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.I. The Future of Fiction issue of The Review of Contemporary Fiction, 1996, edited by David Foster Wallace is a little time capsule. What was the future seventeen years ago?
And my apologies for setting aside Ms. Woolf’s book for a day but this is a double-duty dose of literary candy candy candy for the likes of me :: RCF is always candy and on top of that thing is the thing where fictioneers talk about fiction and fictioning which is something I just can’t put down. One nugget follows another nugget until I’ve eaten up the whole damn thing.
Our contributors and my blurbs ::
David Foster Wallace -- The yet uncollected “Quo Vadis--Introduction” which used to be viewable on-line.
Sven Birkerts -- I’d like a revised version of this essay incorporating what Vollmann has done with the historical novel.
Melvin Jules Bukiet -- His Crackpot Realism designation was over-run by the choice of the opposition, Hysterical Realism.
Mary Caponegro -- She is a “Stone Age fictioneer” like me.
Peter Dimock -- Either I didn’t understand or I didn’t buy what he was arguing as “Literture as Lyrical Politics.”
Jonathan Franzen -- Strawman-diremptions years prior to the Mr Difficult stupidity ; as his title predicts, “I’ll Be Doing More of Same.”
Janice Galloway -- How to deal with “suggestions from noncreators about what ‘true’ creation should consist in”; or, art censorship by the reactionary, anti-art right-wing.
Gerald Howard -- Or, why I, “N.R.”, will likely not bother with Amis’ The Information.
Carole Maso -- Do you people know Maso? Maso is fantastic!
Bradford Morrow -- “‘Rivages Roses’ for Niels Bohr” ; or, “The physicist and fabulist are both magicians”.
John O'Brien -- “31 Questions and Statements about the Future of Literary Publishing, Bookstores, Writers, Readers, and Other Matters” -- I know that this volume of RCF is still in print, but good gods! can we just have this available far and wide on the internet already? Fantastic!!!
Christopher Sorrentino -- Like father like son ; and this one is better than the DFW stuff about fiction and Television and pop-culture. I will be reading Sorrentino The Younger’s books.
Steve Tomasula -- “Imagination dead, imagine!” says Beckett.
William T. Vollmann -- Bill likes to print ; ie, “SYSOUT=A” ;; I’d like to reproduce this for Vollmann fandom sake, but this volume is still in print.
Curtis White -- UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE YOU ARE IN THE POSTMODERN CONDITION ; “Get with it” ; “come to terms with theory” already. : a great anecdote about Spivak farting in response to a hostile anti-theory question ;; and a thing that goes Barth ->Acker -> Leyner.
Please correct me if I have linked incorrectly to the various author pages.
.II. A very nice surprise on page 122 : a photograph of Fernando Del Paso followed by an interview with him on the occasion of the Dalkey publication of his Palinuro of Mexico which I reallyreally want to read. (What we have here is a two-piece “Focus on Mexico”.) The interview is followed by a travel report by Rikki Ducornet, “On Returning from Chiapas: A Revery in Many Voices.” Do you know what happened in Chiapas in the early to mid-1990’s? Likely not. But thanks to people like Ducornet, voices like those of Chiapas may still be heard.
.III. This is where it all started to continue for me ; here in the review section of RCF ; in this issue is one of the most important reviews I have ever read. Here it was that my world of books was first made infinite ; by finding Steven Moore’s review of Infinite Jest. This is the review whence my “Family Resemblances” photo originates ; and my encyclopedic novels list(s) ;; and this is where I first learned of Robert Coover, D. Keith Mano, Richard Powers, Alexander Theroux, William T. Vollmann, Joseph McElroy (Gaddis and Gass I had learned of from Barth ;; Barth, DFW, Pynchon each came to me independently) ;;; so I hope maybe you’ll understand why I feel I owe so much to Steven Moore. This review can be read at the bottom of THIS PAGE. (There are other reviews in this issue which take one deeper into that time capsule I mentioned above ; seems like 1996 was a good year for fiction -- my complaint here is that Evan Dara’s first book did not get reviewed in this issue.)
And my apologies for setting aside Ms. Woolf’s book for a day but this is a double-duty dose of literary candy candy candy for the likes of me :: RCF is always candy and on top of that thing is the thing where fictioneers talk about fiction and fictioning which is something I just can’t put down. One nugget follows another nugget until I’ve eaten up the whole damn thing.
Our contributors and my blurbs ::
David Foster Wallace -- The yet uncollected “Quo Vadis--Introduction” which used to be viewable on-line.
Sven Birkerts -- I’d like a revised version of this essay incorporating what Vollmann has done with the historical novel.
Melvin Jules Bukiet -- His Crackpot Realism designation was over-run by the choice of the opposition, Hysterical Realism.
Mary Caponegro -- She is a “Stone Age fictioneer” like me.
Peter Dimock -- Either I didn’t understand or I didn’t buy what he was arguing as “Literture as Lyrical Politics.”
Jonathan Franzen -- Strawman-diremptions years prior to the Mr Difficult stupidity ; as his title predicts, “I’ll Be Doing More of Same.”
Janice Galloway -- How to deal with “suggestions from noncreators about what ‘true’ creation should consist in”; or, art censorship by the reactionary, anti-art right-wing.
Gerald Howard -- Or, why I, “N.R.”, will likely not bother with Amis’ The Information.
Carole Maso -- Do you people know Maso? Maso is fantastic!
Bradford Morrow -- “‘Rivages Roses’ for Niels Bohr” ; or, “The physicist and fabulist are both magicians”.
John O'Brien -- “31 Questions and Statements about the Future of Literary Publishing, Bookstores, Writers, Readers, and Other Matters” -- I know that this volume of RCF is still in print, but good gods! can we just have this available far and wide on the internet already? Fantastic!!!
Christopher Sorrentino -- Like father like son ; and this one is better than the DFW stuff about fiction and Television and pop-culture. I will be reading Sorrentino The Younger’s books.
Steve Tomasula -- “Imagination dead, imagine!” says Beckett.
William T. Vollmann -- Bill likes to print ; ie, “SYSOUT=A” ;; I’d like to reproduce this for Vollmann fandom sake, but this volume is still in print.
Curtis White -- UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE YOU ARE IN THE POSTMODERN CONDITION ; “Get with it” ; “come to terms with theory” already. : a great anecdote about Spivak farting in response to a hostile anti-theory question ;; and a thing that goes Barth ->Acker -> Leyner.
Please correct me if I have linked incorrectly to the various author pages.
.II. A very nice surprise on page 122 : a photograph of Fernando Del Paso followed by an interview with him on the occasion of the Dalkey publication of his Palinuro of Mexico which I reallyreally want to read. (What we have here is a two-piece “Focus on Mexico”.) The interview is followed by a travel report by Rikki Ducornet, “On Returning from Chiapas: A Revery in Many Voices.” Do you know what happened in Chiapas in the early to mid-1990’s? Likely not. But thanks to people like Ducornet, voices like those of Chiapas may still be heard.
.III. This is where it all started to continue for me ; here in the review section of RCF ; in this issue is one of the most important reviews I have ever read. Here it was that my world of books was first made infinite ; by finding Steven Moore’s review of Infinite Jest. This is the review whence my “Family Resemblances” photo originates ; and my encyclopedic novels list(s) ;; and this is where I first learned of Robert Coover, D. Keith Mano, Richard Powers, Alexander Theroux, William T. Vollmann, Joseph McElroy (Gaddis and Gass I had learned of from Barth ;; Barth, DFW, Pynchon each came to me independently) ;;; so I hope maybe you’ll understand why I feel I owe so much to Steven Moore. This review can be read at the bottom of THIS PAGE. (There are other reviews in this issue which take one deeper into that time capsule I mentioned above ; seems like 1996 was a good year for fiction -- my complaint here is that Evan Dara’s first book did not get reviewed in this issue.)
