dematerialisation in literature
- Thread starter woops
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woops
is not like other people
I haven't heard of John Hawkes, but it's a good thing for any iconoclastic experimental writer to say before going and doing plot, character, setting and theme in whichever iconoclastic, experimental way. I'd be impressed by any novel that bore no trace of any of them.
IdleRich
IdleRich
I dunno who he is either but I like ARG a lot (actually his films more than his books but whatever).
But the thing is, as with plot, so with character, they may be mixed up, it might not be clear who is whom and they might or might or not exist but there is always something that fulfills the role of character.
It's back to what Version said above - how far can you stretch the novel? I'd argue if you genuinely had a novel with no characters, location or plot, then it probably wouldn't be considered as a novel by most people. In contrast to film which can quite easily dispense with all of the above without necessarily even seeming willfully abstract (though obviously such a film would be at the arty end of the spectrum).
Maybe I'm not comparing like with like though; you can have a book with no plot etc and you can have a film with none of them, I'm not sure that you can have novl without them and maybe we need a filmic analogue of novel, say movie perhaps, and possibly that does require the above.
But the thing is, as with plot, so with character, they may be mixed up, it might not be clear who is whom and they might or might or not exist but there is always something that fulfills the role of character.
It's back to what Version said above - how far can you stretch the novel? I'd argue if you genuinely had a novel with no characters, location or plot, then it probably wouldn't be considered as a novel by most people. In contrast to film which can quite easily dispense with all of the above without necessarily even seeming willfully abstract (though obviously such a film would be at the arty end of the spectrum).
Maybe I'm not comparing like with like though; you can have a book with no plot etc and you can have a film with none of them, I'm not sure that you can have novl without them and maybe we need a filmic analogue of novel, say movie perhaps, and possibly that does require the above.
jenks
thread death
No...I gave up on Self about ten years ago - even i do not have time for that shit in my life.
jenks
thread death
None of you read any women? I reckon someone like Drndric would be a good example of someone who was doing erm novel things with the novel form - very much coming out of a lineage of Bernhard, Sebald, Walser - in fact I think Sebald may well be the one who has had the greatest effect (cue much barracking from Luka, i guess)
Nicola Barker who is a category of her own and has been pushing the novel all over the place
Dorothy Nelson in the 80s leading the way to people like Eimar McBride.
Maureen Duffy pretty much inventing the psychogeographical novel years before Sinclair and Ackroyd.
I think Matthias Enard is pushing the novel into interesting places
The short story is very much alive and well - Lydia Davis, Eley Williams, Wendy Erskine, David Hayden (Darker With The Lights On is full of experimental twists and turns) Samantha Swebelin,
this has just degenerated into a list i know but these are all post Joyce and all continue to play with the form in one way or another that suggests the novel isn't dead.
Nicola Barker who is a category of her own and has been pushing the novel all over the place
Dorothy Nelson in the 80s leading the way to people like Eimar McBride.
Maureen Duffy pretty much inventing the psychogeographical novel years before Sinclair and Ackroyd.
I think Matthias Enard is pushing the novel into interesting places
The short story is very much alive and well - Lydia Davis, Eley Williams, Wendy Erskine, David Hayden (Darker With The Lights On is full of experimental twists and turns) Samantha Swebelin,
this has just degenerated into a list i know but these are all post Joyce and all continue to play with the form in one way or another that suggests the novel isn't dead.
woops
is not like other people
Of course I have jenks, on the understanding that they might have written an interesting book.
I don't know most of the names on your list though, add a bit of detail or explanation if you feel like it, same to Craner
woops
is not like other people
I'll step in. Sebald is not a novelist. He writes autobiography and history with a grandiose literary style (I do like some of his stuff, but he relies on an implied literary status too often). Ackroyd is a hack. Sinclair's novels are incidental to his career and he is now a bit of a hack himself.
jenks
thread death
So why don't you mention any of them? There was some light mention of Murdoch but apart from that this discussion would suggest that only men are somehow capable of producing GREAT WORKS OF FICTION
You're wrong about Sebald obviously - Austerlitz and the rest are quite clearly novels. But I'm not going to get into a row about it.
woops
is not like other people
It's because I'm trying to look at this trend or movement of the novel in recent history and the handiest examples are all written by men! I'd be more interested in reading what the women you name are doing as writers (pinched from Josipovici) than in your saying well what about all these women then. It's not as if I'd rule out reading the names you list on the grounds that they were women! I'd give any of them a go.
i've hardly read any women, and do feel quite bad about it. i had a go with a charlotte bronte novel (jane eyre) a few years ago, can't say i liked it much. dunno if it's relevant to this thread really, and i'm sure i've mentioned her before, in the experimental lit thread, but maggie nelson (argonauts, bluets) is interesting, shes doing new things, sort of sebaldian i guess, weaving her own life into theory and other stuff, with diary like entries. and obvs chris kraus. i rate both of those. but yeah, are they novels? i would say they are, but they stretch the form really.
woops
is not like other people
They stop being novels. They become what Geoff Dyer gets lauded for, which is recycling his life as a writer into literature. Same thing Sebald does in the only ones I've read, The Emigrants and Rings of Saturn. He's the most literary of this bunch but it goes all the way down to psychogeography recycled as travel writing/local history (some of which is interesting and has the scale of a "great" novel) and on to misery memoirs and all that waterstone's stuff.
i mean fair enough, if you don't think they are novels, but they are also not really straight non-fic or autobio, i would say. and to me, these are the sorts of things that are interesting long form reading pieces. but yeah, if you don't think they can be counted as novels, i understand your position.
i mean, i've not read any joyce and i gave up with infinite jest. hardly read owt classic novel tbh. i've only read 'notes from underground' by fyodor, nowt else. not read any dickens.
i mean, i've not read any joyce and i gave up with infinite jest. hardly read owt classic novel tbh. i've only read 'notes from underground' by fyodor, nowt else. not read any dickens.
Corpsey
bandz ahoy
Bound to be slapped down for this bold and ignorant assertion but -
Modernism introduced this imperative to 'experiment', didn't it? (Not discounting precursors to modernism like 'Tristram Shandy' and 'Don Quixote' etc.)
It seems like throughout most of the 19th century there was no particular desire to experiment with the form. I'm sure there were experiments with narrative (use of different perspectives, use of inserted letters and accounts, etc.), but the language wasn't what was placed front and centre. They existed to entertain, educate, uplift and edify.
Perhaps one of the strongest psychological effects of the Internet on our minds is that we now expect constant novelty, otherwise time is seen to be standing still. And this was presumably an effect that technology was creating in people's minds around the close of the 19th century and into the 20th.
A zone of fruitless experimentation.
Modernism introduced this imperative to 'experiment', didn't it? (Not discounting precursors to modernism like 'Tristram Shandy' and 'Don Quixote' etc.)
It seems like throughout most of the 19th century there was no particular desire to experiment with the form. I'm sure there were experiments with narrative (use of different perspectives, use of inserted letters and accounts, etc.), but the language wasn't what was placed front and centre. They existed to entertain, educate, uplift and edify.
Perhaps one of the strongest psychological effects of the Internet on our minds is that we now expect constant novelty, otherwise time is seen to be standing still. And this was presumably an effect that technology was creating in people's minds around the close of the 19th century and into the 20th.
A zone of fruitless experimentation.
Corpsey
bandz ahoy
Will Self seems to be unpopular on here (I get it), but this article is full of relevant points to agree or disagree with:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/may/02/will-self-novel-dead-literary-fiction
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/may/02/will-self-novel-dead-literary-fiction