Aggressively Mastubatory Fiction; or Two Authors Enter, Only Ben Marcus May Leave

Observe the rarest of beasts: a promised post which arrives at the promised time.  Earlier today,  I promised Laura I'd discuss Ben Marcus' "Why Experimental Fiction Threatens to Destroy Publishing, Jonathan Franzen, and Life as We Know It," and here comes 7 p.m. rolling around and here I am discussing it.  Marcus begins with a description of one language-processing portion of the brain, Wernicke's area, which like much of the non-polemical part of the article, deserves to be quoted in full:

I would say that my ideal reader's Wernicke's area is staffed by an army of jumpsuited code-breakers, working a barn-size space that is strung about the rafters with a mathematically intricate lattice of rope and steel, and maybe gusseted by a synthetic coil that is stronger and more sensitive than either, like guitar strings made from an unraveled spinal cord, each strand tuned to a different tension. The conduits of language that flow past it in liquid-cooled bone-hollows could trigger unique vibrations that resonate into an original symphony when my ideal reader scanned a new sentence.  This would be a scheme so elaborate that every portion of language would be treated as unique, and its infinite parts would be sent through such an exhaustive decoding process that not even a carcass of a word would remain.

He then apologies for "wishing to slip readers enhancements to their Wernicke's areas, doses of a potion that might turn them into fierce little reading machines, devourers of new syntax, fluent interpreters of the most lyrically complex grammar," such that writers would be liberated "to worry less about whether or not everyone could process even the most elementary sentences."  But such enhancements already exist.  He calls them "books" and bemoans the fact that the books that exercise Wernicke's minions the most are being attacked by those whose dominate the literary marketplace: in particular, writers in the realist tradition like the acclaimed and popular (Oprah notwithstanding) Jonathan Franzen.

Franzen, Marcus argues, encourages writers "to behave like cover bands, embellishing the oldies, maybe, while ensuring that buried in the song is an old familiar melody to make us smile with recognition, so that we might read more from memory than by active attention."  Thus begins his attack against the author of the (criminally over-rated but) award-winning novel The Corrections.  It continues unabated for what remains of the article, and that's unfortunate, because at his best Marcus effectively communicates what, to scholars of realist and naturalist works, constitutes a commonplace but which, to the general reading public, the essays of Franzen and The Atlantic Monthly's B.R. Meyers frequently obscure:

The fallacy that literary realists have some privileged relationship to reality has allowed the whole movement to soften and become false ... the exceptions are terrific writers who have pounded on the emotional possibilities of their mode, refusing to subscribe to worn-out techniques and storytelling methods so familiar we could pretty much sing along to them.  These are writers who are keen to interrogate the assumptions of realism and bend the habitual gestures around new shapes.

To not accept the strictures of realism is consign yourself to the unread stable of "experimental writers" whose "work does not matter, is not readable, and is aggressively masturbatory."  Critics disdain such writers, prefering instead realists whose work possesses "enough surface flourishes and stylistic tics to allow a false show of originality, so that critics can dispense phrases like 'radically innovative' and 'a bold new voice,' when the only thing new is the writer's DNA."  The article concludes with seven pages of close-readings in which Marcus demolishes the arguments Franzen proffers in a recent series of self-aggrandizing short fictions and self-serving book reviews.  I won't repeat it—mostly because like all brilliant close-readings,  citation ruins the brilliance of the reading and thus discredits whoever announces its brilliance—but needless to say, by the end of it I desperately wanted time enough to squeeze a re-reading Gaddis into my George Eliot heavy reading docket.  Still, considering all this, I'm tempted to agree with Franzen.

I know, I know, that sounds terrible, but keep a couple things in mind:

1. I adore a brilliant polemic and Marcus has penned one. 
2. I read very little poetry by design and constitution.  I lack the patience required to work through poetry if it lacks the puzzling qualities I value in writers like Joyce.  (I mean "puzzling" literally there, as in "like a puzzle" which I'm enjoined to put back together.  Hence my love/hate relationship with Gene Wolfe.)
3. As much as I love Marcus' own work, I read it incredibly slowly, and only on those most rare occasions when I can do so carefully.  Now, this may be a symptom of my dissertation.  I may tend toward realist novels now because I can't stomach any more ambiguity than I'm managed to create trying to untangle the knots that earlier realist writers wrote themselves into.  But my late-evening laziness bolsters Marcus' claims, not Franzen's, even if I end up reading fictions more to Franzen's taste instead of Marcus'.  While this situation is temporary for me, I doubt it is for the majority of the reading public ... and as Franzen said, better they read realist prose sans interrogation than another episode of The O.C. or The Real Laguna Beach.  Right? 

In short, I'm caught between Marcus' idealism and Franzen's pragmatism, and while I think Marcus is correct, I intuit Franzen is.   Which is why I award Marcus the laurels in the end, despite agreeing with Franzen for the present. 

Comments

[Brad]

In my quick reading of the article, I though Marcus had a good point re: Franzen's claim to be Gaddis' ideal reader.

[Adam Stephanides]

I'm a bit confused by your offhand reference to Wolfe. Wolfe obviously does have the "puzzling" quality you speak of, so that would account for the "love"; but whence the "hate"? (Unless you're saying that without the puzzles you would simply hate Wolfe, which judging from your earlier post on Wolfe doesn't seem to be the case.)

[Scott Eric Kaufman]

Brad, I agree entirely. In fact, I'm come down on Marcus' side of the polemic, even though I agree with Franzen's implicit claims about the needs of a lazy (or otherwise intellectually occupied) reader. I mean, look at the list of books scrolling down the column to your right: not an experimental novel among them.

Adam, I'm really torn by Wolfe, and at this point am only able to read him in small doses. My opinion as to the experience of reading Wolfe as keeping the company of a single narrative voice hasn't changed (no matter how many layers of ironic distance people would have me place between him and his narrators); nor have I had the time to read some of the books in which his voice varies. In short, I mostly agree with what the other other Adam said earlier. Hence the love/hate. I love him in small doses; hate him in long stretches...but he always writes series which compel me to read them for long stretches. It's as if he enjoys torturing his readers.

[Rich Puchalsky]

"It's as if he enjoys torturing his readers."

Funny, funny.

Actually, since you like puzzles, I should add to my recommendation of Iain Banks. Both "The Bridge" or "Use of Weapons" have a sort of highly structured, back-and-forth-in-time setup in which you slowly figure out more about the main character and their history, and both have highly developed symbolic sets which you can create for yourself or ignore as you prefer. In a certain sense, aspects of the books are similar to Wolfe's puzzles, in that by careful tracking of the information given out, you can figure out things about the characters that you wouldn't otherwise notice (and that aren't really necessary towards following the story). However, I find them vastly preferable because the main characters appear to have organically developed life histories and personalities, and aren't always being jerked around by whatever level of authorial plot-devicing you can choose to think is responsible for events in e.g. Wolfe's BOTNS (in which you can imagine that events are being manipulated by Wolfe as author, Severian as narrator, or the Heirodules / Heirogrammates as manipulators, but in which it's clear that someone is, er, snapping the whip).

[Brad]

Would David F. Wallace's new collection really be characterized as 'realist'?

All the same, I'm not entirely sure that Marcus would disagree either. (His pot shots at realist fiction, notwithstanding.) Ultimately, I think he recognizes that experimental fiction is a minor literature, in the grand scheme of contemporary literature. Neither lover of experimental of fiction, or an adherent to realism, should be at all bothered by this. (The problem, I suppose, when either position wishes to demarcate the limits of what constitutes literary art. In my opinion, Franzen seems far more willing to do this than Marcus.)

Can the distinction at stake here be boiled down to that between a 'hard' novel and an 'easy' novel? If so ... what makes a realist novel easier? At what point does one's commitment to realism turn into experimentalism -- when you've taken too many lessons from Proust? What is limit of Franzen's argument.

Surely. it holds up on a very pragmatic level, but at what cost. To put it in terms of cinema, are we to sacrifice Godard's Masculine Feminine for Vertigo, Fellini's 8 1/2 for the Unforgiven? (I rather like all four.)

I'm not saying you're making this argument ... just wondering about the practical consequences of pragmatics.

[Other other Adam]

My editor passed on to me a rather striking statistic, derived I suppose from market research of some kind. The majority of UK readers buy one book a year, usually when they're off on their hols (since they're going someplace without a TV), and they buy that book in the airport bookshop on the strength of either its first sentence, or its cover/placement in the shop/that 'they've heard of it'. This book, whichever it is, becomes a bestseller, and it almost invariably demonstrates very similar narrative qualities to cinema ... which is to say, the song that's being covered is not another book so much as the narrative logic of film itself. I don't want to sound snobbish here; cinema is a wonderful art form, and filmic narrative can be really powerful: there's a reason why it has become the dominant mode of narrative in our age. But there are things, of course, that film can't do, and it is just those things that I'm looking for when I read novels. Otherwise I'd give my tired end-of-the-workday brain a rest and just watch telly.

In other words, the problem with a novel like The Da Vinci Code is not that it's populist, genre, pulp, lowbrow, none of which categories I have a problem with; it's that it adheres so closely to the filmic paradigm there's nothing in it that wouldn't be better expressed that way. A counter example is Cunningham's The Hours, which of course was made into a film: made with honourable intent, but failingly and clumsily made nevertheless. To watch the film and to read the book is to see, I hope, what I mean here: by missing the exacting and carefully quilted stylistic textures of Cunningham's prose the film misses everything. Even the Corrections (overpraised as it has been, I agree with the Headless One) has moments like this, apperceptions that could only be novelistic because they're about the way the world, the mind and the way the mind takes in and makes words all rub up against one another. This isn't about genre (eg 'Literary Realists' vs 'Fantasists'); it's verbal. There's an Anthony Burgess character (is it Enderby? Or the chap in Earthly Powers? I can't remember) who is told by somebody that poems are made out of feeling and passion, and replies 'oh no, very much no, poems are made out of words.' So there aren't any guitar-strings and all that paraphernalia in my Wernicke's area, I hope: it's a library. Words are important in my life; they're how I communicate to other people and often how I think to myself, and they structure many of my attitudes and beliegs and concepts. I'm interested in art that shakes this word-thing in interesting ways.

It's for this reason that I'd say the 'aggressively masturbatory' tag is misapplied, not to mention a daft metaphor (it makes me picture a line of soldiers marching across no-man's-land wanking for victory). 'Masturbatory' gets used by rhetoricians who want to deride something that lacks popular appeal; but masturbation depends on a predominantly visual and conceptual stimulus, no? You can masturbate to a picture of a naked person, or to the idea of one in your head, but surely not to the word 'naked'. (This, and the way these categories fit together in subjectivity is a complicated business I know; and people do wank to prose, but -- I'd suggest -- to prose that evokes the visual and cinematic experience, not to the Sirens chapter in Ulysses). ButI suppose 'aggressively masturbatory' makes a better jag than 'aggressively contemplative' or 'aggressively literary'.

[Same Adam as Other other Adam]

I should add, actually, that I havn't read the Marcus piece, just the account of the piece given in this threas; and I may accordingly be doing him an injustice.

[Eckhard Gerdes]

I am still baffled by the stir that Franzen caused here. Marcus is so obviously on target. Artists in any medium can choose to be leaders or followers. Franzen pretends that blind obeisance is a virtue. Marcus rightly points out that it never has nor will produce an art worthy of examination. Sure, a reader of genre work (i.e. conventional work) might respond positively to the first reading of that kind of work, because for him or her it appears to be fresh. And then, like the heroin addict, he or she might forever seek a repetition of that initial experience, reading identical novel after novel (e.g. Silhouette Romances), never quite recapturing that initial excitement. A reader of innovative work looks for an exciting, idiosyncratic, original read every time. The choice is between complacency or challenge. What is baffling is that those calling for complacency can find the energy to even raise their own voices. Perhaps they should try to do that in their work.

[Maureen]

ON another note, I like Ben's work - but I'm sick to death of the Marcuseque style of lino-print Victorianism, that old-timey tone that is being mimiced over and over again, no matter how brainless and facile its author. Every new writer is started to sound the same.