On Paths Unknown discussion

There was a sidebar in the Blind Assassin discussion which led to a question from me.

The discussion began with Yolande and Trav talking about post-modern lit as compared to other types of novels like "experimental" lit. Or even maybe what would be post-experimental lit?

I recently have read about and read 3 "Selfie" novels (I think that is a term I've seen used to describe it). This type of novel seems mostly characterized by 2 things:

1. The content is mundane. It is just what happens in the day-to-day life of ordinary people.

2. It is probably mostly autobiographical. The author says it is fiction so that he/she has license to change or add whatever is desired. But these authors make it clear (and in the case of Karl Ove Knausgaard, his family and friends make it clear) that the story is almost completely based on fact.

So, my question was to Yolande and Trav: how do you think these Selfie novels fit into the history of literature?

The novels to which I'm referring are The Neapolitan novels by Elena Ferrante My Brilliant Friend and the My Struggle novels by Karl Ove Knausgaard Min kamp 1. I was skeptical of both series but I have read 2 of the Ferrantes and the first Knausgaard and I am enchanted.

James Wood is a big proponent of both these series and I believe it fits with his love of realism. I just read the opening essay in The Broken Estate: Essays on Literature and Belief where I think he is making the argument that a novel will only be tolerated by readers if it is real enough. I haven't figured out what he thinks of sci-fi or Mieville, etc. I can't tell if he thinks those novels we all love are crap because they aren't realistic enough or if he thinks they only work if there is a thread of realism in them. But he definitely loves the almost microscopic realism of the Selfies.

Another interesting thing about Selfies. The first Knausgaard volume was so popular in Norway that 1 in 10 or even 1 in 9 Norwegians had the book or were reading it. And that Knausgaard was the main topic of Norwegian conversation at the height of its popularity.

Michele wrote: "Another interesting thing about Selfies. The first Knausgaard volume was so popular in Norway that 1 in 10 or even 1 in 9 Norwegians had the book or were reading it. And that Knausgaard was the main topic of Norwegian conversation at the height of its popularity."

Not an answer to your questetion, but perhaps an interesting side note: After The Knausgård-mania, writers (here in Norway) have become much more visible and active in the public debate, and given much more space and time in newspapers and on TV, whereas pre-Knausgård nobody would ask writer for his thoughts on, say, Syria.

Fascinating to see that literature still has the power to change societies, despite what many people seem to think.

Michele wrote: "There was a sidebar in the Blind Assassin discussion which led to a question from me.

The discussion began with Yolande and Trav talking about post-modern lit as compared to other types of novels ..."

That's a fascinating post, thanks Michele! I suspect I am slightly behind on what is cutting-edge these days, but yeah, in some ways I suppose this is post-post modern, and reflects on the 'blog' culture we generally have today.

Maybe because we're a global village these days, it has been brought to our attention that there are people in the world who are very different to us (and in "us" I include the "other people" who of course think exactly the same thing of "us"). XD

So that -might- be part of the reason why mundane blog-type revelations have become interesting? To see how the rest of humanity actually live?

What would you say to this, Michele and others? Any ideas as to why it, alongside, or in the wake of, the fantasy craze has become popular?

Have we perhaps had an overdose of fantasy leaving us longing for more realistic "meat" just like an overdose of candy can make you feel slightly ill and longing for a nice plate of meat and veg?

Will you say more about what you mean by the fantasy craze? I can think of a lot of things you might mean.

Michele wrote: "Will you say more about what you mean by the fantasy craze? I can think of a lot of things you might mean."

Well, in the sense of that "fantasy" literature as a genre in the modern sense only became popular recently.

Before "genre fantasy" you had fantastical mythologies and folklore, of course, but before the doctrines of the Age of Enlightenment really took enough root and spread enough to culminate into positivist theories and schools of thought such as Logical Positivism,(see also http://www.loyno.edu/~folse/logpos.htm), outside of folklore and "fairy tales", the main source of literary fantasy was to be found in the Gothic genre.

Before the advent of "scientific thinking", if you will, people sort of actually believed in fantastical occurrences and beings (okay many people still do, to this day), but the point is that modern-day fantasy is not meant to be taken literally. People reading it do not expect it to be "true-to-life" in the ways that more realistic fiction tends to be.

So what I mean by "fantasy craze" is the glut of YA and other forms of modern fantasy, inclusive of this genre https://www.goodreads.com/genres/fantasy, but also inclusive of fantastical horror and fantastical SF, all of which really saw an explosion from around the 1970'-80's onwards.

Just read this great review of Min kamp 3.

The main idea is that the My Struggle series is a very well-executed "Death of/by Literature" by Knaussgard.

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n10/ben-lern...

I definitely feel an overdose of the fantasy that you are talking about. In fact, I'm having trouble thinking of a standard fantasy book that I really liked since Tolkien besides the A Game of Thrones series.

Yesterday, I watched so much sci-fi on tv I started to feel sick. I've never OD'd on sci-fi before.

As far as knowing other people. The charm of the Elena Ferrante books and the Min kamp 1 for me was the combination of getting such an intimate view of someone different and then finding out that they are so much the same. As an example, in the second Ferrante novel, The Story of a New Name much of the book goes into detail about the games teenagers play around gossip, sex, and becoming an adult. It was reassuring to me to read about Ferrante's experiences and their similarities to my own. Even while they were very different in many ways at the same time.

And just to add more recursion to this thread about post-post-modernism....
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Jonathan Sturgeon, in Flavorwire,

http://flavorwire.com/496630/the-best...

wrote about Ben Lerner's review of Min kamp 3 (that I linked to above):

"In fifty years, Ben Lerner’s review of Knausgaard’s Boyhood Island will be remembered alongside Christian Lorentzen’s review of his 10:04. Why? Because it all forms the critical basis of a deeply self-aware and altogether new form of autofictional writing, one that I believe signals the end of postmodernism in fiction. This is the best novelist-on-novelist book review of the year"

Hmm....I don't see how you can be deeply self-aware and not post-modern. ?? Both are meta or recursive.

The postmodern has a decent dose of paranoia and therefore it is not magical realism in the least. Like horror, fantasy works best with a healthy scepticism. Fantasy has no master and sets the imagination free, although it is always grounded in reality.

Greg wrote: "The postmodern has a decent dose of paranoia and therefore it is not magical realism in the least. Like horror, fantasy works best with a healthy scepticism. Fantasy has no master and sets the imag..."

Okay, agreed... but have I missed something? I went through this thread again to try and see where anybody said that po-mo = magical realism? Or was that just an off-the-cuff remark?

Michele wrote: "Hmm....I don't see how you can be deeply self-aware and not post-modern. ?? Both are meta or recursive."

Exactly. One of the biggest characteristics of po-mo is that it is self-conscious.