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.
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.
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
Oh boy, I had a mad crush on this stern Frenchie in high school.