Realistic

Jacob Russell is mostly right in his critique of American book reviewing practices:

It occurred to me as [Maureen Corrigan] repeated her formula reviews, book after book, why it is that reviewers (make that, commercial--print or electronic... even "non-profit" versions of commercial reviewers) have such a preference for realist narratives. It makes it so much easier to review the books. In effect, all you have to do is name the subject, reduce the book to a summarized report on a fictional event--as though the story might well be real, as though any distinction one might make between "story" and "real" is of no matter. Next, list the cast of characters, offer a movie level sketch of their problem/conflict/search-for-meaningful-resolution-of-past-trauma, etc, sprinkle the review with enough adjectives to make it sound like they're statements on the merit and quality of the book--but so general and empty of specifics that they function rather like movie background music. And there you go.

I would quarrel only with his identification of book reviewers' preference as specifically for realist narratives, for reasons Jacob himself begins to indicate. Reviewers privilege narrative, but not necessarily realism. There is no necessary connection between "story" and "realism," although narrative in literary fiction has been used so often as a way of nominally depicting "real life" that most reviewers--and many readers--assume that they are inseparable, that real life can only be presented to us through a summarizable "story." Thus, I would argue that the stituation Jacob describes is a consequence less of laziness or apathy on the part of reviewers than of the widely held assumption that "fiction" correlates to "story" which correlates to "realism" in a more or less natural progression.

"Realism" thoroughly applied, in fact, would almost certainly reject "story" as itself an artificial imposition on the real (or at least on fiction's attempt to approximate the real, since in the final analysis "realism" is just another kind of fantasy we are willing to accept, an illusion created to deflect our attention away from the fact that there's really nothing real or unreal about works of fiction--they're just verbal compositions, words on a page.) Little in our ordinary lives proceeds as if following a narrative arc. Freytag's Triangle ("problem/conflict/search-for-meaningful-resolution") is no more a reflection of how life actually unfolds than the absurdism of a Beckett play or the most resolute postmodern "game-playing." Writers like Stephen Dixon and Mary Robison are much closer to "reality" in their fictions than the realism that dominates the book review pages. How often are their books reviewed in the New York Times Book Review?

I don't underestimate the willingness of "mainstream" book reviewers (and editors) to cut corners and cling to formula. However, I think that finally their predilection for the kind of hand-me-down storytelling Jacob describes (perhaps spiced with some appropriate "psychological" realism, which is about the only contribution to the store of available techniques made by literary modernism that current reviewers appear to recognize) is even more simply explained: they actually believe that "realist narratives" are what fiction is supposed to provide. Anything else, any serious challenge to the hegemony of such narratives, just doesn't get the reward of their attention.

Comments

[Mark Thwaite]

Hi Dan -- HNY!

I think you are right about Realism's so-called realism. It seems to me that Beckett in particular is painfully, unsparingly realistic and that most Realism is disingenuously -- indeed embarrassingly -- unreal.

Bad reviews happen, I would suggest, because the majority of fiction titles reviewed in the mainstream press are bad books.

[Daniel]

Happy New Year!

Complaining about the state of book reviews is getting to be like bitching about the weather. Let's do something about it, eh?

[Lloyd Mintern]

It also isn't enough to just keep making the same old distinctions, between types of "realism" and "story" (the biggest catch-all), and "mainstream" and whatever is supposedly more vogue; in fact, making these distinctions has become a convention in all forms of media, including blogs--which are verily obsessed with it. The real difference in reviewers is whether they are writing for Readers, or engaging in an intramural discussion with Other Writers. Critics who repeatedly tell authors how they should have written their books are obviously of the latter, amateur stripe.

[Jason]

It seems beyond dispute that mainstream book reviewers have an impoverished vision of what realism might be--as, frankly, do many readers.

I haven't figured out quite how to express this, but this isn't limited to book reviewers: Mainstream American culture frequently insists on literal-minded representation. You see this in politics all the time, in movies, and perhaps especially in education.

[Jacob Russell]

By "realism." of course, I meant the convention, not "reality," or attempts to represent it--so I most heartily agree with your helpful correction. The points you make on the distinction--between story telling and "reality" lie at the heart of my complaint--a subject I've returned to in a number of recent posts on Barking Dog. The failure to make that distinction, that "realist narrative" is not one, but two defining terms. This is something that contributes in no small part to a common (popular) misunderstandings of Modernist narrative innovations. Far from retreating from efforts to represent reality, Modernists like Joyce and Woolf--are, if anything, hyper-realists.

[Jack]

Some fiction, especially thought-provoking works, don’t stand reviews very well. I would venture to say that “realist narratives” receive great attention because the reviewer doesn’t have to think very hard; moreover, they’re practically safe from onerous trade devils such as frivolity and lack of common sense.

[maitresse]

"Far from retreating from efforts to represent reality, Modernists like Joyce and Woolf--are, if anything, hyper-realists."

Yes, yes, and yes. I'd call them sur-realists if the term weren't already taken-- and I personally would like for modernists and surrealists to be brought together more often-- our understanding of both projects would be enhanced by such a rapprochement.