tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470094.post5406012094012531804..comments2024-03-18T16:55:31.971+00:00Comments on This Space: The Munro DoctrineStephen Mitchelmorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01658772259307446873noreply@blogger.comBlogger21125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470094.post-74449297645866788462013-12-11T01:29:28.204+00:002013-12-11T01:29:28.204+00:00This instead of a proper Nobel lecture. http://www...This instead of a proper Nobel lecture. http://www.nobelprize.org/mediaplayer/index.php?id=1973Frances Madesonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03621630522922354741noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470094.post-833335577201615252013-11-25T17:46:21.793+00:002013-11-25T17:46:21.793+00:00It seems fair to equate epistemological certainty ...It seems fair to equate epistemological certainty with an unreliable author, not unlike the unreliable narrator. Of course epistemological certainty has a hint of certitude itself.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470094.post-86581230436820097902013-11-22T12:07:35.736+00:002013-11-22T12:07:35.736+00:00Many thanks Douglas: such a relief to have a comme...Many thanks Douglas: such a relief to have a comment like this. Of course, Bernhard's Lime Works is made up entirely of overheard and attributed remarks – an extraordinary achievement and easily missed in the headlong nature of the prose. <br /><br />I have the same intolerance for third person narrators and begin much heralded novels in some confusion when they start narrating in sentences lacking any truth or necessity. Stephen Mitchelmorehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01658772259307446873noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470094.post-69228894196952902282013-11-22T11:00:15.681+00:002013-11-22T11:00:15.681+00:00Thank you for taking on figure of the masterly (an...Thank you for taking on figure of the masterly (and masterful) mental eavesdropper so forthrightly and thoroughly. And I understand the inexorability of the demurral that "Isn't this what fiction does?" Some years ago I lost the ability to tolerate omniscient third-person narrators, and when I try to justify my intolerance to my fellow-readers I feel as though I sound as perverse as I would in explaining that I had given spinach for health reasons. Two complementary remarks: 1) In Bernhard, as I'm sure you are aware, the renouncing of any claim to be privy to the thoughts of others is usually signaled by his making it clear at the outset (e.g., through an interpolated "So-and-so writes") that the text is already something already written and that therefore mediates rather than registers thought; that it is from the outset a product of the reflective use of language and hence is already publicly oriented. 2) Kafka is usually (though not always) writing within (even if also against) the tradition of the Märchen or tale, in which actions not thoughts are paramount, and in which indeed subjective states can only be rudimentarily described; such that when (as in "The Judgment") he starts reporting such states in an involved Henry James-esque sort of way it is already a sign that something is epistemologically out of joint, that "somebody" may be if not "telling lies" then at least well beyond the reach of the truth. Douglas Robertsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06195660217530594218noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470094.post-63949280974305385102013-11-21T17:34:05.260+00:002013-11-21T17:34:05.260+00:00To pass judgment on an author's "epistemo...To pass judgment on an author's "epistemology", you'd need to be better acquainted with their work than that. Worth noting as well that Gary Lutz is a great admirer of Woolf, for the exact reasons Mepham describes. And as for his certainty and mastery, this interview with Blake Butler is telling: http://www.vice.com/read/windows-that-lead-to-more-windows-an-interview-with-gary-lutz "Life is plotproof, muddled, desultory, irreducible to chains of cause and effect. It’s sweaty and rampantly sad. It’s a motion of moments. There’s no line of any kind other than the one that runs from birth to thwarting to death. As a reader, I drop out of a novel or even a short story as soon as I sense that the writer has a scheme and is overarranging things. I’ve had it with the masterminded." Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13391110313998987958noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470094.post-49961650942937210882013-11-21T10:56:31.956+00:002013-11-21T10:56:31.956+00:00I am not *attacking* anyone but attempting to defi...I am not *attacking* anyone but attempting to define a difference I've noticed over 25 years of reading. If I stopped reading American authors, it was because I've had enough of a lack of nourishment. The same goes for English authors. <br /><br />"Properly" is a vague term. Stephen Mitchelmorehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01658772259307446873noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470094.post-80211920800049861332013-11-21T10:37:19.632+00:002013-11-21T10:37:19.632+00:00Well, as the other commenter suggests, you could s...Well, as the other commenter suggests, you could start by properly reading the ones you've decided to attack! Honestly...Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00078049462800612965noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470094.post-74970526351041076622013-11-21T10:22:06.594+00:002013-11-21T10:22:06.594+00:00I agree, which is demonstrated in that comment: yo...I agree, which is demonstrated in that comment: you clearly haven't recognised the qualifications written into the general point. <br /><br />But, to be sure, how many American novels and novelist should I read before I can comment: 10, 20, 500, 501? <br />Stephen Mitchelmorehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01658772259307446873noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470094.post-27333031122912814842013-11-21T09:33:40.202+00:002013-11-21T09:33:40.202+00:00I guess what I'm saying is that you can't ...I guess what I'm saying is that you can't credibly propose any kind of doctrine if you haven't done the reading.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00078049462800612965noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470094.post-10422688998037673472013-11-21T08:19:15.079+00:002013-11-21T08:19:15.079+00:00Max, yes, you're right and this has been the d...Max, yes, you're right and this has been the danger of isolating something higher in what's very low. I'm not saying "anyone who uses these sentences is an imperialist who has epistemological certainty", I'm saying it reveals a tendency to accept their passport to bypass consternation and/or fascination with writing in favour of creative writing class-based noodling. <br /><br />James – there's a reason I don't read much American fiction, for the same reason the Hunger Artist doesn't eat much. However, I wrote an essay on Ford's Bascombe trilogy, which at least shows there are exceptions to the doctrine: http://www.readysteadybook.com/Article.aspx?page=mitchelmoreonford Stephen Mitchelmorehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01658772259307446873noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470094.post-24792193205828566932013-11-21T00:57:02.440+00:002013-11-21T00:57:02.440+00:00But isn't your implied argument of "Ameri...But isn't your implied argument of "American fiction = (bad) mastery; European fiction = (good) uncertainty" kind of breathtakingly crude? Especially as you don't seem to have read much American fiction. Countless counter-examples can be martialled on either side, it seems.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00078049462800612965noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470094.post-77746888569930844532013-11-21T00:51:19.751+00:002013-11-21T00:51:19.751+00:00Got it, thank you. Though the explanation makes me...Got it, thank you. Though the explanation makes me wonder if the unit of the sentence will do what you want it to, in terms of separating the skeptical, distrustful writers from the overly confident ones. With Beckett, Sebald, and especially (to the point of absurdity) Bernhard, you pick up a sentence and you immediately see the uncertainty -- in the daisy-chained attribution tags and all that. But Kafka's sentences aren't like this. He can put together a story using nothing but normal-looking sentences narrated in the third person (roughly in the same genus as Munro's and Lutz's sentences, even), and still produce the same kind of uncertainty. His consternation, as Beckett said, is in the form. <br /><br />In other words, I don't think serene, unqualified third-person sentences are necessarily inconsistent with "epistemologically uncertain" writing. The uncertainty can show up elsewhere. <br /><br />Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02945029042658059498noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470094.post-33988713593493182032013-11-20T22:24:34.882+00:002013-11-20T22:24:34.882+00:00OK, my point is that The Judgment is a deceptive a...OK, my point is that The Judgment is a deceptive artifice like the letter Georg is writing and is punished for such deception as the story is *punished* by ending abruptly without any apparent logic. Writing is true only insofar as it can follow Georg into his death sentence (hence its end). Kafka belongs with the others in that he writes within this distrust of language. Clearly there's an element of taste in this but this is a provisional attempt to understand why do writers like these speak to me in ways the other two don't. Stephen Mitchelmorehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01658772259307446873noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470094.post-89275363508514827862013-11-20T22:08:25.971+00:002013-11-20T22:08:25.971+00:00Thanks for the interesting post. Could you say a b...Thanks for the interesting post. Could you say a bit more about why Kafka belongs -- by this particular metric -- with Bernhard, Beckett, Kundera? "The Judgement" seems to have plenty of "extracts reporting the inner lives and experience of people narrated in the third person." Right away we're told what Georg is thinking, feeling, and so forth. I don't quite get the argument as to why this isn't what you've called epistemological certainty. Only because the story fringes on fantasy?<br /><br />Thanks again.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02945029042658059498noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470094.post-77288239205815723722013-11-20T21:41:59.701+00:002013-11-20T21:41:59.701+00:00For the record: I'm referring to the evidence ...For the record: I'm referring to the evidence of the sentences in the two stories rather than what I've read about them.Stephen Mitchelmorehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01658772259307446873noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470094.post-52102244397619109472013-11-20T21:16:44.757+00:002013-11-20T21:16:44.757+00:00Fair enough, but (I'll leave it at this- sorry...Fair enough, but (I'll leave it at this- sorry!) I think you'd need to read more than one story by each author to get a grasp of the "evidence"...Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13391110313998987958noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470094.post-8729553229421056322013-11-20T21:10:10.626+00:002013-11-20T21:10:10.626+00:00We'll have to disagree because I think the evi...We'll have to disagree because I think the evidence is overwhelming and there's no point repeating the argument. Stephen Mitchelmorehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01658772259307446873noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470094.post-52899341654810142802013-11-20T20:57:02.431+00:002013-11-20T20:57:02.431+00:00Ah, I think you might need to read more by both au...Ah, I think you might need to read more by both authors, although I've not read much Munro either! But there is a very simple sense in which the "Lish style" (if we can call it that) is far from epistemologically certain: writers who write that way literally do not know where language is leading them--they're using the rhythm and grain of language to propel their writing along (largely using different kinds of repetition), instead of "plot" or "character". One thing's for sure: there definitely, definitely aren't any stable, fixed, or "known" characters (known to the author, or to the reader) anywhere in Lutz's writing, from what I've read! There are really only rhythms and voices.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13391110313998987958noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470094.post-88752229144332714872013-11-20T20:44:46.625+00:002013-11-20T20:44:46.625+00:00Thanks. I think you're missing what I mean by ...Thanks. I think you're missing what I mean by epistemological certainty. "Loo" is the only story of Lutz's I've read and it's identical in the way I've explained to the only Alice Munro story I know. Perhaps EC needs to be defined: the narration has an a priori knowledge of its object (the named character) and then perhaps "operates in terms of the rotation of objects" etc. I'm sure this appreciation is relevant in a rhetorical approach to reading, but that's not what I'm interested in here, which is closer to an ethical demand.Stephen Mitchelmorehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01658772259307446873noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470094.post-57287811393851289122013-11-20T20:28:26.860+00:002013-11-20T20:28:26.860+00:00I probably haven't read as much Lutz as you (o...I probably haven't read as much Lutz as you (only the first two collections, not "Divorcer") ... but I think most would strongly disagree with the idea that his writing exhibits any sense of "epistemological certainty"! My understanding is that he has much more in common with, for instance, Emil Cioran, than with Alice Munro ... that comparison is a real stretch. Similarly, all of that Lish-inspired stuff about the "poetics of the sentence" is basically about the structural play of repetition and difference -- one thing it has in common with Bernhard, although there are methodological differences too. Brian Evenson pinpoints that in a more nuanced way: "Bernhard provides a verbal event constructed around opposition and paradox, a binary movement forward and backward. Lish, on the other hand, operates in terms of the rotation of objects, bringing the same objects to attention in a changing sequence." http://www.webdelsol.com/evenson/beven.htmAnonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13391110313998987958noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470094.post-17065806821082996452013-11-20T15:40:08.661+00:002013-11-20T15:40:08.661+00:00Well, I read Munro's prose and I see nothing r...Well, I read Munro's prose and I see nothing remarkable about it. But I have no problem seeing Kundera, Kafka and Woolf are light years ahead of her.LMRhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08538873868140070018noreply@blogger.com