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Suddenly Less Skeptical
Jan. 4th, 2013 10:24 pmUsually when I see a headline like "[Insert Name of Mainstream Literary Author Here] Has Written the Best Book You’ll Read All Year," especially from a news outlet like the New York Times, I try to take a non-judgmental look, and leave the article bored out of my mind before I'm halfway through it. However, consider this bit from Joel Lovell's piece on George Saunders:
“I began to understand art as a kind of black box the reader enters,” Saunders wrote in an essay on Vonnegut. “He enters in one state of mind and exits in another. The writer gets no points just because what’s inside the box bears some linear resemblance to ‘real life’ — he can put whatever he wants in there. What’s important is that something undeniable and nontrivial happens to the reader between entry and exit. . . . In fact, ‘Slaughterhouse-Five’ seemed to be saying that our most profound experiences may require this artistic uncoupling from the actual. The black box is meant to change us. If the change will be greater via the use of invented, absurd material, so be it.”
As far as I can tell from the article, Saunders initially set out to write mainstream literary fiction, accidentally became a writer of what we genre hacks would call slipstream, but kept the admiration of mainstream critics who didn't recognize how far he'd drifted. Now that's interesting.
Okay, George Saunders, you get one crack at my To Be Read list.
“I began to understand art as a kind of black box the reader enters,” Saunders wrote in an essay on Vonnegut. “He enters in one state of mind and exits in another. The writer gets no points just because what’s inside the box bears some linear resemblance to ‘real life’ — he can put whatever he wants in there. What’s important is that something undeniable and nontrivial happens to the reader between entry and exit. . . . In fact, ‘Slaughterhouse-Five’ seemed to be saying that our most profound experiences may require this artistic uncoupling from the actual. The black box is meant to change us. If the change will be greater via the use of invented, absurd material, so be it.”
As far as I can tell from the article, Saunders initially set out to write mainstream literary fiction, accidentally became a writer of what we genre hacks would call slipstream, but kept the admiration of mainstream critics who didn't recognize how far he'd drifted. Now that's interesting.
Okay, George Saunders, you get one crack at my To Be Read list.
