion with many Toilets! There are definitely times when I can see the point of reading good old (say) Charlie Dickens… other times when I’m a little bored/done with the structural conventions of what we call “realist” (though it’s anything but) Lit… that same old wedding of the Sermon and the Folk Tale which citizens think of as Littracha. The far limit of textual bravery is its own aesthetic matter but what I’m into is the pleasure of the subtly-disjointing (like getting oral sex from a cloud?)…
May I humbly submit (as a cautionary tale?), in this argument, material that isn’t “realist”… but it’s not “experimental”, either (because I’ve been writing this way for 15 years)…
http://staugustine2.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/even-more-difficult-texts-by-steven-augustine.pdf
Or, like, with sound:
http://staugustinian.wordpress.com/film/
hee hee. Like I said, I enjoy McSweeney, but I think it’s OK to enjoy without such hyperbole. The use of cut-up, N+7, collage, etc. is not ground-breaking. It’s almost as old as our James Woodsian conception of proper realism.
Sorry to belabor the point; it all just gives me flashbacks to college; emo kids, tight T-shirts, and the complete fear someone will find their — gasp! — Ethan Canin books under the bed…
Needing Art to be “ground-breaking” is kind of a pop thing, ironically, though, no? Anyone who stomps around an Art gallery declaring her/his stuff “ground-breaking”, you get a free pass to titter at… though, wait: ditto anyone who stomps around the gallery declaring stuff “not-ground-breaking!” Two sides of the same pop dollar.
‘Experimental’ is just this gross, unwieldy pan-term that should be done away with entirely because – in my humble, oft misinformed opinion – ’tis rather dismissive and contingent upon an increasingly labyrinthine and irrelevant network of criteria. yet i use it all the time to describe work in any discipline that is markedly progressive, and i shouldn’t. it’s reductive and ultimately dismissive. mittens, you have a point there.
i think that cute titles are more aptly described as ‘twee’ or ‘whimsical’ a la owen fucking wilson’s smushed-ass face pressed into a bemused grimace against a vibrant, symmetrical tableau of a period interior or something accompanied by obscure 60s britpop in a wes anderson ass-horn. no offense to adam levin.
p.s. thou shalt not take the name of Joyelle McSweeney in vain. that woman pushes the word to weird places like nobody’s business.
depends what kind of ground you’re trying to break, right? plenty of folks have N+7’d, but doesn’t change the fact that it hasn’t reached saturation. N+7, any oulipo, whatever technique you like, hasn’t (I don’t think) reached a point in literary consciousness where it genuinely has changed writing going forward. Even if a young writer chooses not to write in ways that are that kind of manipulation/experiment, being sufficiently aware of it would change his approach to his own writing. It’s that kind of awareness that makes shit “not ground-breaking” because the whole ground’s been broken. Realist was broken long ago.
Yes! To all of it!
Amen.
I’d argue that “Realism” is a misnomer and an illusion. Cite the most “Realist” text you can imagine and I can show you how absolutely divorced it is from any “Reality” outside of its own pages. We’ve all merely agreed on a tonal convention that encompasses a loose collection of narrative stereotypes and trusty maneuvers and we call that “Realism”.
The *artistic* or technical differences between “Realist” and “Non-Realist” texts are very, very few compared to the differences between various Ideological Schools of Interpretation. The Reality Wars are almost always Political, in essence and, as such, thinly-veiled; it rarely gets to the point of going into shop talk or aesthetics. It’s an extra-literary topic. What we’re really talking about is Lifestyle, Worldview, etc.
Now, compare Joyce’s use of Stream-of-Consciousness to Tom Wolfe’s use of the same maneuver and ask if the technique is “non-realist”, “realist” or “hyper-realist” for both, or one as opposed to the other, or neither. On the actual level of mechanics it becomes a tricky interrogation. These arguments are only ever interesting when they get really technical and extremely specific… but that’s when they fail as pigeon-holers.
People-called-Dude: the Imagination is a Mansion with many Toilets! There are definitely times when I can see the point of reading good old (say) Charlie Dickens… other times when I’m a little bored/done with the structural conventions of what we call “realist” (though it’s anything but) Lit… that same old wedding of the Sermon and the Folk Tale which citizens think of as Littracha. The far limit of textual bravery is its own aesthetic matter but what I’m into is the pleasure of the subtly-disjointing (like getting oral sex from a cloud?)…
May I humbly submit (as a cautionary tale?), in this argument, material that isn’t “realist”… but it’s not “experimental”, either (because I’ve been writing this way for 15 years)…
http://staugustine2.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/even-more-difficult-texts-by-steven-augustine.pdf
Or, like, with sound:
http://staugustinian.wordpress.com/film/
hee hee. Like I said, I enjoy McSweeney, but I think it’s OK to enjoy without such hyperbole. The use of cut-up, N+7, collage, etc. is not ground-breaking. It’s almost as old as our James Woodsian conception of proper realism.
Sorry to belabor the point; it all just gives me flashbacks to college; emo kids, tight T-shirts, and the complete fear someone will find their — gasp! — Ethan Canin books under the bed…
Needing Art to be “ground-breaking” is kind of a pop thing, ironically, though, no? Anyone who stomps around an Art gallery declaring her/his stuff “ground-breaking”, you get a free pass to titter at… though, wait: ditto anyone who stomps around the gallery declaring stuff “not-ground-breaking!” Two sides of the same pop dollar.
depends what kind of ground you’re trying to break, right? plenty of folks have N+7’d, but doesn’t change the fact that it hasn’t reached saturation. N+7, any oulipo, whatever technique you like, hasn’t (I don’t think) reached a point in literary consciousness where it genuinely has changed writing going forward. Even if a young writer chooses not to write in ways that are that kind of manipulation/experiment, being sufficiently aware of it would change his approach to his own writing. It’s that kind of awareness that makes shit “not ground-breaking” because the whole ground’s been broken. Realist was broken long ago.
Amen.
I’d argue that “Realism” is a misnomer and an illusion. Cite the most “Realist” text you can imagine and I can show you how absolutely divorced it is from any “Reality” outside of its own pages. We’ve all merely agreed on a tonal convention that encompasses a loose collection of narrative stereotypes and trusty maneuvers and we call that “Realism”.
The *artistic* or technical differences between “Realist” and “Non-Realist” texts are very, very few compared to the differences between various Ideological Schools of Interpretation. The Reality Wars are almost always Political, in essence and, as such, thinly-veiled; it rarely gets to the point of going into shop talk or aesthetics. It’s an extra-literary topic. What we’re really talking about is Lifestyle, Worldview, etc.
Now, compare Joyce’s use of Stream-of-Consciousness to Tom Wolfe’s use of the same maneuver and ask if the technique is “non-realist”, “realist” or “hyper-realist” for both, or one as opposed to the other, or neither. On the actual level of mechanics it becomes a tricky interrogation. These arguments are only ever interesting when they get really technical and extremely specific… but that’s when they fail as pigeon-holers.