How fiction worked?

Back to the question of the New Sincerity.


The concept isn't entirely new to me, personally. Around the time these articles claim this movement was getting traction, a literary friend of mine and I (the director of a literary group and publicist for a poetry and jazz festival) were hot on the trail of the David Foster Wallace/James Wood debate--if you don't know what that is, it's the "Ultimate Post-modern versus Classical Realism dialectic" and all the philosophies therein. Why should this matter in the humanities, in politics, and in life? 

I'm thrilled to see one article on this debate mention the elegant, earthy, honest works of Jumpha Lahiri (of The Namesake), as she was a frequent touch point, aesthetically and philosophically, in my defenses tool kit (whoever wrote this article back then was thinking along the same lines as I was). 

That said, back then, I was fortunate to meet James Wood (I suppose in the "realist camp" and staff writer and literary critic at The New Yorker). I also heard him speak at Tufts U. Later, we met again when he came to our bookstore. I had questions, he had lots of ideas.

In these debates, I was often negated by being placed (with much protest) into the realist camp--a snarky place to be tossed if you are young and in the modern art world, I guess. I would counter by saying if by realism they meant magic realism ala the rich, lucious Marquez; however, I often craved the occasional genuine confession, a kindness, a feeling, and emotion in our art like a person on a dry desert seeks an oasis--sentiments I found often lacking.

Usually if one is traipsing around the metaphorical literary jungles, cities, and sometimes deserts; one is seeking adventure--as anyone who reads to experience new things does (think the protagonist in Norman Rush's Mating). It wasn't the mechanics of the adventure (or ideas or debates) that bothered me; whether the story was Pomo or Realist or any other technical style; it was, I realized later, rather attitudinal proclivities that grew wearisome--attitudes that came from a certain direction and most often.

To rest from time to time in a sincere, calm, nurturing place and gather one's wits; is a fairly benign request.

The problem is when irony sops up the hopes of an oasis and replaces it with bitter, aggressive, wry laughter. To seek such repose in modern academe (something nurturing, perhaps) was a sign of idealistic naivete. It knocked hard on those who said: "Hey, these issues that we write about, that we find our inspiration from--whether they be the big ones such as despair and existentialism; or the more social ones like economics, prison, race, social mores, betrayal--these ideas move us because we see the havoc and pain they can cause on others. Is not the telling of these stories (simply because one wants to be famous, or considered deep and literary) while using post-modern window dressing with no hope of repair fatalistic? *eye roll* "Doesn't sincerity move toward repair?" *snicker* "When should our stories be soft." *yawn* I guess this question somehow made me an old fashioned Classical Realist? 

"Make it new," to quote Pound, in literary circles meant something; yet, the philosophy of what it was was slightly out of reach. The meaning was adrift but the window dressing was specific.  

I think this moves into the theory of the "safe space" as presented in modern academe. With all this ironic, mocking laughter of the innocent, gentle, or sincere, why shouldn't a person want an oasis from which they can catch their breath, eat, sleep under the stars, process their feelings and experiences (you know, a sincere recounting and regathering) before they go back out into the tough, loud, bossy world that provides as much emotional and intellectual excitement as it does jarring and horrifying experiences?

If irony and biting wit are defense mechanisms against the harshness of modern life, what exactly is it that one is defending? Peel back the tough, abrasive layers and I guarantee the softer, more tender answers are waiting there.