David Shields – Michigan Quarterly Review

David Shields

Not Essay, Nor Fiction, But Prose: Of Narration

In his manifesto Reality Hunger, David Shields uses assemblage to curate a dialogue about the limits of The Real. The voices he appropriates and sequences implicitly argue that our increasingly urgent twenty-first century desire for reality is compromised by the fact that our storytelling mechanisms are growing further from it. As Shields notes (without acknowledging in the text proper that he is parroting E. L. Doctorow), “There’s no longer any such thing as fiction or nonfiction; there’s only narrative.”

Not Essay, Nor Fiction, But Prose: Of Narration Read More »

In his manifesto Reality Hunger, David Shields uses assemblage to curate a dialogue about the limits of The Real. The voices he appropriates and sequences implicitly argue that our increasingly urgent twenty-first century desire for reality is compromised by the fact that our storytelling mechanisms are growing further from it. As Shields notes (without acknowledging in the text proper that he is parroting E. L. Doctorow), “There’s no longer any such thing as fiction or nonfiction; there’s only narrative.”

An Aggregated Equality

by Greg Schutz

Thomas Jefferson, remix artist? Well, yes. Fragmentation and recombination are natural features—and unavoidable consequences—of language use, and the Declaration of Independence is a remarkable remix of ideas, a crosshatch of interconnected and often competing influences. What might an investigation of the Declaration tell us about the internet, Reality Hunger, and collage as a literary form?

An Aggregated Equality Read More »

by Greg Schutz

Thomas Jefferson, remix artist? Well, yes. Fragmentation and recombination are natural features—and unavoidable consequences—of language use, and the Declaration of Independence is a remarkable remix of ideas, a crosshatch of interconnected and often competing influences. What might an investigation of the Declaration tell us about the internet, Reality Hunger, and collage as a literary form?

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