This is not a recording: Faux-Dickensian (or James Wood's Hysterical Realism Again)

[Kai Frederik Lorentzen]

The novelist Jan Brandt ("Gegen die Welt") claims to write MANIC 
REALISM, a label which is, according to Brandt, the most adequate to 
grasp the totality of description. He differentiates it from 'magic 
realism' by "extraordinary violence" and "unexplainable brutality" that 
can hit the world any time and thus are mixed into reality and fantasy 
from the very start. The examples he gives in addition to his own big 
novel are "2666" by Bolano and "House of Leaves" by Danielewski. Of 
course, MANIC REALISM sounds - not only, or in the first place, because 
of its resonance with 'magic realism' - much better than 'hysterical 
realism', a label Wood created with pejorative intentions. So perhaps 
MANIC REALISM could indeed be working as a "great phrase" for a "new 
branch of surrealism". Vonnegut, Pynchon ...

 > Der Manische Realismus ist ein Begriff, der meines Erachtens am 
ehesten die Totalität der Darstellung erfasst. Er grenzt sich vom 
Magischen Realismus, wie man ihn von Gabriel García Márquez kennt, 
dadurch ab, dass sich im Manischen Realismus Realität und Fantasie mit 
einer außerordentlichen Gewalt vermischen, mit der unerklärlichen 
Brutalität, die jederzeit über die Welt hereinbrechen kann.<

http://culturmag.de/litmag/jan-brandt-gegen-die-welt-im-interview/35338

On 16.08.2014 19:14, Mark Kohut wrote:
> You know what I have come to think about this famous Wood labeling?
> He created a great phrase
> for some of our current best writers which, with just a little
> flicking perspectival change, have created
> a new branch of surrealism. They are better than he says.
>
> On Sat, Aug 16, 2014 at 3:29 AM, alice malice <alicewmalice at gmail.com> wrote:
>> http://www.newrepublic.com/article/61361/human-all-too-inhuman
>> -
>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>
>

-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l