Operation Puppetmaster

Sometimes when I skim the cursor of my Macbook over the application icons at the bottom of the screen, I think I see the words "Philip Roth." It really says "Photo Booth," but for a second I get a thrill that someone has invented a Philip Roth app, or maybe he sent me a new kind of e-mail! My dream author made waves a while back with his assertion that the novel will die within 25 years, or at best reach a level of cultishness similar to that of Latin poetry. (I assume he means poetry in Latin, not poetry by modern Hispanic writers, but what do I know?) While there may be cause for concern about the future of the serious, literary novel, I think the future of the independent bookstore and traditional publishing is in more jeopardy than the form itself.  What with e-readers and vooks, it is sadly possible that fewer and fewer people will take the time to read novels the old-fashioned way. But I can't help but be somewhat more optimistic than Roth, if indeed he's being serious. He could just be trying to be provocative, or, as has been suggested, just can't imagine the novel surviving very long after he is dead.

His outlook could also be influenced by his stringent requirements for the correct way of reading novels. Apparently, according to Roth, if you take longer than two weeks to read a novel, "you aren't really reading it." I would love to be able to read any novel I like in less than two weeks. However, we aren't all living alone in cabins in the northern hills, with hours to do nothing but read or write in seclusion. Heck, it took me two weeks to read one-sixeenth of 2666. OK, that's not the greatest example, because (a) 2666 is 893 pages long, and (b) since it is so huge, it stays on my bedside table, not traveling on the subway or anywhere, so I only read it for the scant few minutes after I get in bed and before I fall into a deep, well-deserved sleep. Also, he is most certainly talking about serious fiction: I daresay Stephanie Meyer and Charlaine Harris have little complaint with their readership numbers. So it's a question not only of whether how people read novels lives up to his standards, but also would a particular novel itself meet his standard of what a novel should be.

But of course, Roth's job is not to encourage anybody to do anything, and I respect his attitude of not caring what anyone thinks about what he says. His job is to write. More recently, he said in an interview that he no longer reads fiction. That statement has launched a great deal of comment in the world of blogs and elsewhere, as well as speculation as to what exactly he meant when he answered "I wised up" when asked why. Some say it's a terrible thing (if true); others praise him for concentrating on his own writing. Still others admit they hardly read fiction any more, implying they are Roth-like in their own genius.

The answer is less interesting than why Roth would say something so attention-grabbing in the first place. He doesn't give many interviews, but when he does, he certainly seems to know how to get some play. Compare this interview to the earlier one I mention above, and it seems obvious that for every interview he makes it a goal to come up with one or two sensational proclamations that are sure to get him more publicity than if he just said the same thing over and over. He retains an attitude of not caring what anyone thinks about what he says by making such statements, but it seems to me underneath it all he is just toying with us, masterfully. First there's the implicit criticism of all us philistines for not reading enough, or taking too long to read novels, so that we are personally responsible for the imminent death of the form; then there's the admission that he no longer reads novels himself because he "wised up"! How could he not be messing with us? My guess is he does still read novels when he feels like it--but if you're Philip Roth, you can be exempt from all the usual novel-reading requirements. He probably does not really care when or if the novel is going to die, as long as he can keep writing. It's just fun to throw out a proclamation and see everybody run to their keyboards to try to opine about it. No matter; I'm  still waiting for that magical e-mail to come through. That should make everything perfectly clear.

Fictional Feast

I've been hearing about this book Reality Hunger by David Shields, and then I came across this interview with the author. I haven't read the book, but that never stopped anyone from having an opinion (as we shall soon see very well). The author sounds to me like an overexcited undergraduate taking his first literary criticism course, and the idea of the book strikes me as naive. Since when is a lyric essay or a memoir more true than a novel? In the interview he spends a lot of time putting down a novel by Myla Goldberg for having a story structure with plot points. (He admits he has not read the book, and only knows what he has gleaned from the catalog description.) He criticizes this novel, which he does not name, along with others that actually have a plot, for being outmoded, "antediluvian." Leaving beside the point that Shields has not even read the book (the Second Pass dealt neatly with that), I've read Bee Season, and I recall that it was hardly a formulaic story. And anyway, egads, a novel with plot points! What next, music with melody? Apparently Shields simply dislikes fiction. Therefore, to express his dislike for fiction and disdain for the novel—and to feed his hunger for reality?—he has written a book consisting of quotations from many other authors. At first he did not plan to credit the other writers, but finally did so when his publisher advised him to do so.

I'm finally nearing the end of 2666 by Robert Bolano; it is a digressive, infuriating, simultaneously raw and refined feast to feed my hunger for stories. Nestled deeply within this novel so rich in story, so sprawling in reach, a novel as reality-laden as any I have ever read, near the end (i.e., 152 pages from the end), I came across this passage: "Semblance was an occupying force of reality . . . . It lived in people's souls and their actions, in willpower and in pain, in the way memories and priorities were ordered." So everything is semblance--Shields would seem to agree, since he argues (or rather Geoffrey O'Brien does in writing the introduction to Reality Hunger), "Since to live is to make fiction, what need to disguise the world as another, alternate one?" Stephen Emms writes that Shields's "arguments fall apart upon further contemplation." It is pointless to argue that there is no need to make up stories, since it is done every day by hundreds of thousands of people, and has been for thousands of years in one form or another. It must fulfill some human hunger.

As I continued to ponder these ideas, I came across the following passage 45 pages later in 2666, in a character’s monologue on the difference between a masterpiece of literature and a minor work: A minor work is the:

shell of literature. A semblance . . . . The person who really writes the minor work is a secret writer who accepts only the dictates of a masterpiece. 

Our good craftsman writes. He's absorbed in what takes shape well or badly on the page. His wife, though he doesn't know it, is watching him. It really is he who's writing. But if his wife had X-ray vision she would see that instead of being present at an exercise of literary creation, she's witnessing a session of hypnosis. There's nothing inside the man who sits there writing. Nothing of himself, I mean. How much better off the poor man would be if he devoted himself to reading.

And this further on:

Plagiarism, you say? Yes, plagiarism, in the sense that all minor works, all works from the pen of a minor writer, can be nothing but plagiarism of some masterpiece. The small difference is that here we're talking about sanctioned plagiarism.  Plagiarism as camouflage as some wood and canvas scenery as a charade that leads us, likely as not, into the void. 

Interestingly, though, somehow the minor works are necessary; they are like a forest:

There must be many books, many lovely pines, to shield from hungry eyes the book that really matters, the wretched cave of our misfortune, the magic flower of winter!

Bolano also compares minor works to cannon fodder, something that must exist in order to be sacrificed,  to protect somehow the true masterpieces of literature. Why do masterpieces need to be protected? Would the "hungry eyes" devour them too completely if they were not shielded or hidden by the minor works? Alas, I have not been able to glean an answer to that question from 2666. Perhaps someone else will. But in any case, according to Bolano's system, I am glad that David Shields wrote Reality Hunger.