The Ineluctable Modality of the Googlable
James Wood rails against the “hysterical realism” of contemporary fiction—a mode, a genre, a type characterized by “a fear of silence.” It is characterized by a desperate search for vitality, marked by ostentatious erudition and an affection (an affectation) for absurdity and suggestive coincidence. He uses as an example of this latter a pair of twins, one in England and one in Bangladesh who break their noses at the same time.
Of course, there is something strained about this. A forced parallel, a jarring coincidence that is neither necessary nor beautiful—-screeching feedback instead of gentle resonance, all subtlety stripped away by the force of intention. Writerly intention like a powerful caustic, eating away at nuance or even narrative until all that’s left are the bones of the “point,” the totalizing summation, the “message” of this new novelistic didacticism. He writes about the outrageous plots and frenetic activity of these novels. He's not wrong. I love Wood’s essays: direct, sometimes almost scornful but radiating intelligence and seeming, somehow, if it is not too old fashioned to say so, seeming humane. But at the moment, I can’t think of anything further from the mark than Wood’s critique of “hysterical realism.”
For I have read the erotica of Scooter Libby.
We live in a (an?) hysterical reality. We live in a reality where Arnold Schwarzenegger is the governor of California—it doesn’t get much more hysterical than that. But it’s not just these absurdities that make our lives hysterical. Crazy coincidences? We are so surrounded by media, by information that we see coincidence everywhere. If we have access to the lives of several billion people, we are bound to find events and situations that are coincident. That we draw patterns from them is only natural. I just imdb-ed my birthday. I share it with Jon Stewart, Anna Nicole Smith, and Claude Levi-Strauss.
This is, of course, entirely irrelevant.
That doesn’t stop me from interpreting the data as somehow meaning something. And who would have thought that Levi-Strauss would show up on imdb? Hysterical.
That the novel is afraid of silence is unsurprising. Look around. We are all afraid of silence. Walkmans (Walkmen?). Cell phones. iPods. We want to be connected. Be careful what you wish for, Mr. Forster. I hate getting email, but I freak out if my inbox is empty. When I’m not worrying about all the television I do watch, I worry about all the television that I don’t watch. All the stories that go unseen, the narratives that travel in waves or tubes to make their way into his living room that go unactualized because I didn’t turn the set on. They are betrayed, silenced.
The hysterical novel’s fear of silence, the frenetic search for vitality at all costs is just a last ditch cultural effort to avoid looking into the abyss. To avoid the fate of Wile E. Coyote who can keep running as long as he keeps running. As long as he doesn’t look down.
Take Iran-Contra. Talk about your hysterical reality—pure spectacle from a consumer standpoint. History used to happen first as tragedy, then as farce. With Iran-Contra it happened first and finally as rerun. Astrophysicists and astrologers and coyboys. A hotsy-totsy secretary smuggling top secret and illegal documents out of the White House in the back of her skirt like some kind of post-modern textual bustle. A confessed felon who sold arms to an enemy of the state turned into a hero. A president who can’t remember if he knew that he sold arms to an enemy of the state. Soap opera fans who write the networks angry letters because the televised testimony preempts General Hospital (because what happens to Frisco and Felicia if no one is watching them?).
The rest of us watching the hearing as if they were a soap opera. The star witness, the head of a secret agency, dying of a brain tumor the first day of the hearings after giving a deathbed statement. The defense attorney assuring the Senate that he was not a potted plant. Actually telling the Senate that he was not a potted plant. Hysterical.
' "scooter libby" erotica' gets 50,900 hits on google. Hysterical.
Of course, there is something strained about this. A forced parallel, a jarring coincidence that is neither necessary nor beautiful—-screeching feedback instead of gentle resonance, all subtlety stripped away by the force of intention. Writerly intention like a powerful caustic, eating away at nuance or even narrative until all that’s left are the bones of the “point,” the totalizing summation, the “message” of this new novelistic didacticism. He writes about the outrageous plots and frenetic activity of these novels. He's not wrong. I love Wood’s essays: direct, sometimes almost scornful but radiating intelligence and seeming, somehow, if it is not too old fashioned to say so, seeming humane. But at the moment, I can’t think of anything further from the mark than Wood’s critique of “hysterical realism.”
For I have read the erotica of Scooter Libby.
We live in a (an?) hysterical reality. We live in a reality where Arnold Schwarzenegger is the governor of California—it doesn’t get much more hysterical than that. But it’s not just these absurdities that make our lives hysterical. Crazy coincidences? We are so surrounded by media, by information that we see coincidence everywhere. If we have access to the lives of several billion people, we are bound to find events and situations that are coincident. That we draw patterns from them is only natural. I just imdb-ed my birthday. I share it with Jon Stewart, Anna Nicole Smith, and Claude Levi-Strauss.
This is, of course, entirely irrelevant.
That doesn’t stop me from interpreting the data as somehow meaning something. And who would have thought that Levi-Strauss would show up on imdb? Hysterical.
That the novel is afraid of silence is unsurprising. Look around. We are all afraid of silence. Walkmans (Walkmen?). Cell phones. iPods. We want to be connected. Be careful what you wish for, Mr. Forster. I hate getting email, but I freak out if my inbox is empty. When I’m not worrying about all the television I do watch, I worry about all the television that I don’t watch. All the stories that go unseen, the narratives that travel in waves or tubes to make their way into his living room that go unactualized because I didn’t turn the set on. They are betrayed, silenced.
The hysterical novel’s fear of silence, the frenetic search for vitality at all costs is just a last ditch cultural effort to avoid looking into the abyss. To avoid the fate of Wile E. Coyote who can keep running as long as he keeps running. As long as he doesn’t look down.
Take Iran-Contra. Talk about your hysterical reality—pure spectacle from a consumer standpoint. History used to happen first as tragedy, then as farce. With Iran-Contra it happened first and finally as rerun. Astrophysicists and astrologers and coyboys. A hotsy-totsy secretary smuggling top secret and illegal documents out of the White House in the back of her skirt like some kind of post-modern textual bustle. A confessed felon who sold arms to an enemy of the state turned into a hero. A president who can’t remember if he knew that he sold arms to an enemy of the state. Soap opera fans who write the networks angry letters because the televised testimony preempts General Hospital (because what happens to Frisco and Felicia if no one is watching them?).
The rest of us watching the hearing as if they were a soap opera. The star witness, the head of a secret agency, dying of a brain tumor the first day of the hearings after giving a deathbed statement. The defense attorney assuring the Senate that he was not a potted plant. Actually telling the Senate that he was not a potted plant. Hysterical.
' "scooter libby" erotica' gets 50,900 hits on google. Hysterical.
posted by Feemus at
7:59 PM
1 Comments:
Ironically, in his later years Levi-Strauss was often heard claiming that he was, in fact, a potted plant.
Go figure.
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Anonymous, at 8:53 AM
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