“A Note on Realism” by Robert Louis Stevenson
Style is the invariable mark of any master; and for the student who does not aspire so high as to be numbered with the giants, it is still the one quality in which he may improve himself at will. Passion, wisdom, creative force, the power of mystery or colour, are allotted in the hour of birth, and can be neither learned nor simulated. But the just and dexterous use of what qualities we have, the proportion of one part to another and to the whole, the elision of the useless, the accentuation of the important, and the preservation of a uniform character from end to end—these, which taken together constitute technical perfection, are to some degree within the reach of industry and intellectual courage. What to put in and what to leave out; whether some particular fact be organically necessary or purely ornamental; whether, if it be purely ornamental, it may not weaken or obscure the general design; and finally, whether, if we decide to use it, we should do so grossly and notably, or in some conventional disguise: are questions of plastic style continually rearising. And the sphinx that patrols the highways of executive art has no more unanswerable riddle to propound.
In literature (from which I must draw my instances) the great change of the past century has been effected by the admission of detail. It was inaugurated by the romantic Scott; and at length, by the semi-romantic Balzac and his more or less wholly unromantic followers, bound like a duty on the novelist. For some time it signified and expressed a more ample contemplation of the conditions of man’s life; but it has recently (at least in France) fallen into a merely technical and decorative stage, which it is, perhaps, still too harsh to call survival. With a movement of alarm, the wiser or more timid begin to fall a little back from these extremities; they begin to aspire after a more naked, narrative articulation; after the succinct, the dignified, and the poetic; and as a means to this, after a general lightening of this baggage of detail. After Scott we beheld the starveling story—once, in the hands of Voltaire, as abstract as a parable—begin to be pampered upon facts. The introduction of these details developed a particular ability of hand; and that ability, childishly indulged, has led to the works that now amaze us on a railway journey. A man of the unquestionable force of M. Zola spends himself on technical successes. To afford a popular flavour and attract the mob, he adds a steady current of what I may be allowed to call the rancid. That is exciting to the moralist; but what more particularly interests the artist is this tendency of the extreme of detail, when followed as a principle, to degenerate into merefeux-de-joie of literary tricking. The other day even M. Daudet was to be heard babbling of audible colours and visible sounds. Continue reading ““A Note on Realism” — Robert Louis Stevenson”
“Childhood is still running along beside us like a little dog who used to be a merry companion, but who now requires our care and splints, and myriad medicines, to prevent him from promptly passing on.” It went along rivers, and down mountain gorges. If you gave it any assistance, the evening would construct the most elaborate and costly lies. But it wouldn’t save you from pain and indignity. Lurking cats crossed your path with sinister thoughts. Like him, so nettles would sometimes draw me into fiendish moments of unchastity. As with him, my fear was made palatable by raspberries and blackberries. A swarm of crows were an instant manifestation of death. Rain produced damp and despair. Joy pearled off the crowns of sorrel plants. “The blanket of snow covers the earth like a sick child.” No infatuation, no ridicule, no sacrifice. “In classrooms, simple ideas assembled themselves, and on and on.” Then stores in town, butchers’ shop smells. Façades and walls, nothing but façades and walls, until you got out into the country again, quite abruptly, from one day to the next. Where the meadows began, yellow and green; brown plowland, black trees. Childhood: shaken down from a tree, so much fruit and no time! The secret of his childhood was contained in himself. Growing up wild, among horses, poultry, milk, and honey. And then: being evicted from this primal condition, bound to intentions that went way beyond himself. Designs. His possibilities multiplied, then dwindled in the course of a tearful afternoon. Down to three or four certainties. Immutable certainties. “How soon it is possible to spot dislike. Even without words, a child wants everything. And attains nothing.” Children are much more inscrutable than adults. “Protractors of history. Conscienceless. Correctors of history. Bringers-on of defeat. Ruthless as you please.” As soon as it could blow its own nose, a child was deadly to anything it came in touch with. Often—as it does me—it gives him a shock, when he feels a sensation he had as a child, provoked by a smell or a color, but that doesn’t remember him. “At such a moment you feel horribly alone.”
From Thomas Bernhard’s novel Frost.
The Rings of Saturn — W.G. Sebald
Denis Johnson’s Train Dreams Is a Perfect Novella
The Pale King — David Foster Wallace
The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis
Intertexuality and Structure in Roberto Bolaño’s 2666
Why I Abandoned Chad Harbach’s Over-Hyped Novel The Art of Fielding After Only 100 Pages
Jonathan Lethem’s Bloodless Prose
I Super Hated Gary Shteyngart’s Super Sad True Love Story
The Sot-Weed Factor — John Barth
“The Death of Me” — Gordon Lish
“A Good Man Is Hard to Find” — Flannery O’Connor
“The School” — Donald Barthelme
“Wakefield” — Nathaniel Hawthorne
“Good Old Neon” — David Foster Wallace
APHORISM
A concise, often witty, turn of phrase that should be shared out of context on Twitter or Pinterest.
BILDUNGSROMAN
Novel where someone (preferably male) matures into the ideal state of bitter disillusionment.
CATHARSIS
Evocation of fear and pity. Best exemplified in modern storytelling by Lifetime Network original movies.
DECONSTRUCTION
A form of textual analysis. No one knows what it means. Apply liberally.
EXISTENTIALIST
Use to describe any French novel of the 20th century. Serve with coffee and cigarettes.
FOIL
First, Outer, Inner, Last.
GENRE FICTION
Deride genre fiction at all times. If a writer uses genre tropes, praise her for genre bending. (See LITERARY FICTION).
HYSTERICAL REALISM
Use to describe any big ambitious novel that does not meet your aesthetic and/or moral needs.
IAMBIC PENTAMETER
All poetry is composed in iambic pentameter.
JUVENILIA
A writer’s immature work, which she usually (wisely) withholds from publication. After the writer dies, every scrap should be published, scrutinized, and passed around the internet out of context.
KAKFAESQUE
Synonym for “odd.” Apply freely.
LITERARY FICTION
A genre of fiction that pretends not to be a genre. What your book club is reading this month.
MAGICAL REALISM
Use to describe any novel by a South American writer.
NARRATOLOGY
Use structuralist techniques to analyze narrative plots—and watch the kids go wild! Narratology is the number one thing the audience of a book review is interested in.
ORPHAN
All heroes must be orphans.
PANOPTICON
Use this term liberally in any discussion of modern politics. Pairs well with film studies courses.
QUEER THEORY
A form of literary analysis that conveniently begins with the letter “Q,” making it ideal for silly alphabetized lists like this one.
ROUND CHARACTER
A character portrayed in psychological and emotional depth to the degree that she comes alive in your imagination. Round characters provide an excellent alternative to making meaningful human relationships.
SOUTHERN GOTHIC
Use to describe the style of any writer from the Southern part of the United States.
TAUTOLOGY
A tautology is a tautology.
UTOPIA
Synonym for dystopia. Argue about its pronunciation, indicating that you understand the complexities of Greek prefixes.
VERISIMILITUDE
Literary trickery.
WHODUNNIT
A genre of books that sells well in airports.
XENA
Beloved warrior princess. Look, x is hard, okay?
YOUNG WERTHER
The original sad bastard; he invented emo.
ZEITGEIST
Time’s ghost. You’re soaking in it, which makes it hard to see.
Novels with cinematic structure:
Hemingway, In Our Time
Faulkner,
[Horace] McCoy, They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?
Robbe-Grillet, Les Gommes [The Erasers]
[Georges] Bernanos, M. Ouine
I[vy] Compton-Burnett,
V Woolf, Between the Acts
Philip Toynbee, Tea with Mrs. Goodman
des Forêts, Les Mendiants
his first novel—multiple pov [points of view]
[Barnes,] Nightwood
Reverzy, Le Passage
Burroughs,
[John] Dos Passos
Firbank, Caprice; Vainglory; and [Inclinations] (trilogy)
Jap[anese] writer [Yasunari Kawabata] (N.B. visual sense, suppleness of changing scenes)—Snow Country, etc.
Dickens (cf. Eisenstein)—
There are people who thought with camera eye (a unified p-o-v that displaces itself) before the camera
N[athaniel] West,
Blechman
“new novelists”: Claude Simon, Le Palace
Claude Ollier, La Mis-en-Scène
(all based on organization of a decor (N[orth] Africa)
–From an entry dated 6/26/66 Paris in Susan Sontag’s notebook, published as part of As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh. (I’ve maintained the bracketed editorial intrusions of the published text, even with they did not seem necessary).
I don’t know, I’m guessing this is intentionally awful. I mean, book trailers are supposed to be awful, right?
Biblioklept 