The Reading Experience

All Blown Up

Jim Gauer's Novel Explosives (Zerogram Press, 2016) seems at first to be an almost paradigmatic example of what has been called a "meganovel" or a "maximalist" novel, exemplifying in its approach what Tom LeClair also called the "art of excess." It is a 700-page behemoth (its length made even more daunting by its generally very long paragraphs) that tells what initially presents itself as a quite complex story requiring multiple points of view, a fractured narrative--although the story takes place over the course of a week, we begin at the end of the week, go back to the beginning, and are subsequently presented alternating episodes from beginning, middle, and end--and a style that is uninhibited, to say the least, in both its syntactical overabundance and its often arcane vocabulary. Quite clearly as well, it intends to take on the heftiest and most far-reaching of themes: the nature of human identity, insatiable greed, the corruption of social and cultural norms of decency.

Yet finally the novel seems not so much a complex response to what has become a complex reality, but a sustained embellishment of a relatively simple--if at times disturbing--story of the intersection of financial chicanery and the drug trade and a relentless enhancement of the details and circumstances of that story with endlessly proliferating information, often deliberately esoteric. The outrageousness of this strategy, whereby, for example a few minutes of a character's time is extended for pages while we are told about the physics underlying the situation or the technological developments contributing to the plot turn underway, can be rather entertaining in itself, but, while Pynchon and DeLillo preceded Gauer in creating information-saturated narratives, their novels seemed to be attempting to reveal how perceptible reality was increasingly conditioned by the sometimes imperceptible forces (political, technological, historical) flowing together in the formation of modernity. Novel Explosives seems content simply to add mathematical and scientific explanations to its ongoing narrative actions, slowing those actions down at the same time they act as a kind of reinforcement of the novel's realism rather than an interrogation of it.

And, indeed, ultimately this is an intensely realistic novel, deeply immersing us in the milieu of each of its settings: a town in Mexico where the novel begins with a man who has forgotten who he is (but not what he knows) and how he came to be in the town; the world of megacapitalism inhabited by an unnamed "venture capitalist" (later he is referred to as "Douchebag" by those who are pursing him), who turns out to be the amnesiac to whom we are first introduced; and the world (underworld, perhaps more accurately) in which move a pair of criminal enforcers employed by an American drug overlord, whose activities bring together predatory capitalism and the drug trade, the latter obviously being portrayed as an extreme but logical extension of the former. One of the enforcers, Raymond, arguably becomes the novel's protagonist when he begins to rebel against the orders given to him by his employer, exhibiting a moral conscience the other characters lack. We are able to appreciate Raymond's change of heart, however, mostly because we have been so relentlessly exposed to the pervasive moral rot polluting the environment in which he finds himself, which by extension reflects the corruption of the larger socioeconomic system that makes it possible.

Novel Explosives comes closer to being a species of satire than the kind of postmodern pastiche we might associated with Pynchon or DeLillo. Certainly the novel makes its share of metafictional gestures—starting with its title, which refers literally to a kind of advanced explosive but which also clearly enough alludes to the novel we are reading, with its attempt to “explode” the narrative and stylistic expectations some readers might bring to it--and while this contributes to its predominantly comic tone, in effect adding its own representational objectives to the array of potential satirical targets, it doesn't finally negate those objectives. Surely few people could read Novel Explosives without concluding that the author intends it to draw attention to the corruption and criminality it highlights so that we can be aware, at least, of the scope of the problem we face if we hope to combat it. Indeed, it might be said that the novel goes beyond satire to become more straightforwardly a critique of capitalism in its 21st century variety, a critique given more immediate force through its realization in the form of a postmodern novel.

But then this appropriation of the postmodern novel of excess for its rhetorical convenience--adding it as a kind of elaborate supplement to an otherwise polemical narrative--makes it something less (or other) than an postmodern novel, since Pynchon and DeLillo are not satirists, except to the extent that satire might be a indirect and secondary effect of their more radically incongruous and unsettling portrayals of an enigmatic and often impenetrable reality. Thus it would be both unfair and ultimately inaccurate to say that Novel Explosives is derivative of the work of these earlier writers. While to a degree a novel like this would not be possible without the prior example of Pynchon and De Lillo (as well as Gaddis and McElroy), we could say that those writers have enabled Gauer in his endeavor to write a complex, large-scale novel whose complexity is mostly a surface complexity that supports the novel's ultimate representational ambition: to amplify the characters and their circumstances as much as possible, but in order to enhance the verisimilitude of the depictions. Postmodern fiction questions the capacity of language to fully achieve verisimilitude; Novel Explosives does not manifest such skepticism, even if it must extend the resources of language almost to the bursting point to achieve its goal.

Still, it is in its invocation of language that this novel is most impressive. If its style could be called excessive, it is excessive in the most audacious and frequently entertaining way. If the sentences and paragraphs are elongated and labyrinthine, it is not because of the author's lack of control but because he maintains such measured control that they can be trusted to do their work. The Venture Capitalist celebrates his success in that vocation:

We should, at this point, probably take our seats; the salads have arrived, and the wine is being poured, and with our market cap now hovering above $10 billion, and plenty of oxygen trapped in the ever-expanding market bubble, death by live burial would seem to be out of order. We're starting with an ethereal Corton-Charlemagne, a $500 white from the Burgundy region, which is about as far from Bahr al Gazal as you can possibly get, a wine that in my understated Elicit Networks tasting notes is "all but inevitable" and "brilliantly executed" and "seemingly so accidental but so richly deserved," though to be perfectly honest, let's not kid ourselves, no one in Silicon Valley, much less North Dallas, really gives a shit about ethereal Burgundies, since they're more about earthy poetry, and epiphanic moments, than power and elegance, measured in fruit-pounds of torque, and Parker, rather famously, no longer bothers to even taste them.

The tone of this passage, a kind of mock sincerity, typifies the style of the novel as a whole, but especially the sections narrated by the Venture Capitalist. Although ultimately the style flags in the last third of the novel, this is as at least as much because the narrative itself has been stretched beyond its capacity to sustain interest in its resolution, not because the prose itself wears out its welcome.

Novel Explosives is certainly by far more interesting than most of what gets published by prominent publishers, even prominent independent publishers, as "literary fiction." However, the novel too nearly seems to treat the "postmodern novel" as itself a genre to be adopted for me to fully embrace it. Most readers would find it a less intimidating work than its size might suggest, but in a way that is also the source of my disappointment with it.

From the TRE Archives: The Beloved Community

"Literary citizenship" is a concept that many writers apparently take quite seriously, as it has evolved from a metaphorical notion that writers should advocate on behalf of literature generally to a quasi-literal requirement that they be good citizens in the "literary community" at large, whose well-being they are expected to consider.. According to Lori A. May in her book The Write Crowd: Literary Citizenship and the Writing Life (2015),

Literary citizenship takes the power of the individual and puts it to use in fostering, sustaining, and engaging with the literary community for the benefit of others. The concept is to pay kindness and skill forward, to offer something to the community so that others may learn, engage, and grow from combined efforts. And the possibilities for how that is accomplished are wide and varied, both in effort and in outcome. At the heart of literary citizenship, though, is one constant: contributing something to the literary world outside of one's own immediate needs.

The biggest motivating factor in the rise of literary citizenship as an ideal to which writers should aspire is likely to be found in that "constant" May identifies in the final sentence. "One's own immediate needs" in the literary world, are of course, to be published, to find readers, if lucky to make a career of writing. At a time when it has become harder to do all of those things (and when there even more writers trying to do them), "literary citizenship" and the "community" work together as appealing alternatives to the publish-or-perish ethos that dominated not just academic publishing but in effect all of publishing and the old "literary world" associated with it. While "contributing something" to the community free of self-interest is ostensibly the goal of literary citizenship, surely the ultimate benefit of such a contribution redounds to the contributor in some way (tangible or intangible), or it simply wouldn't be worth making. One's "immediate needs" aren't necessarily identical with one's long-term hopes.

Considered most generously, the creation of community through literary citizenship is a way of preserving a space for literature that isn't dependent on (although ultimately by no means completely separate from) a hyperactive capitalist economy that has so distorted social and commercial values as to otherwise leave little room for such a relatively nonprofitable enterprise as literary writing, except at the most crass and mercantile levels of the "book business." From this perspective, cultivating the literary garden as a whole is the only way to ensure that the garden survives to provide a spot for one's own harvest.

But while such an effort to affirm literary value for its own sake is both commendable and necessary, how many would-be literary citizens really are as dedicated to Literature in the abstract as the rhetoric of literary citizenship would have them be? Are there many who would be willing to cultivate the garden even if it wasn't going to be open to their own work, after all? Perhaps I am overly cynical in suspecting that the ranks of good literary citizens would thin out appreciably under those circumstances, that Literature as a sovereign territory worth defending would be a less compelling cause if one's loyalty to it were so purely conceptual. But even if what might be gained through exemplary literary citizenship is not careerist in the narrowly commercial sense, the urge for recognition and status can't help but dilute the purity of motive that supposedly underlies the practice of literary citizenship.

That in itself does not invalidate the call for literary citizenship. Human motives can never be pure, and none of the strategies for manifesting one's citizenship described by May--attending readings, starting a journal, writing reviews, joining literary organizations, etc.--are in themselves at all objectionable (although it is certainly possible to question the reliance on the Reading as the most visible representation of the "literary world"). There is a point, however, beyond which the breadth of responsibilities May suggests the writer might shoulder actually seems to appease the very market forces that literary citizenship is supposed to counteract. Corporate publishers have already contracted out most marketing and advertising to writers themselves, who must relentlessly promote their own work through book touring and maintaining a social media "presence." Should writers aid and abet this process by voluntarily enabling the system in the name of literary citizenship? As Becky Tuch has written on this subject, "Today’s writers are expected to do more marketing work than ever before while not expecting much in the way of compensation or benefits. It’s what we are being 'trained' to do."'

If literary citizenship "takes the power of the individual and puts it to use" on behalf of all writers, what about the much greater power of publishers and publicists, who are surely in a much better position to be "fostering, sustaining, and engaging with the literary community"? Is the push for literary citizenship another way of acknowledging that the era of the publisher has come to an end? Is the logical extension of literary citizenship a literary world dominated by self-publishing as well as self-promotion, which becomes the only way to do business in books? Although, to again assume the sincerity of those advocating for a writing community built around literary citizenship, presumably "business" would not be the center of activity: payment comes in "kindness and skill," receipt of which cumulatively allows everyone to "learn, engage, and grow."

 But would real growth actually occur if all that was "paid forward" was "kindness"? Would the "skill" also offered in payment include a critical skill, an ability to honestly assess what a writer has produced, even when that assessment might be negative? Is literary citizenship specifically about ensuring a certain kind of "literary life," as May's subtitle suggests, or should it also encourage a serious engagement with literary works that in taking them seriously accepts that some literary efforts are more successful than others? In the literary world that emerges from the congruence of idealism and the obsolescence of the old publishing model, will there be a role for literary critics, who sometimes are accused of something less than kindness, but from whom much can often be learned? It is hard to imagine that a "literary" culture (or "community") with any credibility and integrity could be sustained if frank but impartial criticism was unwelcome.

It is not exactly the case that readers seem to be unwelcome in the literary community as described in The Write Crowd, but as the title suggests, literary citizenship is practiced primarily by writers, although finding ways of "reaching out" to readers is certainly encouraged. Indeed, in addition to the decline of publisher support, an underlying assumption of  both May's book and the appeal to citizenship and community more generally is that there aren't enough readers to go around and thus writers need to support each other, offering themselves as especially dutiful readers who will not just content themselves with the reading experience but will supplement it through recommendations on social media, reviews, and attendance at author events. Writers act as readers on steroids, giving the literary community a semblance of vitality, even when most writers struggle to find readers for whom reading is not so freighted with external obligation.

What about the apostate, the writer who resists the call to literary citizenship, either through obstinacy or through a sincere belief that the writer's job is to write, not to network? Although May frequently insists that the writer's first responsibility is indeed to his/her own writing, those who might deny the value of literary citizenship when it is made into a de facto requirement of living a "writing life" would surely provoke resentment for not carrying his/her weight in propping up the remaining structures that make a literary life still marginally possible. More importantly, what about the true literary apostate, who violates community norms, who produces work even the best literary citizens might have trouble celebrating, or even understanding? What if the demand for literary citizenship had been made of Samuel Beckett or William S. Burroughs (or even a more conventional curmudgeonly type such as, say, Philip Larkin)?

The work of Beckett and Burroughs was surely abrasive (to some, incomprehensible) enough to its original audience that, absent some expression of solidarity with their fellow writers by each of them, it was almost foreordained to at first be rejected or ignored (or both) by the literary community of the time, however that would have been defined. Perhaps we feel that now the more self-identified literary community is inclusive enough that iconoclastic writers such as these would be acknowledged. Still, it seems to me that the inevitable tendency of a "literary community" expecting its members to be "good literary citizens" is an at least implicit regulation of what counts as worth supporting, what can be recognized as "literature" in the first place. Bad literary citizens are going to continue to disregard the exhortations to blend harmoniously into the growing crowd of writers, but will also manage to write what turns out to be great works of literature, nevertheless.

From the TRE Archives: On "Craft" in Fiction

If we take The Writer's Notebook: Craft Essays from Tin House (Tin House Books) to be a representative gathering of critical wisdom from current American writers, what does it ultimately tell us about these writers' understanding of the purpose of fiction, their widely-shared assumptions?

Unfortunately, in my view it tells us that their understanding of fiction's purposes is very limited indeed, their assumptions about its possibilities, its potential to surprise and to creatively challenge established conventions, very narrow and constricted. Almost none of the essays included in the volume even suggest that fiction ought to be challenging in this way, and some even explicitly express impatience with adventurous, unconventional fiction. Most of the essays--all of them originally delivered at Tin House's Summer Writers Workshop--discuss works of fiction as if they were products to be assembled from blueprints exploiting familiar devices, the writing of fiction as adherence to certain fundamental truths universally acknowledged.

Perhaps this is to be expected in a book presenting "craft essays." A "writers workshop" is centrally focused on "craft" as an element of fiction writing that can be taught (or at least talked about), and as working writers those participating in the workshop presumably do have advice to dispense at the level of craft. Perhaps it is too much to expect that writers themselves would feel comfortable emphasizing "art " over craft, since arguably the best most of them can do is hope that careful attention to craft will ultimately give rise to art. Distinguishing what is successfully artistic, which is a function of the experience of reading fiction, from the mere application of craft is the critic's job, not the writer's.

Perhaps. But in publishing a book like The Writer's Notebook, Tin House is putting its imprimatur on the "craft" approach, and one might presume that those writers who heed the kind of advice dispensed in the book might ultimately be producing the kind of work that could find its way into print in this journal. That this work would be safe, formally "sound" and stylistically "fine," would only conform to the mission of journals like Tin House, which, as far as I can tell, is to a) reinforce the existing structure of academic writing programs and workshops, providing their graduates with a place to publish, and b) associate themselves as much as possible with "quality" writing, which can't be just anything and everything and thus needs to be narrowed down to its embodiment in "craft," the boundaries of which are laid down in The Writer's Notebook.

I wouldn't go so far as to say that Tin House or other high-profile literary magazines are actively hostile to adventurous or experimental fiction (sometimes an unconventional story or two can be squeezed into the mix), but the discussions of the nature of fiction and the writing of fiction in The Writer's Notebook assume a form that is relatively fixed, comprising such staple elements as "dialogue," "scene," and "character motivation," a practice that is subject to improvement through increased skill with these tools. Such a conception of fiction as a handy collection of pre-approved devices doesn't much encourage departures from standard practice or questioning of the place of these devices in composing works of fiction. (Why, for example, is "dialogue" to be expected in stories or novels? Shouldn't this be something that might be useful in some circumstances, when contributing to an overall aesthetic effect, rather than a convention all fiction must "get to" at some point?) It shouldn't be surprising that most issues of Tin House don't feature short stories that seem to be the result of such questioning of the short story as a stable, identifiable thing reproducible through the application of "craft."

Thus Tom Grimes informs us that "our stories are amorphous until we discover how time controls them. Every great story contains a 'clock,' an intrinsic timekeeper." "Determine whether or not your story has a 'clock,'" he concludes. "It can be a day, a week, a month, a season, etcetera, but the story has to have it." If a story "has to have" a clock, then should one discover one's story doesn't really seem to depend much on timekeeping, on the sort of narrative "development" the passage of time provides, then apparently one doesn't really have a story at all. This seems a reductively literal insistence on "story" as the sine qua non of short fiction, when of course much modern/postmodern fiction has explicitly worked to undermine "story" as the essence of fiction. Not many of Donald Barthelme's stories, for example would be able to pass the "clock" test administered by Grimes. They're much too "amorphous."

Anna Keesey tells us that a "scene" is "fiction's fundamental unit." "Part of what makes fiction writing so difficult," she claims, is that "the writer must decide what's going to happen, to whom, and why, but is simultaneously loaded up with another set of decisions: who'll be telling the story, in what order, with what level of detail and at what speed of revelation." Here again is a recipe for conventionality in fiction, by which "story," ("what's going to happen") takes precedence and all of the other "decisions"--themselves highly conventional and formulaic--are made as ornamental on the primary illusion of narrative immediacy. "We see the action occur; we feel the time pass," as Keesey puts it later in the essay. Keesey acknowledges that writers like Woolf and Proust slow down the unfolding of scene--which Keesey calls "infolding"--but she can't see this as an implicit repudiation of "scene" except in its most perfunctory role as a framing device. She chooses instead to regard it as just an indication that scene "is superbly elastic." Why not just say that in some fiction "scene" is as irrelevant as "clock time"?

Even when otherwise acknowledging the limitations of one or another conventional approach, as in Keesey's essay or Aimee Bender's essay on "character motivation," the writers can't seem to give up on the assumptions giving rise to the approach. Bender cautions against making "motivation" explicitly clear. Instead, she writes, it's acceptable "not really to know what's going on with your characters and to let the writing be a process of discovering that." This sort of "complexity" is truer to human psychology, after all. But what if "motivation" never becomes clear, or is not even necessary? What if "psychology" itself is irrelevant to a particular's writer's concerns? One gets the sense that this would not be acceptable, since it jettisons one of the underlying assumptions of mainstream literary fiction--it's all about "understanding" character--that supports all of the accompanying assumptions about "craft."

The only two essays in The Writer's Notebook that really do depart from conventional thinking, the only two essays that finally are about the art of fiction, are Lucy Corin's "Material" and D.A. Powell's "(Mis)Adventures in Poetry." Corin specifically abjures the impulse to "find the form to 'suit' your content, your material." Instead, she describes her own practice of regarding words as her "material," from which come other words that finally cohere into form. Her advice to writers: "you should look at the material you produce to find your material." This can include the visual arrangement of the words on the page, and Corin spends much of her essay comparing different kinds of arrangements of "material." The essay undermines much of the other "advice" to be found in The Writer's Notebook and is really the only essay in this book that makes it worth having. Powell posits that in poetry "often it's the inexact, the awful, the mistaken linguistic turn that manages to say the right thing because it unmoors us from our perceived relationship to the subject about which we're trying to write." "The subjects of poetry are always the same," he concludes, "so lend your ear to the language instead." "Dare to say the unsayable in a new way." If only as many fiction writers could find a way to heed this advice as, in my opinion, many poets already do.

Unfortunately, readers of The Writer's Notebook won't get exposed to much discussion of language as the fundamental "unit" of fiction. They'll mostly discover essays that invite the writer to say the same old things, the eminently sayable, in the same old ways, but to think of this as "craft."