{"id":4070,"date":"2010-03-15T20:30:10","date_gmt":"2010-03-16T03:30:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.candlelightstories.com\/?p=4070"},"modified":"2010-03-15T20:30:33","modified_gmt":"2010-03-16T03:30:33","slug":"reality-hunger-a-manifesto","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/candlelightstories.com\/Blog\/2010\/03\/15\/reality-hunger-a-manifesto\/","title":{"rendered":"Reality Hunger: A Manifesto"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I haven’t finished it yet.\u00a0 But Reality Hunger: A Manifesto<\/a><\/em> by David Shields<\/em> is making me forget to eat my food. That’s how good it is. I’m sitting there in my local restaurants trying my best to finish my Pasta Siciliana, but I’m staring at my Kindle screen and almost jumping out of my chair with ideas. That’s what this book is for. It was written to light a fire underneath the bottom of an artist.\"\"<\/p>\n

Don’t be afraid of stealing.\u00a0 Just do it.<\/p>\n

David Shields is a thief and he’s the happiest most energetic thief you’ll ever meet between to covers.\u00a0 All art is theft.\u00a0 We build all our original creations on top of other creations.\u00a0 We consume and then we spit the pieces back out in exploding new arrangements.\u00a0 We appropriate all the time when we incorporate bits of newsprint into paintings, or street sounds into symphonies, or quotes into novels.<\/p>\n

Novels.\u00a0 What are they and what do they really do?\u00a0 Do we need or want novels anymore?\u00a0 Fiction?\u00a0 Or do we want the more real?\u00a0 Are we craving more and more reality?\u00a0 It’s on TV everywhere.\u00a0 Can the old form of the novel that describes scenes so well and gets into the characters’ heads really compete with all the new forms coming to life that are built primarily upon reality?<\/p>\n

What is reality?\u00a0 Whose reality?\u00a0 Isn’t one’s perception of a simple street scene actually fiction once it passes through the subjective filter?\u00a0 Isn’t everything ultimately fiction?<\/p>\n

Shields’s book is composed of many fragments mostly snatched from other people throughout history.\u00a0 Shields leaves his own remarks unannounced until the back of the book where he finally credits his sources.\u00a0 The point is to connect thoughts from all over the world through many ages to gradually build up a central argument or ‘manifesto’ for a modern art or literature that eliminates the guilt from borrowing or ‘stealing.’\u00a0 The ideas are obviously not all new, otherwise there would be no fragments to put in the book.\u00a0 But the expression of the ideas in this way is new.\u00a0 Reality Hunger<\/em> is a jolt and it will offend as many or more people than it inspires.<\/p>\n

Several years ago Bob Dylan got into hot water for using a phrase from a relatively unknown novel.\u00a0 Sure enough, Dylan’s phrase did match the novelist’s.\u00a0 Outrage ensued.\u00a0 When the novelist was asked about his feelings he stated that if Bob Dylan wanted to use one of his phrases he was simply honored.<\/p>\n

This book is very timely in a world where people are getting into lawsuits because some artist’s sculpture appears in a street photo.\u00a0 We’ve been waiting for this book.\u00a0 Fortunately, Mr. Shields is as excited about this book as his readers are – those who aren’t outraged anyway.\u00a0 He comes off as a very energetic and enthusiastic partner to the artist.\u00a0 I admire this book a great deal and will most likely be referring to bits and pieces of it for many years – and stealing them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I haven’t finished it yet.\u00a0 But Reality Hunger: A Manifesto by David Shields is making me forget to eat my food. That’s how good it is. I’m sitting there in my local restaurants trying my best to finish my Pasta Siciliana, but I’m staring at my Kindle screen and almost jumping out of my chair […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[137,78],"tags":[1008,2485,1009],"class_list":["post-4070","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-literature","tag-david-shields","tag-literary","tag-manifesto"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/candlelightstories.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4070","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/candlelightstories.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/candlelightstories.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/candlelightstories.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/candlelightstories.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4070"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/candlelightstories.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4070\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4082,"href":"https:\/\/candlelightstories.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4070\/revisions\/4082"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/candlelightstories.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/candlelightstories.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4070"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/candlelightstories.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}