My review of "Reality Hunger" by David Shields
(Copy/pasted from my review over on the Goodreads website.)
I may have written a few paltry reviews of other books in the past, on here and elsewhere, but this is the first time that I've felt truly compelled to write a review for a book. Okay, to start with, the star rating, just to get it out of the way. Three stars, according to Goodreads, is "liked it" and two stars is "it was okay." I'm vacillating between giving it three or two stars, but I think I'm going to settle on two. With that said, I'm not trying to make some of kind of objective statement that I thought the book was bad, just that I, personally, had some issues with it. It's not that it was a bad book (and, to be clear, there are some books out there that I do think are objectively bad), it's just that it wasn't "my cup of tea."
A bit of clarification: when I refer to "the author" (which will probably be rarely), I am talking just about David Shields himself. When I refer to "the book," I am talking about David Shields and all of the other sources from which he liberally "borrowed."
Okay, so. This book. I saw it sitting on the shelf in my public library. It's one of those books, you know, where the entire front cover, the entire back cover, and the first three pages are crammed full of excerpts from glowing reviews. I don't usually mind (or even notice, really) that sort of thing, but when even the title and author credit themselves are being overwritten by review excerpts, it's a bit much, isn't it? One of the reviews claims that the book "feels at least five years ahead of its time and teaches you how to read it as you go." I literally rolled my eyes at that one. And yet, even so, I still picked up the book from the shelf, took it to the counter, and checked it out.
Pretentious
adjective
1. characterized by assumption of dignity or importance, especially when exaggerated or undeserved:
a pretentious, self-important waiter.
2. making an exaggerated outward show; ostentatious.
3. full of pretense or pretension; having no factual basis; false.
"Pretentious" is not a word that I use lightly or throw around willy-nilly as though it were a synonym for "thing I don't like," as most of the rest of the Internet seems to like to do, but in this case, I feel that at least the first two of those definitions of the word fit this book. And, honestly, I don't even necessarily see that as an entirely bad thing, in this case. The book is pretentious, simple as that. It is what it is, for good or ill. Don't hate on it just for that. I'm not. But I think it bears mentioning, even so. Be warned. Though as with most subjective statements like "this book is pretentious," YMMV.
Here, in no particular order, is what I got out of the book. These are the notes that were repetitively beaten on the drum that is this book, as interpreted by me.
1) Traditional literature, e.g. the novel, the memoir, etc., is dead. Or, if not dead, it has at the very least become an uninteresting, nigh unreadable bore, of little value to modern society.
2) Fiction (the traditional novel) is bad if there isn't an element of the "real" to it, i.e. if there isn't something pulled from the writer's real life imbued into the writing. I agree with this, certainly, to an extent, but definitely not to the extent that the book seems to want. The book is saying not just that fiction should be a reflection of reality in some way, but that pure fiction, i.e. simply "telling a story" made up whole cloth, has little remaining value these days, that it's passé and is (or should be) on the way out.
3) Non-fiction (the traditional memoir) is bad if there is too much of an emphasis on "accuracy." For example, the book seems to be of the opinion that the problem with James Frey wasn't that James Frey lied, but that he didn't lie well enough.
4) There is, or at least should be, little distinction between fiction and non-fiction. Fiction, again, needs to have elements of real life to be worthy of being read, and non-fiction is necessarily going to be "false" or "fictitious" in many ways, anyway, because memory is fallible and untrustworthy, so there's really no need to make so much of a distinction between them.
5) The Future of Literature™ apparently lies in the lyric essay, not traditional novels or memoirs or whatever.
6) The author, David Shields, seems to want unfettered license to create "remixes" (to use the musical term) or "collages" (to use the visual arts term) of previous literary works. Basically, he wants to be able to lift whole sections of other works, whether of his own creation or not, and "fit" them into his own works. This is, in fact, what he has done here, with Reality Hunger, which is why I felt the need to distinguish between "the book" and "the author," as explained above. Many of them are "his" words only in the sense that he was the one who chose the passages from other sources to include in this book. It's just a hair shy of straight up plagiarism. David Shields wants to be able to plagiarize to his heart's content, but not have to suffer the stigma associated with being a plagiarist. Yeah, that would be nice, wouldn't it? The long list of citations at the end of the book are only there because they were imposed upon him by his publisher's lawyers. Indeed, he explicitly says, "If you would like to restore this book to the form in which I intended it to be read, simply grab a sharp pair of scissors or a razor blade or box cutter and remove pages 207-221 by cutting along the dotted line." In other words, he essentially seems to want to be the Timbaland or Melania Trump of the literary world, apparently, but without the backlash.
It took me over a month to finish this book, even though it's only 200 or so pages long. I finished it mostly out of a sense of... obligation, sort of. That, and a desire not to let the book "beat me." I could have just set the book aside and never touched it again until it was time to take it back to the library, and many times almost did just that. But I kept reading, off-and-on, hoping that I'd eventually reach a point where everything clicked, a "Eureka!" moment where, suddenly, I got it, a moment where I finally, truly grokked what the book was getting at, nodding excitedly in agreement. Such a moment never happened. It almost happened, at a few points, but then the book would just repeat yet another banal variant of "I just can't bring myself to slog through traditional novels anymore" and it would lose me again. I mean, yes, I understood what the book was saying and why it was saying it, and with some few parts of it I actually agreed (e.g. the assertion that current copyright laws are abysmal and need to be, at the very least, completely reworked if they are to have a prayer of adequately dealing with modern technologies), but on the whole... nope, sorry.
So, yeah. That's my take on Reality Hunger. Despite my two star rating up there, I do actually think that I would probably recommend this book be read, even if only in a sort of "oh man, you guys, you gotta see this" way. I am glad this book exists. I am glad that I read it. I mean, after all, it compelled me to write this wall of text about it, if nothing else. However, if all modern literature started to trend toward being like this, which seems to be what the book wants, then I think I'd probably have to just give up reading modern literature altogether.
I may have written a few paltry reviews of other books in the past, on here and elsewhere, but this is the first time that I've felt truly compelled to write a review for a book. Okay, to start with, the star rating, just to get it out of the way. Three stars, according to Goodreads, is "liked it" and two stars is "it was okay." I'm vacillating between giving it three or two stars, but I think I'm going to settle on two. With that said, I'm not trying to make some of kind of objective statement that I thought the book was bad, just that I, personally, had some issues with it. It's not that it was a bad book (and, to be clear, there are some books out there that I do think are objectively bad), it's just that it wasn't "my cup of tea."
A bit of clarification: when I refer to "the author" (which will probably be rarely), I am talking just about David Shields himself. When I refer to "the book," I am talking about David Shields and all of the other sources from which he liberally "borrowed."
Okay, so. This book. I saw it sitting on the shelf in my public library. It's one of those books, you know, where the entire front cover, the entire back cover, and the first three pages are crammed full of excerpts from glowing reviews. I don't usually mind (or even notice, really) that sort of thing, but when even the title and author credit themselves are being overwritten by review excerpts, it's a bit much, isn't it? One of the reviews claims that the book "feels at least five years ahead of its time and teaches you how to read it as you go." I literally rolled my eyes at that one. And yet, even so, I still picked up the book from the shelf, took it to the counter, and checked it out.
Pretentious
adjective
1. characterized by assumption of dignity or importance, especially when exaggerated or undeserved:
a pretentious, self-important waiter.
2. making an exaggerated outward show; ostentatious.
3. full of pretense or pretension; having no factual basis; false.
"Pretentious" is not a word that I use lightly or throw around willy-nilly as though it were a synonym for "thing I don't like," as most of the rest of the Internet seems to like to do, but in this case, I feel that at least the first two of those definitions of the word fit this book. And, honestly, I don't even necessarily see that as an entirely bad thing, in this case. The book is pretentious, simple as that. It is what it is, for good or ill. Don't hate on it just for that. I'm not. But I think it bears mentioning, even so. Be warned. Though as with most subjective statements like "this book is pretentious," YMMV.
Here, in no particular order, is what I got out of the book. These are the notes that were repetitively beaten on the drum that is this book, as interpreted by me.
1) Traditional literature, e.g. the novel, the memoir, etc., is dead. Or, if not dead, it has at the very least become an uninteresting, nigh unreadable bore, of little value to modern society.
2) Fiction (the traditional novel) is bad if there isn't an element of the "real" to it, i.e. if there isn't something pulled from the writer's real life imbued into the writing. I agree with this, certainly, to an extent, but definitely not to the extent that the book seems to want. The book is saying not just that fiction should be a reflection of reality in some way, but that pure fiction, i.e. simply "telling a story" made up whole cloth, has little remaining value these days, that it's passé and is (or should be) on the way out.
3) Non-fiction (the traditional memoir) is bad if there is too much of an emphasis on "accuracy." For example, the book seems to be of the opinion that the problem with James Frey wasn't that James Frey lied, but that he didn't lie well enough.
4) There is, or at least should be, little distinction between fiction and non-fiction. Fiction, again, needs to have elements of real life to be worthy of being read, and non-fiction is necessarily going to be "false" or "fictitious" in many ways, anyway, because memory is fallible and untrustworthy, so there's really no need to make so much of a distinction between them.
5) The Future of Literature™ apparently lies in the lyric essay, not traditional novels or memoirs or whatever.
6) The author, David Shields, seems to want unfettered license to create "remixes" (to use the musical term) or "collages" (to use the visual arts term) of previous literary works. Basically, he wants to be able to lift whole sections of other works, whether of his own creation or not, and "fit" them into his own works. This is, in fact, what he has done here, with Reality Hunger, which is why I felt the need to distinguish between "the book" and "the author," as explained above. Many of them are "his" words only in the sense that he was the one who chose the passages from other sources to include in this book. It's just a hair shy of straight up plagiarism. David Shields wants to be able to plagiarize to his heart's content, but not have to suffer the stigma associated with being a plagiarist. Yeah, that would be nice, wouldn't it? The long list of citations at the end of the book are only there because they were imposed upon him by his publisher's lawyers. Indeed, he explicitly says, "If you would like to restore this book to the form in which I intended it to be read, simply grab a sharp pair of scissors or a razor blade or box cutter and remove pages 207-221 by cutting along the dotted line." In other words, he essentially seems to want to be the Timbaland or Melania Trump of the literary world, apparently, but without the backlash.
It took me over a month to finish this book, even though it's only 200 or so pages long. I finished it mostly out of a sense of... obligation, sort of. That, and a desire not to let the book "beat me." I could have just set the book aside and never touched it again until it was time to take it back to the library, and many times almost did just that. But I kept reading, off-and-on, hoping that I'd eventually reach a point where everything clicked, a "Eureka!" moment where, suddenly, I got it, a moment where I finally, truly grokked what the book was getting at, nodding excitedly in agreement. Such a moment never happened. It almost happened, at a few points, but then the book would just repeat yet another banal variant of "I just can't bring myself to slog through traditional novels anymore" and it would lose me again. I mean, yes, I understood what the book was saying and why it was saying it, and with some few parts of it I actually agreed (e.g. the assertion that current copyright laws are abysmal and need to be, at the very least, completely reworked if they are to have a prayer of adequately dealing with modern technologies), but on the whole... nope, sorry.
So, yeah. That's my take on Reality Hunger. Despite my two star rating up there, I do actually think that I would probably recommend this book be read, even if only in a sort of "oh man, you guys, you gotta see this" way. I am glad this book exists. I am glad that I read it. I mean, after all, it compelled me to write this wall of text about it, if nothing else. However, if all modern literature started to trend toward being like this, which seems to be what the book wants, then I think I'd probably have to just give up reading modern literature altogether.