“It is easy to understand why literary revolutions have always been made in the name of realism. When a form of writing has lost its initial vitality, its force, its violence, when it has become a vulgar recipe, an academic mannerism which its followers respect only out of routine or laziness, without even questioning its necessity then it is indeed a return to the real which constitutes the arraignment of the dead formulas and the search for new forms capable of continuing the effort. The discovery of reality will continue only if we abandon outworn forms. Unless we suppose that the world is henceforth entirely discovered (and, in that case, the wisest thing would be to stop writing altogether), we can only attempt to go farther. It is not a question of ‘doing better,’ but of advancing in ways as yet unknown, in which a new kind of writing becomes necessary.”
I begin this issue’s editorial with these words, written by Alain Robbe-Grillet in what can be considered his 1963 manifesto For a New Novel, because in the index to his 2010 work, Reality Hunger: A Manifesto, David Shields cites the former as “the book that in many ways got me thinking about all this stuff.” Indeed, Shields begins his so-called ars poetica by stating: “Every artistic movement from the beginning of time is an attempt to figure out a way to smuggle more of what the artist thinks is reality into the work of art.”
buzzard picnic 