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In Form: Digressions on the Act of Fiction
Form must never be taken for granted, but must be created as the work itself is shaped: “The writer works not from a priori ideas about what will happen and what form it will take, but in and through the text.”
Sukenick, one of our most original contemporary novelists, describes these essays as “the comments of a fiction writer about writing, not those of a critic on what has been written. They are more or less reports on experience—those of one engaged in the ongoing struggle with the angel of form, rather than of one studying its consequences from a cool distance: ‘in form,’ not ‘on form.’”
The difficulty of creative works no longer accessible to traditional reading habits has threatened us with an age of criticism in which interpretation has become more imposing than invention. One of the tasks of modern fiction, therefore, is “to displace, energize, and re-embody its criticism—literally to reunite at with our experience of the text.”
Sukenick, one of our most original contemporary novelists, describes these essays as “the comments of a fiction writer about writing, not those of a critic on what has been written. They are more or less reports on experience—those of one engaged in the ongoing struggle with the angel of form, rather than of one studying its consequences from a cool distance: ‘in form,’ not ‘on form.’”
The difficulty of creative works no longer accessible to traditional reading habits has threatened us with an age of criticism in which interpretation has become more imposing than invention. One of the tasks of modern fiction, therefore, is “to displace, energize, and re-embody its criticism—literally to reunite at with our experience of the text.”
272 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1985
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About the author
Ronald Sukenick
32 books32 followersRonald Sukenick was an American writer and literary theorist.
Sukenick studied at Cornell University, and wrote his doctoral thesis on Wallace Stevens, at Brandeis University.
After Roland Barthes announced the "death of the author", Sukenick carried the metaphor even further in "the death of the novel". He drew up a list of what is missing: reality doesn't exist, nor time or personality. He was widely recognized as a controversial writer who, frequently humorously, questioned and rejected the conventions of traditional fiction-writing. In novels, short stories, literary criticism and history, he often used himself, family members or friends as characters, sometimes quoting them in tape-recorded conversations. He did stints as writer in residence at Cornell University, the University of California, Irvine, and Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel. But his books were never best-sellers. Sukenick once commented that he had “only forty fans, but they’re all fanatics.”
He referred to his career as a university professor as his "day job". He taught at Brandeis University, Hofstra University, City College of the City University of New York, Sarah Lawrence College, Cornell University, the State University of New York (Buffalo), and l'Université Paul Valéry, Montpellier, France. His most prolonged teaching career was at the University of Colorado, Boulder, where he was professor of English from 1975-1999.
He was actively committed to publishing and promoting the writing of other unconventional writers. He was founder and publisher of American Book Review, and a founder of The Fiction Collective (now Fiction Collective Two). Sukenick was chairman of the Coordinating Council of Little magazines, and on the executive council of the Modern Language Association and the National Book Critics Circle.
Sukenick studied at Cornell University, and wrote his doctoral thesis on Wallace Stevens, at Brandeis University.
After Roland Barthes announced the "death of the author", Sukenick carried the metaphor even further in "the death of the novel". He drew up a list of what is missing: reality doesn't exist, nor time or personality. He was widely recognized as a controversial writer who, frequently humorously, questioned and rejected the conventions of traditional fiction-writing. In novels, short stories, literary criticism and history, he often used himself, family members or friends as characters, sometimes quoting them in tape-recorded conversations. He did stints as writer in residence at Cornell University, the University of California, Irvine, and Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel. But his books were never best-sellers. Sukenick once commented that he had “only forty fans, but they’re all fanatics.”
He referred to his career as a university professor as his "day job". He taught at Brandeis University, Hofstra University, City College of the City University of New York, Sarah Lawrence College, Cornell University, the State University of New York (Buffalo), and l'Université Paul Valéry, Montpellier, France. His most prolonged teaching career was at the University of Colorado, Boulder, where he was professor of English from 1975-1999.
He was actively committed to publishing and promoting the writing of other unconventional writers. He was founder and publisher of American Book Review, and a founder of The Fiction Collective (now Fiction Collective Two). Sukenick was chairman of the Coordinating Council of Little magazines, and on the executive council of the Modern Language Association and the National Book Critics Circle.
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April 14, 2015
One of Sukenick’s two books of criticism, In Form is, in Sukenick’s own rather drab explication, “the comments of a writer about writing, not those of a critic on what has been written”. The collection attends to the vexed postmodern dilemma of how best to represent experience (the most emphasised word throughout), without lapsing into the mere imitation of other novels (like John Barth), and in a series of page-long ‘digressions’, Sukenick muses on methods for achieving this authentic form, by loosing oneself from the conventional business of words in linear shapes on the page: his own fiction makes use of unpunctuated recordings in lower case and typographical hoohaws leaping verso to recto. ‘Nine Digressions of Narrative Authority’ is the essay where Sukenick loosens his often stiff academic tone and allows his more entertaining fiction-voice to weave the words, revelling in the various innovative narrative forms and texts dissected therein. Sukenick’s passion for innovation is the most endearing aspect of this collection. His passion for Wallace Stevens (50-page essay on his poems here) is the least endearing aspect of this collection.
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