Too Narrowly Real

Jacob Russell on realism:

I am not on the side of an aesthetic in opposition to representation. My complaint with conventional realism is that it isn't, that it is too narrowly real, too dependent on unexamined conventions, to rigidly dependent on those tropes that reinforce received notions. I should not have to suspend the better part of my critical faculties to find pleasure in a work of fiction. That to me is where aesthetics comes in. There is no possibility of pretending the action on stage in The Tempest is "realistic," or in Kafka's fiction. The pleasure is found in enjoying them first on a freely imaginative plane, for their aesthetic daring, and at the same time, feeling the wonderful tension between that fantasy and how it challenges--demands of us, that we relocate our notions of "reality" within these dramatic and fictive worlds.

Comments

[Andrew]

Another thing to bear in mind is that a literary work of art exists as a series of words placed in consecutive order. In what sense can this sequence of words not be 'real'?

[Jacob Russell]

I gather you've experienced the same thing... how difficult it is to raise a serious critique of "realist" fiction without some readers feeling that you have set out to attack them, and to couch their defense, not on the ideas or questions you've raised, but of some hypothetical set of readers who like what you have criticized.

I'm not going to play disingenuous, and deny that I have any theories about why a critique of certain notions of "reality" might stir a somewhat misdirected denial--but I find this troubling... don't know how to respond. I didn't used to--but I try to avoid confrontational responses... it still bothers me when there is a distinct disconnect between subject, and the personal nature of the response