Fiction vs. anti-fiction revisited:

...in the traditional form, "such writers power it does because it is always positthink they are reflecting or reproducing ing nothingess, because it is so 'created' 0 NE OF THE thorniest problems posed reality...

...What is the nature of fiction/anti- Within the Word, which argues a self- If we look at fiction as John Gardner JANETOROTHformerly on the editorial staff of contained fictional world, the lines of does-and as most of the great novelists The New Yorker, is presently a member of the this no-longer-new debate became re- of the 19th century did-as a representaEnglish Department at the University of Cin- drawn and took on new life...

...This turn outward, how- Fitzgerald...

...If you do not believe any of this, then read John ever, is not a return to an outdated nineteenth century realism Updike's The Coup...

...they must think that 'out there' .. [Barth] always make us aware of what just this insistence on no message...

...We look to it to find reader's usual sympathies or antipathies...

...may prove similarly enlightening here...

...Last October, a Fiction Festival anti-fiction with a want of moral M OST OF our familiar novelists held at the University of Cincinnati (in seriousness-a proposition Gass firmly have operated-and many still joint sponsorship with the National En- rejects...

...In it, a Standing like grace notes in the early this vision says, it must be supplied by Jewish liquor-store owner from Min- days of the festival were the readings of you, the reader...

...The implica- hell succeeds in getting him a hearing and bate...

...One was reminded that realm where everything is held in sus- goes on stirring up the populace until words, next to children, are the most pension...

...have been exhausted in the 18th century...

...qualify as a beautiful object...

...Gardner tion of the real world, then our concern cinnati...

...In other words, a willing sus- God himself is forced to stand trial in exciting, dangerous and delightful adult pension of all beliefs...

...but we are vitally Is such an approach merely perverse...

...In it, we follow the interior states the contemporary scene of anti-fiction of an academic couple who are forced to writers and the work they dolive in close proximity to a couple of their B ARTH introduced a selection from his shimmering over, shattering, reflecting, peers, in a two-family dwelling that new work entitled Letters as an at- challenging, borrowing, and, in general, sports extremely thin walls...

...The vision on the identified with the anti-fiction novel, did that could not come out of one's own other side is seen to be not moral, im- not participate in a panel, but he appeared imagination at all...

...he each of them...

...We look 11 May 1979: 269 upon it as a dramatic forum in which (Spring/Summer, 1978) "Anti-fiction so many of today's most gifted writers philosophical questions are explored by may include a story, but will fracture it...

...the traditional processes of reading and With the publication last year of John To state the two views in the briefest writing fiction that the productions of the Gardner's On Moral Fiction, which ar- way possible will necessarily be crude modern school came to be identified as gues the superiority of the traditional and inadequate...

...In his larly undertakes to render suicide, adul- chapter on "Nonbeing opening up betery and various forms of sexual deprav- ing" Tillich says: "In our discussion of ity involving children in an aesthetically courage and life we have mentioned the pleasing light...

...The opportunity of hearfiction began to turn inward and to evince teacher of English at the University of ing first-hand from several anti-fiction an ever-greater consciousness that the Cincinnati, are now in print...

...So our late 1970s novelists are not optimistic but they with the writing...

...neapolis is sent to his reward by a couple Tillie Olsen and John Gardner from their The sine qua non of literary apprecia- of gun-toting heroin addicts in the course own fiction, written in traditional form...

...charge against Gass (and the other writ- treasure of meaning...

...adolescents," read us a quite indescriba- participatory cast of morality-byble passage from it...

...Such an understandCommonweal: 270 ing is possible only if one accepts the changes as it is borne in upon them that figures from one of his earlier novels view that non-being belongs to being, their own intimate acts in bedroom, bath- write to one another describing kaleidothat being could not be the ground of life room and kitchen are likewise being in- scopic (and quite unsummarizable) without non-being . . . non-being drives stantly and noisily communicated to the carryings-on on the banks of Baltimore's being out of its seclusion, it forces it to couple on the other side...

...We no longer consider the ques- exploring them...

...Elkin, hav- playthings conceivable...

...William Gass read a section smithereens "because I could never find possible that whatever direction fiction called "The Tunnel" from his new my audience...

...They become river...

...were reassuringly free of cloven hooves) out how to live...

...view, and of William Gass's The World equally so to both...

...would seem to be a matter not of the want means of characters who live them out in .. It forbids, ignores, or frustrates the of morals (all participants in the festival an exemplary way...

...We care, naturally, that but rather the result of a swing of the it should be beautiful...

...They provoke though, the kind of love ration by ordinary fictional-and Stanley Elkin, another major figure that one feels only for amazing things moral-standards...

...11 May 1979: 271...

...Gass give us our cue when he but, by virtue of sheer annoyance power, and Gardner at the Festival nevertheless says"as a fiction writer I find it conve- his complaint from the lower regions of provided a valuable comment on the denient not to believe things...

...To approach this If, on the other hand, we look at fiction ers of anti-fiction) of a want of moral treasure from the perspective of faith is to as William Gass does-and as many of seriousness wouldn't hold up...

...The Gass- writers who spoke about the philosophithing they were producing was a product Gardner debate appeared in The New Re- cal and ethical bases of their work reof the imagination: an object made of public, March 10, the Barth-Hawkes lieved that burden for many who attended words...

...Nobody can truly suffer or be truly exchange with Gardner "John wants a but rather the presence or absence in obscene in Saul Bellow's work, for message, some kind of communication them of a system of belief(s) -almost example, because he has a humane comic to the world...

...tion is that we, as fiction readers, will an eventual transfer to heaven...

...lected all sorts of highway signs and stylistic and interpretive assumptions And I want fiction always to situate us in made a piece of sculpture out of these which are unavailable to the writer of the psychic and literal spot where life is things that says Chicago, 35,000 miles...

...tempting to disarm "the almost insistent this vein, the absence of the moral fiction But what, if any, is the moral content communicability of language...

...anti-fiction that stubbornly resists penet- at the stake...

...to Nabokov do-as a made thing, the only round us everywhere," agreed that approach it from the perspective of doubt difference between it and any other made "they are deeply important" but ques- is to find in it a multitude of discrete thing being its materials, which are lin- tioned "whether or not writing fiction, sounds signifying nothing, out of which guistic instead of mortar or brick, then rather than, for instance, doing the best one can hope to make is, as Gass our concern with it is properly an aesthe- philosophy, is a good method" for has noted, a linguistic construct that can tic one...

...It began to seem own works...

...All that can be said of inference...

...perversity began to feel like the salutary seriously, notably in the idea of trinity...

...I want to plant some object any system, from orthodox religion to a vision...

...Unlike much of the continental European have turned outward once again and no longer refrain from tradition with its emphasis on ideology, the middle avenue reporting what Richard Locke has dubbed "the secular between the demanlls of Realism and Art, between the Best news...

...At first the tempt to resuscitate a literary form-the refreshing the literature of both past and couple listens with malicious glee to the epistolary novel-hitherto supposed to present-sets up a tension, charges the sounds of living issuing from next door...

...anti-fiction revisited JANET GROTH fiction...

...To we are most afraid of, which is nothingwhat Gass means when he speaks of at- judge from statement after statement in ness...

...By this Large audiences attended all the readtoo...

...modern psyche from a natural condition concerned that it be good and true, and Is it, as Gardner suggests, immoral...

...About twenty years tion is the author's position on those heart of hearts cannot get past its often ago, with the advent of Pynchon and questions...

...Computer error anti-fiction which dominated the event, disbelief," so serviceable to us on the sends the proprietor to the wrong reward these works and the presence of Olsen other side...

...affirm itself dynamically...

...One loves them the moral, or amoral so much an anti-moral...

...I .. that it's pointing somewhere...

...introduced the element of morality into with it is properly a moral one...

...At the fulcrum point of this swing senting us with a vision of life the ac- val came early in the Gass-Gardner de- is the Logos, the divine principle which quaintance with which-whether tragic, bate with the discovery that Gardner's bears within its garments of language the or comic-we may feel as salutary...

...Tillich goes increasingly and progressively inhibited For those to whom the festival discuson to assert that philosophy has dealt with until, finally, they break down com- sions had granted a new vantage point, this dynamic in Hegel and the Neo- pletely in a state that seems to be a com- these anti-fiction readings attained a platonists, and that theology has done so bination of acute paranoia and virtually strange power...

...Armed with our new dictum, let Bernard Shaw, winds up with pure Yid- contentless beauty of the moon, our us go on to look briefly at the readings the dish theater...

...Our contemporary novelists about the art of fiction-making...

...tions of truth and goodness with regard to The contributions of Gass, Hawkes, Before we find these writers in the it, but wish to know only one thing: is it and Barth to the two fiction festival anti-fiction mode wanting in either moral beautiful...

...should take in the future, the presence on novel...

...But ac- such belief makes possible to the writer think the writing of fiction involves tually I've gone down the road and col- of traditional fiction a whole series of enormous anxiety and enormous risk...

...Gardner regrets and finds missing from of this willingnesss to embrace risk, to But there is content in anti-fiction, and encounter nothingness...

...Perhaps his vision is sustaining...

...They must think they know what that it also insists on that which is vacant . by the anti-fiction school of writing is reality is...

...If there is to be any moral insight here, novel, The Conventional Wisdom...

...John Hawkes regu- defined it as the "courage to be...

...tion on this side of the glass is no longer of a robbery designed to yield funds for Not strictly germane to the discussion of the Coleridgeian "willing suspension of the support of their habit...

...what He might well have been moved to add ing the heroine of his new novel as "the had presented itself to us as morally repthat literature does so in the form of anti- depraved matron of a home for disturbed rehensible began to take on an enjoyable fiction...

...Dickens, for example, once modified by a discussion between two major prac- als, there is still a burden of misuna character in one of his serially- titioners of the anti-fiction novel: John derstanding about its nature which published works when word reached him Barth and John Hawkes...

...Far from looking to the work panels make it clear that what separates seriousness or moral courage it might be for any philosophical guidelines on how their work from the realist tradition well to consider what John Hawkes has to to live or expecting it to supply us with a Gardner is identifying as "moral" is not say on the subject of risk: ". . . at least in sense of affirmation of life, we view it as the presence or absence of moral serious- certain writers, comedy is too comforta linguistic construct...

...when exposed to something IMMEDIATELY we understand that it is that it involves the moon, the matron, dislocating or frustrating in the text we dynamic and accept the efficacy of a young boy, and an atmosphere of could begin to feel about it something of dialectically opposing what is and what is pleasurable dread...

...In their be able to construct whole systems of the best post-Joycean novelists, includ- very first exchange Gass readily acknow- morality and belief and-in ultimate ing Samuel Beckett and Vladimir ledged that of course, "moral issues sur- terms-to create a coherent universe...

...The new insistence upon viewing comments in The New York Times Book the festival, A resume of their positions the novel as artifact proved so inimical to Review, April 1, 1979...

...But Gass goes on, "Not to disbe- time it has become clear, however, that ings and seemed equally receptive at lieve things either, just to move into a the fellow is a chronic malcontent...

...It is at once about Africa, about America, nor is it counterfeit journalism...

...literary atmosphere in such a way that all But, gradually their mocking contempt His reading consisted of letters which readers and writers benefit...

...Later, Hawkes ex- what John Barth says he feels when he not, we pass through the looking glass pressed his hope that in this book, once reads John Hawkes: "They wear me out, and find a kind of entree into the world of and for all "innocence would be burned Hawkes's books...

...do-out of a consciousness that, dowment for the Arts) brought Gass and The matter seems worth reviewing though their medium may be artificial, Gardner together to debate the matter, an here because, in spite of a considerable they are dealing with the material of real- event that was followed a few days later vogue for anti-fiction among intellectuity...

...anti-fiction, not because he has no moral most difficult, most dangerous, most What I hope, of course, is that people sense but because, as Gass put it, "I beautiful...

...God, in an artistic-and familiar planet, earth, took on contours authors gave at the festival from their cosmic-fit of pique blows everybody mysterious and new...

...It was a little like Of course, all of this means little with- ing rung a series of brilliant changes on a trip to outer space, where from the out the literary art it is designed to be in Dance, Milton, the Bible, and George vantage point of the weightless, all-butaid of...

...And, as Hawkes said of writers John Barth's fiction has the enormous consequently forgetting Chicago...

...THE DEBATE SHIFTS TO THE MORAL QUESTION Fiction vs...

...Many pay the anti-fiction novel lip midget- was causing pain and distress to explicit content, a significant shaping service, may purchase-and even a real midget, resident in the Midlands, factor in virtually all contemporary fic- read-an anti-fiction work, but in their and much beloved...

...What emerged afflicts large portions of the reading pubthat the character-a stony-hearted was a demonstration that, whatever its lic...

...Paul Tillich has it is often very harsh...

...in the world...

...In a preoccupations of the post-modernists, refers to a novelist's distinctively modern fashion our recent better novels mark a concern with facticity, with the rhetoric and reality of social return to that precarious path trod by Melville and Hawthorne, change, with moral and spiritual questions-in short, with Twain and James, and later by Hemingway, Faulkner and what Henry James called "felt life...

...The presence of some: erything is tentative, nothing is certain...

...order to shut everybody up...

...at the festival to read a section of his new more for that fact...

...It is is reality, which I don't think at all...

...Transcripts of both discus- repellent content and textual difficulty to Borges, among others, some writers of sions, edited by Thomas LeClair, a actually like it...

...What, if any, is its moral con- the discussion, charging the writers of tent...

...As George P. Elliot de- dynamic understanding of reality by the scribes it in The American Scholar philosophers of life...

...myth, the absurd, comedy, multiple narrative perspectives and instead, it is moving into a new and, perhaps, more precarious so on, but they are also engaged with the world and not just phase...

...one can only hope to be anti-fiction...

...Locke's phrase, in contradistinction to the parochial Sellers and the Groves, is a peculiarly American tradition...

...Gass says in his ness (moral views) in them as authors, ing...

...ity of meaning...

...We might look too, at his will come along, gather in front of the don't know, most of the time, what I tribute to his fellow novelist: "For me sculpture, and just look at it- believe...

...One of faith to one of radical existential we hold the author responsible for pre- of the first revelations of the fiction festi- doubt...

...John Hawkes, after cheerfully describ- destruction of preconceived ideas...

...they hurt my head...

...and, best of all, it is about the continue to tap all the post-modernist resources like parody, human heart in conflict with itself...

...What had seemed mere whenever it took the idea of a living God paralyzing self-consciousness...

...Now it happens to be made minimal humanistic belief in the possibil- But for me everything is dangerous, evof signs, which may lead people to think...