Reality Hunger — Summer 2011 edtition

This book is a work of fiction, although it also deals with historical events. Those segments of the work that are historical in nature are based on extensive research and interviews. Some real persons, both deceased and alive, are mentioned in the work. However, to the extent those persons are depicted as interacting with the narrator of the novel, their actions, motivations, and conversations are entirely fictitious and should not be considered real or factual.

There's no either-or division with poems. What's made up and what's not made up? What's the varnished truth , what's the unvarnished truth? We don't care. With prose you first want to know: Is it fiction, is it nonfiction? Everything follows from that. The books go in different places in the bookstore. But we don't do that with poems, or with song lyrics. Books of poems go straight to the poetry section. There's no nonfictional poetry and fictional poetry. The categories don't exist.

*

The events described have happened

In the interest of privacy, names and identifying characteristics have been changed, timelines have been compressed, and some of the dialogue is more exact than some of the other dialogue. Although subject to impression and memory, this is a work of nonfiction. The events described have happened. Except, of course, for a couple of passages, which I'm pretty sure have been so distorted by interpretation that no place and no one involved with them actually exist, including myself, including you.*

Now *that's* a title!™

[I]n the original magazine installments of the novel, the full title read The Personal History, Adventures, Experience and Observation of David Copperfield the Younger, of Blunderstone Rookery, which he never meant to be published on any account.

(from Richard Locke's forthcoming Critical Children)

Reality hunger for March 9, 2011

Why would someone create a replica of Blackie, complete with every single nick and scratch, including the wear pattern from Mr. Clapton’s belt buckle and the burn mark from his cigarettes? And why is that replica expected to fetch at least $20,000 at Wednesday’s auction, and probably much more? —"Urge to Own that Clapton Guitar Is Contagious, Scientists Find," NYT

The turtle, which scientists say could be more than a century old, is revered as the incarnation of a mythical creature that snatched a magic sword from a 15th-century king and returned it to its divine owners beneath the water, giving the lake its name, Hoan Kiem, or Lake of the Returned Sword. Romantics say the turtle is that legendary creature, believing it to be more than 600 years old. —"Turtle in Hanoi Escapes Would-Be Rescuers," NYT

Aide memoirs

Addendum to this post:

One of the guys who stepped forward is now peddling a memoir.
Attention and money all come into play. I don’t plan on reading it. I don’t have time to read fiction.

Gimme nonfiction

Their living and dining rooms are lined with books, all of them nonfiction, all of them read. Mr. Barrett cannot remember the last time he read a novel, and when asked if he felt he was missing something, he said, “Nyah.” —NYT

On whether he would ever wax his chest for a role.

It's a funny thing,

the other day I thought about doing it.

Seriously,

I was just thinking

about doing it.

I'm not going to do it anyway, now.

I guess I would do it if I had to do it.

(Source.)

What!

I.

'You patted his face.'
'I never. I was feeling his moustache.'
'It's the same thing.'
'It's not. Sidney, it's fastened on with glue!'
"What!'
—P.G. Wodehouse, Quick Service


II. Levi on Reality Hunger:

This seems like a perfect demonstration of what Shields doesn't seem to get about fiction: he’s right about what would happen if you were to take the plot out of Hamlet—but he doesn’t realize that the result would be terrible. A Hamlet who riffs forever? Could anyone really want that?

Reality hunger #13

He’s certainly got my history to some degree. I’d sort of like to keep that as vague as possible because some of what he’s about is exactly me and some of it is the opposite of me. I mean, everything is made up for the most part. There’s a grain of truth to it all, and everything is made up. That’s why I never wanted to do autobiography, because it’s so much easier to make things up. And things work out so much better in the story than if you did autobiography.

[*]

Literary Tupac-ism, or the case of the posthumous authors

Brandon Stosuy wrote in the VLS a few years back:

In 2001, W.G. Sebald's Austerlitz had barely hatched when its expat German author died in an auto accident near Norwich, England. The book came of age in its creator's absence. As a steady stream of miscellany, new translations, and critical exegesis in books about World War II has emerged, Sebald's posthumous trajectory resembles, of all things, that of slain West Coast rapper Tupac Shakur. An Inside a Thug's Heart/Campo Santo mash-up is a pipe dream, but both artists' beyond-the-grave success is a lesson in memory's resonance and Sebald's refrain that the dead are still around us (cf. Shakur's "How Long Will They Mourn Me?").

[An aside: Can someone please tell news websites to stop adding automated-seeming hyperlinks to every other word? Like, I really want to jump to all instances of "Long Will"???]

I thought of literary Tupac-ism twice recently—upon seeing the ARC of yet another Roberto Bolaño book, and again on reading Charles McGrath's piece on the afterlife of Stieg Larsson. I seem to remember (and seem to remember noting somewhere, perhaps on this blog) someone saying that even the unfinished stuff on Bolaño's hard drive could be considered for publication—their very incompleteness a commentary on his fate/career. (And I remember noting, as I note again now: Did I just this make this up? Can anyone find this? I think it was a tiny thing in a TLS...maybe in that "J.C." column.)

The most tantalizing part of McGrath's piece is the existence of a fourth, unfinished novel on Larsson's hard drive, which is in the possession of his longtime partner Eva Gabrielsson (who is at loggerheads with his father and brother over his literary estate)...

* * *

I'm also reminded of this recent NYT piece about the late Yiddish writer Chaim Grade; his widow Inna Hecker Grade's recent passing means that more scholars and translators might have the opportunity to work on his writings. (She was notoriously difficult with those interested in translating her husband's work, resulting in less exposure and ironically causing his star to dim.)

The story rang a bell, not because I'd ever heard of Grade, but because last year I read Joseph Epstein's short story "Beyond the Pale" (which is in the 2010 edition of The Best American Short Stories) about a young Time reporter whose interest in Yiddish leads him to pursue a great but obscure writer named Zalman Belzner. Belzner's wife, Gerda (= anagram for Grade!) is so loyal to the idea of her husband's greatness that she defeats every attempt at translation and proselytizing. (Like Irma, she's staunchly anti–Isaac Bashevis Singer.)

To be continued...

Reality hunger #12

Initials, blanks, or both were often substituted for proper names in nineteenth-century fiction to enhance the illusion of reality. It is as if the author felt it necessary to delete the names for reasons of tact or legal liability. Interestingly, as with other aspects of realism, it is an illusion that is being enhanced, by purely artificial means.


[*]

Reality hunger #11

W. Somerset Maugham, John Buchan, Ian Fleming, Graham Greene, John le Carré: all had experienced the world of espionage firsthand. For the task of the spy is not so very different from that of the novelist: to create an imaginary, credible world and then lure others into it by words and artifice.



[*]

Reality hunger #10

All descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate.








[*]

Reality hunger #9

Fact:

The Priory of Sion—a European secret society founded in 1099—is a real organization.





[*]

Reality hunger #8

Don Miff opens with a preface in which Virginius Dabney, purporting to be editing the papers of a certain Mr. John Bouche Whacker, warns “against too much faith in the account Mr. Whacker gives of himself.” But I suppose you can trust Mr. Dabney, because when he signed the preface “V. Dabney—108 West Forty-ninth Street, New York,” he was in fact giving readers his current home address.

[*]

Reality hunger, #7

This essay resembles a lengthy preface. It would rather be the foreword to a book I would one day wish to write.

[7]

Reality hunger #6

I once planned a book which was to consist entirely of dedications, but abandoned the idea because I could not think of a dedication for it.

[6]

Reality hunger #5

Come on in the crib. Don’t get freaked out by the Plexiglas walkway over the koi pond with the little waterfall next to it, it’ll hold you. The big room in the front with the marble tiles is cool and the upstairs room with the pool table is very cool. But the best room is the entertainment room just off the kitchen. In there are three big-screen TVs. Yeah, three. That’s not the best part, though. The best part is that the TVs are inset into a floor-to-ceiling aquarium that runs about 30 feet down one wall.



[#5]

Reality hunger #4

People really want to believe that there is no fiction. I think they find it much easier to imagine that novelists are writing memoirs, writing about their lives, because it's difficult to conceive that there's a great imaginary life in which you can participate.



[#4]

Reality hunger #3

There's always 14 pages describing a lawn that you skip over. I wondered, can you write a kind of fiction that the reader can't skip, because it's so dense with pleasure, so unrelentingly enjoyable, so packed with event. The goal was to make every sentence seem like a tabloid headline, so to speak, to turn up the volume on every sentence, to deliver a constant surprise.


[3]