The Future of Literature

I was going to open this post with a quote from someone famous saying that the novel is dead, and then give the date of that quote. It was going to be funny, because they said it a long time ago. But I can't find it.

Before I start, I wanted to address that I completely forgot a very important novel a few posts back, when talking about product placement in fiction. Delillo's White Noise, is a constant stream of products. He invents products to place. It drives the reader mad. But that's the whole point of the book.

A corollary to all rules in literature is that they can be broken if breaking them is the point of the work.

I wrote a paper or two on White Noise. I think I mentioned here before that reading it was epiphanic for me. It shoved my nose in consumer culture until I was choking on it, and I came very close to stepping back and going it alone, quitting my job, living in a shack, you know the drill. Because it made the life most of us live look so trivial. Which it is.


What I wanted to show you was this. If I've got the story straight, Zachary German is or was a 19 year old when he wrote the linked stuff. It's being published by FSG--if you're unfamiliar, they're big. And he has a blog titled "Every Time a Police Officer Gets Shot I Throw a Party." Which makes me want to beat the piss out of him.

Eat, which is how I'll abbreviate it, reads like Tao Lin and Noah Cicero, both of whom I've mentioned before. I don't know if this is the new shit, I don't know if one person started it and the others followed suit or if they pulled some morphic field crap and it hit them all at once. But I'm tired of it already.

Tao Lin had a few good pieces. I can't stand to read his blog because he seems full of himself and when he wants to say that he or someone else wrote something he says they "typed" it. Which is literally true, yes. But it's also annoying.

What I read of Cicero's was garbage. So's the linked excerpt of German's. I'll give German that he can do dialogue. He's not bad at that, but most young people aren't.

All three of these writers seem to think that writing like a comatose Hemingway about being naked and eating organic food means something. It doesn't. I get that you're sad. I got that Robert was sad the first time he did nothing but stay in his room and take off his clothes and masturbate after getting dressed. You're not even being edgy, at this point. This is emo-edgy. Navel-gazing edgy. If you want to write about a loser, that's okay. But write about a loser doing something.

Granted, I haven't read all of Eat, and just a little bit of Cicero, but I couldn't find anything for the chaff. Tao Lin has some good pieces. And some of it is right with these guys. Deadpan description of licking a girl's nipples. Okay. But you've not actually brought anything to light. That's erotica. Bad erotica. It's not literature.

Sorry. I'm getting carried away.

We're going to see a lot of stuff like this, I'm willing to bet. Not a ton, but a lot. People who think that the world is their therapist, and they should write like a ten year old about their feelings. That's where we're headed. Good ol' Generation Y. Feed me organic vegan food and fill my prescription.

It's been my quasi-belief that no matter who you are and how good you've got it, you're life is filled with difficulty. And life is subjective, such that Paris Hilton's life is as hard as mine is as hard as a Darfur refugee. Hear me out. Each of us have our own problems. Because of perspective, each of our own problems is going to seem mountainous at times, and other's will seem small. Problems that we see as huge are small to others. That's just the nature of our vision.

Now, however, when it seems like the rest of the world is holding that same belief...I'd like to give it up. Renege it. Because I can't live thinking that way, that people eking out existence in an alleyway somewhere are having the same time of it as the people at the top of the hill. It makes my life easier, because I can feel better in the belief that no one's life is as bad as it seems, because mine is pretty good. And that's, simply, bullshit. I'm beginning to wonder if everything about postmodernism is a little off. Not just the postmodernists.

So, back on track. Even without the terrible, flatlined, deadpan, Hemingway-warmed-over style, the subject matter of this trio is still missing. Cormac McCarthy said that if it's not about life and death, he doesn't understand it. I don't know if I'm that strict, because I can live with a story about the nuances of emotion, but these stories read partly like a psychiatrist's recommendation and partly like a wet dream. And that I can't tolerate.

I'd like to know what you think.

And, also, part of my ire is jealousy. It's also frustration. I won't hide that fact.

Maybe next time I'll pick on the Kite Runner. Big ideas, little writing.