tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27325099.post4682760889339317343..comments2023-07-14T04:28:49.111-06:00Comments on Now What: a conversation with jeffrey deshell : part oneLance Olsenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13659209766706247259noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27325099.post-72694999063774828222007-01-19T21:52:00.000-07:002007-01-19T21:52:00.000-07:00I like the conversation. I am reminded of the use...I like the conversation. I am reminded of the usefulness of the term "provision" for such definition discussions -- a term used by an old teacher of mine, an Olsonite poet named Jack Clarke. In Olson there's the great provision, "Art should not describe but enact," which is to point to the same kind of self-aware usage of language (or one being used by language) that is at issue, it seems to me, here. Self-aware writing, writing that has its own energy, that doesn't borrow its form from elsewhere but grows it in the composing of the work -- this is the articulation (provision, if you will) I'd add -- a thing we are all doing or trying to do in our writing.<br /><br />btw/ I don't think "is" has had so much attention since Clinton testified to Kenneth Starr, 35 Presidential scandals ago.Ted Peltonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13616332838143149496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27325099.post-34720500583967664512007-01-19T18:06:00.000-07:002007-01-19T18:06:00.000-07:00I like your observation, Charles, that interesting...I like your observation, Charles, that interesting texts can affect us like interesting people. That strikes me as deeply the case.<br /><br />Timmi: I don't know how others might respond to your really engaging question, but, for me, innovation has little, if anything, to do with a writer's intentions, stated or otherwise, and nearly everything to do with a reader's phenomenology, her or his situation in the world, education, reading habits, age, background, experience, etc. etc.<br /><br />For one reader, a book like Ulysses, say, has become something like naturalized, relatively straightforward and uncomplicated, while for another the latest Dan Brown novel breaks every expectation about textuality and the world he or she has ever had.<br /><br />Well, clearly I'm overstating the case. Where do others locate the experimental?Lance Olsenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13659209766706247259noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27325099.post-11100572854678130302007-01-18T14:39:00.000-07:002007-01-18T14:39:00.000-07:00I’m just finishing writing the review of a novel t...I’m just finishing writing the review of a novel that is formally experimental. One of the questions troubling my review is the extent to which the author’s (apparently sincere) expressed intentions in the press materials provided by the publisher should be a criterion for judging the novel’s accomplishment. In this case, the writer consciously chose a form that arguably ends in undercutting his stated goal. A more skilled and experienced writer might have been able to pull it off, perhaps, but the formal innovations of the style, combined with the consistently ironic edge to the prose, seems almost guaranteed to undermine the author’s intentions. Jeffrey eloquently notes “the vicissitudes of writing something long”; but in this case, I’m interested in whether it’s a question not of degree or intensity, but of intention. That same novel, read without any knowledge of the author’s intentions, could in the hands of an active, create reader, be transmuted into an interesting (if verbose and sometimes frustrating) metafictional tour de force.<br /><br />When Jeffrey turns the question back to Lance, Lance interestingly shifts the focus from the writer (and the writer’s degree of interiority and consciousness) to the reader’s reception: “Texts begin to become engaging for me at that point where they become much more than predictable, much more than texts I’ve seen before, where they begin to impede my easy understanding of them, where they begin to challenge me to invent a modified and fairly complex way of speaking in order to converse with them. So, yes, self-consciousness is a key component of experimental fiction, as far as I’m concerned, but, equally if not more important is a certain textual density and difficulty of imagination at the strata of language, structure, character, voice, vision, and so forth.” A question writing the review has raised for me, though, is to what extent the reader’s relationship with the experimental text has to do with the writer’s intentions and consciousness. When the writer fails to accomplish what s/he thinks their doing in a formally innovative work and the reader still manages to engage with the text by not taking it face value, when the questions the writer’s text raises are not the questions s/he probably intended it to raise, does the work still fit the definition of “experimental literature”? I would say that it does; but I’m not sure a work would fit comfortably into a continuum based on the writer’s degree of consciousness.Timmi Duchamphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00673465487533328661noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27325099.post-79776217025056486412007-01-17T07:22:00.000-07:002007-01-17T07:22:00.000-07:00I agree Joe, the questions are of a different orde...I agree Joe, the questions are of a different order. Still, for me, the question of literature rests precariously on the "is." (how's that for a BIG statement?!) Semester starts here too. In the snow. Jjdeshellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10284348944284380704noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27325099.post-88958673051677171052007-01-16T17:40:00.000-07:002007-01-16T17:40:00.000-07:00This is an enjoyable exchange...
Jeffrey: Isn't ...This is an enjoyable exchange...<br /><br />Jeffrey: Isn't there a qualitative difference between saying "exp. fiction is warm apple pie" and "exp. fiction is that which questions what exp. fiction is"?<br /><br />I mean, since you've posed the question of the *is*, it seems to me that R.M.'s distinction *ought* at least to be made distinct from more simple such existential assertions.<br /><br />Granted, to suggest that we know what exp. fiction is might be a problem. But to suggest that we know that exp. fiction poses such a problem is not quite the same kind of...problem. It's at least an iteration removed from the warm-apple-pie way of knowing.<br /><br />Anyway, eagerly awaiting part two as I kick off my spring semester here in flatland...<br /><br />Best,<br /><br />JoeJoe Amatohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00870101339563504324noreply@blogger.com