The Ancient Art Of Keeping It Real

Sent in by Zen In Darkness: The Ancient Art Of Keeping It Real. An excerpt:

It's one of the most contentious debates in the literary blogosphere, but its roots stretch back more than 2,000 years. Is realism, "lifeness" or verisimilitude a necessary quality of good literature?

Former Guardian books editor James Wood argues forcefully that it is, and in so doing has trampled on and trounced some glamorous, bulgy, iconic American novels. This has fuelled fireworks and lit up a lot of Yankees. Votaries of Thomas Pynchon, David Foster Wallace and Don DeLillo are particularly hostile. Wood's extolling of "lifeness" and character as key to "how fiction works" has resulted in much red-flagged response from those who favour avant garde experimentalism. Attacks have been frenzied and in some cases gratuitously insulting. Much of the name calling can be put down to envy - Wood writes better than almost all comers - or a misplaced national pride - how dare this upstart limey besmirch our holy texts.

Wood's contention is that the best drama/fiction uses techniques that create lifelike characters because this is how emotions and feelings are most effectively communicated, how the most pleasure is gained and how moral improvement is best achieved. Of course, words on the page do not perfectly replicate the real world - they're just scribbled signs - but gain their power by creating reactions in readers which approximate those experienced in their real lives. If I can get psychoanalytical for a moment, when a situation replicates something first encountered in childhood, this often triggers feelings similar to those experienced years ago.