I recently discovered a new writer, Ronald Sukenick, and I wanted to share some of Sukenick’s interesting views on literature.
For one, Sukenick is known as a major writer in contemporary fiction. His works such as Out, Mosaic Man, and Narralogues have been attempts to open up new ways of writing fiction, and also to question the expectations we have when writing or reading fiction. Yes, he’s in the vain of “post-modern” or “avant garde” fiction, but I think his vision is important to consider because he was ultimately interested in understanding the writing process itself.
So in the the Introduction to his Narralogues, Sukenick defines his concept of a “narralogue” as: “essentially narrative plus argument.” What Sukenick is trying to do in this book is, give fiction the ability to move away from just story-telling and it allow it to make arguments that aim to arrive at truth. He cites Plato’s Dialogues as the progenitor to his narralogue. Although Plato’s work is thought of as philosophy, he still invented the scenes and the dialogue, essentially creating a fictionalized space where he was able to work out his philosophy. And when you do read Plato’s Dialogues there is a certain life and vividness not always (or if at all) found in most works of philosophy.
Sukenick even mentions a time when an editor accepted one of his stories and classified it under “non-fiction.” And one time after reading one of his pieces at a university, a professor stood up and said to Sukenick, “I like your piece but what’s the difference between this and personal essay?” From day one, Sukenick was dealing with this problem of genre because his fiction was moving within the realms of both “fiction” and “non-fiction.”
For Sukenick this blending wasn’t a blending at all, because he didn’t believe in the distinction between “fiction” and “non-fiction.” He felt that fiction had been confined to the idea of make-believe stories that were meant to mime the world. And if a booked mimed the world then it was fiction. But he felt like so many of the books he read and loved helped him to understand the world and to make sense of his experiences. So when he started writing, his fiction took on a quality that became story-plus-argument, akin to Plato’s Dialogues.
Here’s a good quote, albeit dense, that sums up Sukenicks ideas regarding fiction and argument: “For one thing, if fiction is a way of thinking–as reflection, experimental enactment, rhetoric–its form becomes as potentially various as the forms that thought takes. And if thought is fundamentally a way of deriving conviction from experience, then persuasion is clearly a basic form.”
I think this is a very important idea. Thought is how we make sense of the world. And thought is a complex “thing” and process. It doesn’t always flow in a straight line, like a plot with a beginning, middle, and end. And at the same time we convince ourselves to see and understand the world in a certain way when we reflect. So why not, Sukenick asks, write fiction that reflects the persuasive nature of our own thinking, and the varied directions it moves in?
Adios
Nathan
P.S. If you find Sukenick interesting, you should read Henry Miller because I think Miller is the best example of writing in a way that cannot be classified a fiction, non-fiction, essay, etc. Miller’s writing used all of these styles to during his lifelong attempt at self-discovery.
