I'm not recognizing your conception of Naturalism. I think what's missing is Zola's idea of experimentalism in literature. Say we take a guy with "passions," say an "amorous man" (from Zola's example in his "The Experimental Novel") and place him in a social situation, his family, and see how the base materials, the social milieu and the various personalities, react to each other, and then you assess the results "scientifically." (This is all straight Zola, no chaser.) Etienne (from Zola's "Germinal") was just this sort, and his idealistic passions were what both stoked a miners' strike and also led to that strike's failure, as well as his romantic failures and near death.
What "passions" do characters in millennial novels have, and what do they do? Anything? Lerner, Moshfegh, any of them? Are these characters super horny, angry as hell, even idealistic, ambitious? Never. They often have nothing but a kind of wisp of originality or despair, they go about some sort of business, and end up where they began. This is not a literary experiment. And it's not determinism -- it's predetermined.
I think Neoliberal Predeterminism is a term for capturing this idea.
Way Harsh, Tai! Haha. I think the passion you describe is what Norris would refer to as Zola's Romanticism. I think that the experimentalism, sure, is not there in an obvious way. But in another way, I find it very present! To me, these authors -are- experimenting within the confines of our social systems. They are trying to elucidate how and why and where and when things like capitalism and racism and homophobia and technology and on and on impinge upon a life, constraint a life, affect a life. I mean, sure, they aren't experimenting in the way Zola conceived of it, but also, like, we now can put people on Mars.
I also think that Zola's passions are not inherently Naturalistic! I tend to agree with Norris on this. I think Zola was kind of a Romantic. But I don't know. This letter was mostly for fun. And maybe you just don't like Millennial Novels.
I also disagree! Take Raven Leilani's Luster, an unapologetically horny book. Or even Normal People, which is so astute about desire and craving and lust, etc. And often, the characters are ON FIRE to want to understand the world in which they live. So I don't know. Even if Passion weren't, to my mind, a Romantic Impulse. I'd say that it was certainly alive in in the Millennial Novel.
Don't mean to be harsh, B! Not at all. I think millennial literature is what it is, I neither like it nor dislike it. It's the tendencies in it that are interesting to me, and I felt compelled to say here that these tendencies are to me not classically naturalistic.
How would I describe them? I think these writers, Moshfegh, Lerner, etc., remind me of Knut Hamsun's Hunger more than anything, and a kind of Underground Man-type literature, in which a figure moves helplessly and powerlessly (not to mention comically, which most of these novels share, too) through a constraining context he can't in any way hope to alter—a phenomenon I called Superfluous Literature in a review I wrote (when I used to write reviews): https://www.cleavermagazine.com/berlin-alexanderplatz-a-novel-by-alfred-doblin-reviewed-by-tyson-duffy/
That's why I say millennial lit tends not to be determined, it tends toward PREdetermination. Were it not predetermined (for failure and despair), we might have seen Lerner's anxious, self-conscious, ambivalent, fairly fraudulent Adam Gordon in 'Leaving the Atocha Station' in a context in which his anxieties were brought out to elicit unexpected and dramatic real-world consequences (say he were assigned to direct an important performance or lead a protest or send someone to Mars, etc., and saw his own innate nature lead him to destruction—now THAT would be an experiment), instead of just sort of fart around and wander off. I think it's the drama that's missing—science experiments are always dramatic!
This exchange has made me curious about your book, which I will pick up. Thanks for replying.
I don't think that we necessarily disagree about the determinism, but I am excited by the idea of Neoliberal Predeterminism. Thanks for the link! I'll check it out! And thanks for the thoughtful comment! It's been a lot of fun, haha.
I am enjoying your takes on Rooney and Naturalism -- haven't talked about this since my 20th century American novel class in college way back when. I loved Normal People. One of my absolute favorite recent novels.
I'm not recognizing your conception of Naturalism. I think what's missing is Zola's idea of experimentalism in literature. Say we take a guy with "passions," say an "amorous man" (from Zola's example in his "The Experimental Novel") and place him in a social situation, his family, and see how the base materials, the social milieu and the various personalities, react to each other, and then you assess the results "scientifically." (This is all straight Zola, no chaser.) Etienne (from Zola's "Germinal") was just this sort, and his idealistic passions were what both stoked a miners' strike and also led to that strike's failure, as well as his romantic failures and near death.
What "passions" do characters in millennial novels have, and what do they do? Anything? Lerner, Moshfegh, any of them? Are these characters super horny, angry as hell, even idealistic, ambitious? Never. They often have nothing but a kind of wisp of originality or despair, they go about some sort of business, and end up where they began. This is not a literary experiment. And it's not determinism -- it's predetermined.
I think Neoliberal Predeterminism is a term for capturing this idea.
Way Harsh, Tai! Haha. I think the passion you describe is what Norris would refer to as Zola's Romanticism. I think that the experimentalism, sure, is not there in an obvious way. But in another way, I find it very present! To me, these authors -are- experimenting within the confines of our social systems. They are trying to elucidate how and why and where and when things like capitalism and racism and homophobia and technology and on and on impinge upon a life, constraint a life, affect a life. I mean, sure, they aren't experimenting in the way Zola conceived of it, but also, like, we now can put people on Mars.
I also think that Zola's passions are not inherently Naturalistic! I tend to agree with Norris on this. I think Zola was kind of a Romantic. But I don't know. This letter was mostly for fun. And maybe you just don't like Millennial Novels.
I also disagree! Take Raven Leilani's Luster, an unapologetically horny book. Or even Normal People, which is so astute about desire and craving and lust, etc. And often, the characters are ON FIRE to want to understand the world in which they live. So I don't know. Even if Passion weren't, to my mind, a Romantic Impulse. I'd say that it was certainly alive in in the Millennial Novel.
Don't mean to be harsh, B! Not at all. I think millennial literature is what it is, I neither like it nor dislike it. It's the tendencies in it that are interesting to me, and I felt compelled to say here that these tendencies are to me not classically naturalistic.
How would I describe them? I think these writers, Moshfegh, Lerner, etc., remind me of Knut Hamsun's Hunger more than anything, and a kind of Underground Man-type literature, in which a figure moves helplessly and powerlessly (not to mention comically, which most of these novels share, too) through a constraining context he can't in any way hope to alter—a phenomenon I called Superfluous Literature in a review I wrote (when I used to write reviews): https://www.cleavermagazine.com/berlin-alexanderplatz-a-novel-by-alfred-doblin-reviewed-by-tyson-duffy/
That's why I say millennial lit tends not to be determined, it tends toward PREdetermination. Were it not predetermined (for failure and despair), we might have seen Lerner's anxious, self-conscious, ambivalent, fairly fraudulent Adam Gordon in 'Leaving the Atocha Station' in a context in which his anxieties were brought out to elicit unexpected and dramatic real-world consequences (say he were assigned to direct an important performance or lead a protest or send someone to Mars, etc., and saw his own innate nature lead him to destruction—now THAT would be an experiment), instead of just sort of fart around and wander off. I think it's the drama that's missing—science experiments are always dramatic!
This exchange has made me curious about your book, which I will pick up. Thanks for replying.
I don't think that we necessarily disagree about the determinism, but I am excited by the idea of Neoliberal Predeterminism. Thanks for the link! I'll check it out! And thanks for the thoughtful comment! It's been a lot of fun, haha.
I am enjoying your takes on Rooney and Naturalism -- haven't talked about this since my 20th century American novel class in college way back when. I loved Normal People. One of my absolute favorite recent novels.
I feel like I'm learning more than in a whole class on contemporary writing I took at college (Cusk and Lerner featured).
i am but a literature dilettante yet i loved this
Thank you! Glad you liked it!
Oh boy, I had a mad crush on this stern Frenchie in high school.
Whomst among us, tbh.