February 18, 2010
Shields takes on fiction/nonfiction distinction in newest book
David Shields’ newest book explores a new genre that blurs the line between fiction and nonfiction. Shields has also co-written a new, 700-page work about the late J.D. Salinger.
Reality Hunger: A Manifesto, Shields’ tenth book, will be published Feb. 23 by Alfred A. Knopf. In the first chapter, Shields says he intends an ars poetica, an explanation, for a “burgeoning group of interrelated (but unconnected) artists in a multitude of forms and media . . . who are breaking larger and larger chunks of ‘reality’ into their work.” At the same time that such artists, including fiction writers, are inserting “real” material, Shields says, nonfiction writers are shaping real material to fit their interpretation, sometimes making what could be called fiction, but also getting at truth.
Chapters of “Reality Hunger” are titled with letters of the alphabet and words such as “collage,” “reality,” and “in praise of brevity.” Within the chapters are numbered paragraphs, some by Shields, some by other artists, but none with quotation marks.
At the beginning of the “G” chapter, subtitled “blur,” Shields says, “An awful lot of fiction is immensely autobiographical, and a lot of nonfiction is highly imagined . . . ‘Fiction’/’nonfiction’ is an utterly useless distinction.” That passage is followed by lines from Emily Dickinson: “Tell all the Truth but tell it slant – ” yet there aren’t any quotation marks around her words.
It isn’t always easy to tell which words belong to Shields and which to other artists. You have to check the appendix. Shields’ choices range from Montaigne, who himself blended serious thought with anecdotes and autobiography, to Picasso and Woody Allen. In some cases, too, Shields has pared and reshaped the quotations to fit the needs of his book. New art, he explains in one of his paragraphs, is built on the shoulders of the old, so the boundaries sometimes blur.
Early reviews include one by writer Jami Attenberg in Bookforum: “There is an impressive rhythm to Reality Hunger: Shields posits ideas, cites references, composes a gallery of unique, influential voices to support his beliefs, and then — ever so gently, every so often — reveals a bit of his personal life.”
Shields has worked in several genres. His other nine published books include Handbook for Drowning: a Novel in Stories and Black Planet: Facing Race During an NBA Season, an exploration of how white men, including himself, project their own fears and fantasies onto black men’s bodies. More recently, Shields has written The Thing About Life Is That One Day You’ll be Dead, a meditation on mortality that was a New York Times best-seller.
For the Salinger book, Shields collaborated with Shane Salerno, a screenwriter who directed and produced Salinger, a two-hour documentary. However, Shields declined to elaborate about either book or movie, citing a confidentiality agreement that keeps him from talking until both works are sold.
To see Shields talk about his work, visit online here.
