Sunday, February 3, 2013

start thinking about this quote

Read this. Think about whether or not we can say the same things about our culture, politics and economy; have we as a people really settled for making fun instead of making a difference in the world? Feel free to comment with questions (Who is Bret Ellis? What does mimesis mean?), observations, dis/agreement, and suggestions about how we might study Modernism and Postmodernism. I'm planning to start with a story in which a parent's values conflict with a child's, but the virtual suggestion box is now open. More on all this tomorrow here and in person.  

“If what's always distinguished bad writing--flat characters, a narrative world that's clichéd and not recognizably human, etc.--is also a description of today's world, then bad writing becomes an ingenious mimesis of a bad world. If readers simply believe the world is stupid and shallow and mean, then [Bret] Ellis can write a mean shallow stupid novel that becomes a mordant deadpan commentary on the badness of everything. Look man, we'd probably most of us agree that these are dark times, and stupid ones, but do we need fiction that does nothing but dramatize how dark and stupid everything is? In dark times, the definition of good art would seem to be art that locates and applies CPR to those elements of what's human and magical that still live and glow despite the times' darkness. Really good fiction could have as dark a worldview as it wished, but it'd find a way both to depict this world and to illuminate the possibilities for being alive and human in it. 

Postmodern irony and cynicism's become an end in itself, a measure of hip sophistication and literary savvy. Few artists dare to try to talk about ways of working toward redeeming what's wrong, because they'll look sentimental and naive to all the weary ironists. Irony's gone from liberating to enslaving. There's some great essay somewhere that has a line about irony being the song of the prisoner who's come to love his cage… The postmodern founders' patricidal work was great, but patricide produces orphans, and no amount of revelry can make up for the fact that writers my age have been literary orphans throughout our formative years. 

We enter a spiritual puberty where we snap to the fact that the great transcendent horror is loneliness, excluded encagement in the self. Once we’ve hit this age, we will now give or take anything, wear any mask, to fit, be part-of, not be Alone, we young. The U.S. arts are our guide to inclusion. A how-to. We are shown how to fashion masks of ennui and jaded irony at a young age where the face is fictile enough to assume the shape of whatever it wears. And then it’s stuck there, the weary cynicism that saves us from gooey sentiment and unsophisticated naïveté. Sentiment equals naïveté on this continent. 

You burn with hunger for food that does not exist. 

A U. S. of modern A. where the State is not a team or a code, but a sort of sloppy intersection of desires and fears, where the only public consensus a boy must surrender to is the acknowledged primacy of straight-line pursuing this flat and short-sighted idea of personal happiness.”

― David Foster Wallace

4 comments:

  1. Bret Easton Ellis (born March 7, 1964) is an American novelist, screenwriter, and short story writer. His works have been translated into 27 languages.[2] He was at first regarded as one of the so-called literary Brat Pack,[3] which also included Tama Janowitz and Jay McInerney. He is a self-proclaimed satirist, whose trademark technique, as a writer, is the expression of extreme acts and opinions in an affectless style.[4][5] Ellis employs a technique of linking novels with common, recurring characters. Info from wiki.
    Mimesis- imitation or reproduction of the supposed words of another, as in order to represent his or her character

    ReplyDelete
  2. Possible vocab for this coming week
    depict- to represent in a picture or in words
    Cynicism-cynical disposition, character, or belief
    patricide- the act of killing one's father
    revelry- reveling; boisterous festivity
    formative- relating to formation and development
    ennui- boredom
    fictile- capable of being molded
    consensus- general agreement



    ReplyDelete
  3. That Was Interesting, i like the part where he says, " You burn with hunger for food that does not exist. " .(:

    ReplyDelete
  4. I like how he attacked fiction, how it is not a good way to deal with depressing or dark times.

    ReplyDelete