This is a great essay, Tao Lin's Eeeee Eee Eeee is one of my favourite novels and your descriptions of Sebald etc. seem to clarify, to me, the historic foundation to the inscrutable quality of that book has ; what process it rode upon. I have purchased Free Indirect on the strength of this essay.
I am in full writing mode now which means solving the frequent narrative problems I encounter as I seek some form of coherence vis a vis a "felt" reality. You've done alot of the heavy lifting for me here and justified my approach to fiction. Thank you for a really great and incisive essay.
another theoretician who writes about the phenomenon is Anna Kornbluh and her book Immediacy. she does a great job of relating this anti-fictional ideology to a sort of political impotence (by resisting exemplarity, you resist solidarity and coalition building). It's also part of a broader aesthetic movement toward genre-less and formless artlike products. Bewes sounds like another writer worth checking out.
I think that the way out of it isn't necessarily returning to 19th century models of literature, but a sort of dialectic through autofiction that might restore some sense of history and materiality to the form. looking forward to the novel of the future.
Tbh I didn’t like Kornbluh’s book because I felt that it constructed its argument out of a lot of spurious readings and a misunderstanding of the problem. The problem is not immediacy but mediation—a hypermediation that disguises itself as immediacy (as when the algorithm on a platform seems to anticipate your desires when it is really producing those desires out of a statistical account of what a person like you would want at a given time).
What she does register correctly I think is a process across art-media that Jameson described decades earlier: the shift away from “representation” in a classical sense towards the production of affect, which is a symptom and a cause of the retreat of “totality” from view, and with it a loss of historicity/futurity in exchange for a perpetual present. Fair enough! But again, neither an original idea nor a very well argued thesis in her book.
I agree that the novel of the (near) future will have to involve elements of autofiction & reportage, but it has to do so in search of (or rather, towards the formation of) a collective subject under the sign of something like a type.
Basically, we must reclaim a good universality and collectivity over and against the bad logics of “identity” and “singularity” that either erase certain forms of experience or linger onanistically in tragic particularity
yeah, some parts of the book certainly landed more for me than others. I'm not as well steeped in these ideas as yet (so I can't speak to what is really original to her), but the political/historicist critique she makes really lands for me. I see her as one critical voice within a growing movement away from standpoint epistemology (and related concepts) as useful or aesthetically valuable.
I would like to see the modernist's capture of psychology and subjectivity fused with the social novel, forms of fiction that can speak both the the singular and the general.
tbh, I'm revising my own novel right now that has a pretty direct bearing on this debate. it's tough for me to balance these more abstract and intellectual questions of form and ideology with the craft and narrative demands of the work itself. but the nice thing about the novel as a form is that it accommodates everything. more than maybe any other art form, I think it benefits from a wide aperture, diverse influences, and a sustained and organic growth alongside the mind of the author. not to be too self-important or anything haha
I don't know about this TBH. If you create a fictional world the people in it are going to be more likely to behave one way rather than another and that will be revealed by what they do. It's really bedrock and it's cross-cultural. Cinderella acts one way and her sisters act another way, and that's an ancient Chinese folk tale. You can opt out of it, but then you're not telling a story and you will give up on certain ways of connecting to readers that are quite effective. Characters don't have to be exemplary -- they can be weird and idiosyncratic. But they are a tool that lets the story teller give the reader some emotional purchase and investment in the story. I think your people are missing something really basic.
This is a great essay, Tao Lin's Eeeee Eee Eeee is one of my favourite novels and your descriptions of Sebald etc. seem to clarify, to me, the historic foundation to the inscrutable quality of that book has ; what process it rode upon. I have purchased Free Indirect on the strength of this essay.
might very well be the best thing I've read on Substack
I am in full writing mode now which means solving the frequent narrative problems I encounter as I seek some form of coherence vis a vis a "felt" reality. You've done alot of the heavy lifting for me here and justified my approach to fiction. Thank you for a really great and incisive essay.
another theoretician who writes about the phenomenon is Anna Kornbluh and her book Immediacy. she does a great job of relating this anti-fictional ideology to a sort of political impotence (by resisting exemplarity, you resist solidarity and coalition building). It's also part of a broader aesthetic movement toward genre-less and formless artlike products. Bewes sounds like another writer worth checking out.
I think that the way out of it isn't necessarily returning to 19th century models of literature, but a sort of dialectic through autofiction that might restore some sense of history and materiality to the form. looking forward to the novel of the future.
Tbh I didn’t like Kornbluh’s book because I felt that it constructed its argument out of a lot of spurious readings and a misunderstanding of the problem. The problem is not immediacy but mediation—a hypermediation that disguises itself as immediacy (as when the algorithm on a platform seems to anticipate your desires when it is really producing those desires out of a statistical account of what a person like you would want at a given time).
What she does register correctly I think is a process across art-media that Jameson described decades earlier: the shift away from “representation” in a classical sense towards the production of affect, which is a symptom and a cause of the retreat of “totality” from view, and with it a loss of historicity/futurity in exchange for a perpetual present. Fair enough! But again, neither an original idea nor a very well argued thesis in her book.
I agree that the novel of the (near) future will have to involve elements of autofiction & reportage, but it has to do so in search of (or rather, towards the formation of) a collective subject under the sign of something like a type.
Basically, we must reclaim a good universality and collectivity over and against the bad logics of “identity” and “singularity” that either erase certain forms of experience or linger onanistically in tragic particularity
yeah, some parts of the book certainly landed more for me than others. I'm not as well steeped in these ideas as yet (so I can't speak to what is really original to her), but the political/historicist critique she makes really lands for me. I see her as one critical voice within a growing movement away from standpoint epistemology (and related concepts) as useful or aesthetically valuable.
I would like to see the modernist's capture of psychology and subjectivity fused with the social novel, forms of fiction that can speak both the the singular and the general.
tbh, I'm revising my own novel right now that has a pretty direct bearing on this debate. it's tough for me to balance these more abstract and intellectual questions of form and ideology with the craft and narrative demands of the work itself. but the nice thing about the novel as a form is that it accommodates everything. more than maybe any other art form, I think it benefits from a wide aperture, diverse influences, and a sustained and organic growth alongside the mind of the author. not to be too self-important or anything haha
I don't know about this TBH. If you create a fictional world the people in it are going to be more likely to behave one way rather than another and that will be revealed by what they do. It's really bedrock and it's cross-cultural. Cinderella acts one way and her sisters act another way, and that's an ancient Chinese folk tale. You can opt out of it, but then you're not telling a story and you will give up on certain ways of connecting to readers that are quite effective. Characters don't have to be exemplary -- they can be weird and idiosyncratic. But they are a tool that lets the story teller give the reader some emotional purchase and investment in the story. I think your people are missing something really basic.