David Shields is tired of novels in which character and plot drive the ‘action’. Not only is he tired of them he claims that they fail to satisfy the current zeitgeist where collaged borrowings, mashups, and self-conscious copyings come closest to reality and truth. Hence his new book, Reality Hunger: a manifesto, a dizzying compendium of short texts (more than half of which have their overt origins in the words of others) which taken together argue that the lyric essay (creative non-fiction/poetry) has more to offer the present than the current novel.

It’s  a strange strap line (book meets marketer?), manifesto. It’s not a call to arms – there’s neither plan nor promises here – unlike the main political parties of the moment. Instead there’s an argument – at times willfully contradictory – about the value of multivalent works that unapologetically mix channels, forms and sources and see no reason to explain how, why or from whom. If once inscribed it’s all a lie anyway, why not celebrate the con which is delivered with a wink of the authorial I/eye.

Shields excites and stimulates but he doesn’t completely convince. He deals with novels but says nothing of stories. The ‘narrative turn’ in much social science has looked at the ways in which our perception of the world revolves around the structure of story – we ‘story’ experience in order to understand it. When we can’t story it we can’t make sense of it: unstoried is in one important way, unhinged. Walter Benjamin captured it this way when he wrote:

the story, which is one of the oldest forms of communication. It is not the object of the story to convey happenning per se, which is the purpose of information; rather it embeds it in the life of the storyteller in order to pass it on as experience to those listening.

The story, however embedded, can revitalise our personal experience by revealing that what might be ordinary can be extraordinary, revelatory. The story in which character and plot drives the action can also increase empathy – lost in the plot the story can inspire understanding for unsympathetic and even monstrous characters. That can enrich our experience. And that’s why I keep reading them.

Reality Hunger is – and this is an irony – a linear romp, a page-turner in which I was was drawn into and through very quickly. At the same time it’s a mine – there’s all those underlined sections and annotations to return to and mull over. So, a paradoxical success: a page-turning modernist thriller-argument and post-modern esoteric navel gazing.

Or perhaps a lyric essay for our times.