Experimental Literature - or Not

[steepholm]

Over the years I've read a lot of articles like this one by about Gabriel Josipovici, lamenting the state of contemporary British fiction. Most of the usual charges are present on this occasion, but for ease of reference I will list the classic ones, which include: a) an "uptight" concentration on precision and craft, which is seen here as a kind of unhealthy control-freakery; b) being "petty-bourgeois" (pun presumably intended); c) lack of ambition - often by comparison with American writing, to which the label "epic" attaches more easily, especially when you consider that a coast-to-coast road story set in England might only cover a distance of about 100 miles - but in this case more particularly by comparison with the formal experimentation of Sterne and the modernists of the early twentieth century.

As a matter of fact I'm not a huge reader of the usual Booker suspects either. I've no particular brief for Rushdie, Amis and the rest. But these general complaints say more about the complainer than about the literature, I suspect. First, Josipovici the article doesn't seem to question whether these Booker shortlist habitués are in fact the best writers the UK currently has to offer. Not only does he seem to be unaware of any genre other than adult lit-fic, he manages to get through the entire article without mentioning any female writer at all. Then again, what could be more bourgeois than to complain about how middle-class everything has become - as if to be bourgeois were ipso facto to be especially limited in outlook? Few writers were more bourgeois than Shakespeare, but even without that trump card it's a pretty dodgy proposition, both in theory and in practice. Finally, there's the valorization of formal experimentation, especially of the ostentatious variety, and the corresponding disdain for craft - a false opposition if ever there were one.

I too love Tristram Shandy, but not more than I love Pride and Prejudice. And which was more experimental anyway?

Comments

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Interesting that "experimental" is still an excuse for a lot of storytelling upchuckery.

[(Anonymous)]

This isn't an article *by* Josipovici but a journalist who sensationalises some fairly straightforward statements. How can he mention a female novelist if he has no control over the content? For what it's worth, his new book places Muriel Spark at the head of post-War British novelists and chose Rosalind Belben's Our Horses in Egypt as one of his books of the year in the TLS.

And he does question whether those male authors mentioned in the article are the best writers in the country. This is the flamin' point of the article! Try reading his essays, reviews and many great novels he's written before you apply some journalist's venal spin to him.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

You're quite right, Anon - that was careless of me. The cliches are entirely those of Dalya Alberge, not Josipovici himself. Apologies to the latter.

On the other hand, I don't see that the point of the article is to question whether the authors named are the best in the country - otherwise one might expect some alternative names and/or genres to have been mentioned. Alas, neither Muriel Spark nor any of the writers mentioned approvingly is alive, and Josipovici is quoted as saying that we are living in "a very fallow period". Perhaps that does not reflect his real belief, however?

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

By the way, I allow anonymous comments for the sake of people who don't have Livejournal accounts, but I'd appreciate it if you'd identify yourself, should you wish to comment again.

[diceytillerman.livejournal.com]

Ta, I just copied your phrasing on that for an anon comment I received today. :)