Only a few people, maybe the writers, are interested in the Fiction vs Memoir question. The rest of you might want to skip this post. Don't worry, I just need to get this out of my system.
Last night I read David Foster Wallace's intro to The Best American Essays 2007 - in which he freely admits he "isn't sure what an essay even is." The first astonishing selection Werner felt very much like a short story. Was it, as he suggests, "narrative essay?" Whoa.
Anyway, he says:
"Writing-wise, fiction is scarier, but nonfiction is harder--because nonfiction's based in reality, and today's felt reality is overwhelmingly, circuit-blowingly huge and complex. Whereas fiction comes out of nothing. Actually, so wait: the truth is that both genres are scary; both feel like they're executed on tightropes, over the abysses--it's the abysses that are different. Fiction's abyss is silence, nada. Whereas nonfiction's abyss is Total Noise, the seething static of every particular thing and experience, and one's total freedom of infinite choice about what to choose to attend to and represent and connect, and how, and why, etc.
"...With a few big exceptions, I don't much care for abreactive or confessional memoirs. I'm not sure how to explain this. There is probably a sound, serious argument to be made about the popularity of confessional memoirs as a symptom of something especially sick and narcissistic/voyeuristic about U.S. culture right now. About certain deep connections between narcissism and voyeurism in the mediated psyche. But this isn't it. I think the real reason is that I just don't trust them. Memoirs/confessions I mean. Not so much their factual truth as their agenda. The sense I get from a lot of contemporary memoirs is that they have an unconscious and unacknowledged project, which is to make the memoirist seem as endlessly fascinating and important to the reader as they are to themselves. I find most of them sad in a way that I don't think their authors intend. There are, to be sure, some memoirish-type pieces in this year's BAE--although these tend either to be about hair-raisingly unusual circumstances or else to use the confessional stuff as part of a larger and (to me) much richer scheme or story."
Okay, so it kind of sounds like DFW votes for fiction, or nonabreactive nonfiction. The abyss...there is always the abyss, whether it's Nothing or Total Noise. I guess I am using the blog to grapple with the Noise, to quiet some of it. I hope it doesn't feel like my agenda is to make myself endlessly fascinating. But I don't really think that's it for me. I have enough places where I confess. It's really about telling a story and not being afraid of you, the reader. Is that abreactive? Don't know. Maybe.
The abyss of nothingness where fiction hovers...It is a scary place, and one to which I am irrationally drawn. And maybe there is abreaction in fiction, too.
DFW hung himself three years ago. Maybe he could have used a little more abreaction.
Last night I read David Foster Wallace's intro to The Best American Essays 2007 - in which he freely admits he "isn't sure what an essay even is." The first astonishing selection Werner felt very much like a short story. Was it, as he suggests, "narrative essay?" Whoa.
Anyway, he says:
"Writing-wise, fiction is scarier, but nonfiction is harder--because nonfiction's based in reality, and today's felt reality is overwhelmingly, circuit-blowingly huge and complex. Whereas fiction comes out of nothing. Actually, so wait: the truth is that both genres are scary; both feel like they're executed on tightropes, over the abysses--it's the abysses that are different. Fiction's abyss is silence, nada. Whereas nonfiction's abyss is Total Noise, the seething static of every particular thing and experience, and one's total freedom of infinite choice about what to choose to attend to and represent and connect, and how, and why, etc.
"...With a few big exceptions, I don't much care for abreactive or confessional memoirs. I'm not sure how to explain this. There is probably a sound, serious argument to be made about the popularity of confessional memoirs as a symptom of something especially sick and narcissistic/voyeuristic about U.S. culture right now. About certain deep connections between narcissism and voyeurism in the mediated psyche. But this isn't it. I think the real reason is that I just don't trust them. Memoirs/confessions I mean. Not so much their factual truth as their agenda. The sense I get from a lot of contemporary memoirs is that they have an unconscious and unacknowledged project, which is to make the memoirist seem as endlessly fascinating and important to the reader as they are to themselves. I find most of them sad in a way that I don't think their authors intend. There are, to be sure, some memoirish-type pieces in this year's BAE--although these tend either to be about hair-raisingly unusual circumstances or else to use the confessional stuff as part of a larger and (to me) much richer scheme or story."
Okay, so it kind of sounds like DFW votes for fiction, or nonabreactive nonfiction. The abyss...there is always the abyss, whether it's Nothing or Total Noise. I guess I am using the blog to grapple with the Noise, to quiet some of it. I hope it doesn't feel like my agenda is to make myself endlessly fascinating. But I don't really think that's it for me. I have enough places where I confess. It's really about telling a story and not being afraid of you, the reader. Is that abreactive? Don't know. Maybe.
The abyss of nothingness where fiction hovers...It is a scary place, and one to which I am irrationally drawn. And maybe there is abreaction in fiction, too.
DFW hung himself three years ago. Maybe he could have used a little more abreaction.
I think DFW could've used a lot more FUN and a lot less SNARK. But you never know what makes or breaks a person. Some days I feel full of love and joy and butterflies and other days, I wonder if life is worth the struggle.
ReplyDeleteBut it really is worth the struggle and for those of us who care and have a soul, a little navel-gazing can be interesting. As long as the Search for Answers doesn't overwhelm us...