LESS IS MORE, MORE OR LESS

The Fiction Of Fragments

“Fragments are the only forms
I trust” - Donald Barthelme.

The inherent anarchy of capitalist markets is absent from the linear forms of narrative fiction. The events in our lives don't fit the “Seven Basic Plots” of Christopher Booker. Life is a collage, informed by montages of memory. We are always becoming. The bourgeois construct of the novel serves bourgeois interests. There is no Everyman. Why not package yourself and take yourself to market? Genres are not species – they are not naturally occurring forms waiting to be classified. Do we want a world in which everything is entertainment? Each work should find its own form. A book is simply a collection of pages ; how many pages and what they contain should be a matter for the author and not a marketing department. Capitalism produces an illusion of choice ; there may be more cultural products but they reflect a narrow range of viewpoints. To paraphrase a song by Morrissey (“Panic”) : “The books that they constantly write say nothing to me about my life”. In my mind, “The Waste Land” by T.S. Eliot still provides a truer reflection of the experience of life in London than most contemporary novels. Samuel Beckett's “Breath” is usually staged as part of a package that forms a marketable evening in the theatre. Wouldn't it be better staged as the entire evening? Just think of the bar sales....

Posted by markkelly 13:53:55 31.10.2009;

Comments (195):

Genres/packaging

Well some of it is organisational. How to find what you want. I assume there's cause and effect in categorisation; I want something, you name it, other people like it, it becomes handy to keep it in that category. Perhaps the relative freedom of search engines will help us to search by words instead; fresh, minty, radical, children elicited
The Blood of Lambs, Kamal Saleem, Book - Barnes & Noble
2) Throughout the book, Kamal tells of the infiltration of radical Islamists ... tell us about the power of male role modeling in the life of a child? ... She would serve it cool that evening with pita bread, fresh mint, and cucumbers. ...
Hm. This may well be the book I want or the info on toothpaste or the chutney recipe.

Posted by Kenweatherloach 14:30:43 31.10.2009;

Suspicious package

Yes, of course, there is an organisational imperative but, just as our desires become both defined and frustrated by bureaucracies, so creative impulses are restrained by the demands of "the market". Word of mouth is more interesting than professional marketing, though sales are usually much lower - but why not settle for Less? It's exciting to stumble across something which you feel, (rightly or wrongly) you've discovered for yourself. Wall-to-wall marketing allows us to discover nothing except the same product being delivered again....

Posted by Bingo Crosby 17:18:04 31.10.2009;

Ever read any B.S. Johnson? I think you are on the same wavelength.

Posted by Mark Automaton 08:18:20 02.11.2009;

Another Double Entry

Hi. Yes. I'd also recommend a contemporary (and acquaintance) of his - Ann Quin. The biography of B.S. Johnson, "Like A Fiery Elephant", seems fitting in style, though I'm sure he'd have hated it on principle.

Posted by Mark Kelly 13:00:40 03.11.2009;

An Apology

This blog is being attacked by a plague of idiots leaving lengthy (often obscene) spam. Today, I've removed 74 offensive items. Apologies - I'll have to discontinue this particular blog. Please disregard any messages
left below this one.

Posted by markkelly 19:20:47 09.01.2010;