The fragment novel

"...William Gass complained about the effects of the American penchant for simplicity on the country’s writing, so often reduced to the meat and potatoes of straightforward storytelling. In the contemporary fragment novel, the inverse has occurred. What a plainly narrated adventure was to Gass’s pioneers, a performance of profundity is to the fragment novelist. Oracularities, the more muddled and gently elegiac the better, are offered as evidence of sophistication. “Can you think of writing as a gaze?” the narrator of Drifts asks her students. “Maybe writing was about being visible when I felt invisible,” she reflects later. “Or maybe writing was about becoming invisible again after having become too visible. Maybe it was both. I wasn’t sure anymore.” Zambreno comes close to clarifying that her method hinges on her resistance to clarity—though of course the method itself rebuffs clarification. “One of the notes I take that spring: ‘vagueness.’ Another: ‘signs,’” she writes. Maybe what this means is that vagueness is a sign of poignance, but then it is not altogether clear what it means. After all, why think when you can mimic thinking? And why write a novel when you can meditate on the difficulty of writing a novel? Fragment novels are in effect reflections on novels that, by their own admission, their authors never end up finishing: “What prevents me from writing the book?” asks the protagonist of Drifts. “The heat, the dog, the day, air-conditioning, desiring to exist in the present tense,” and so on and on. It is less a novel than a gesture at a novel. At first glance, the fragment novel’s structural equivocations about how its pieces hang together and substantive equivocations about all its internal architecture appear antithetical to two of the declutterer’s foremost tics: her allergy to euphemism and her request that everything be stashed in its proper place. But in fact the novel’s studied evasiveness is the product of its commitment to tabling wants and honoring needs, in accordance with the minimalist’s most cherished directive. There is no plot, no food, no friends, and very little dialogue. Perhaps the fragment novel is not in fact constructed by way of removal, but it might as well be, for it is no more than an accumulation of negations."

"All Things Are Too Small: Essays in Praise of Excess": https://a.co/caQ5YMc

Crime Fiction and Social Justice - Five Books Expert Recommendations

Let's talk about the five books you've chosen for us on the theme of crime fiction and social justice. Are they all crime fiction would you say? 

I would. With the Barbara Kingsolver, people might say it's a bit of a stretch, but the best novels that talk about crime are hybrids. She would say herself she's writing about social justice. The Poisonwood Bible is about social justice. Demon Copperhead has been called the Appalachian David Copperfield. It reminds me of Shuggie Bain, actually, with a little of Huck Finn. And Odysseus, because this character goes on these odysseys and keeps meeting interesting people. 

I've been to parts of Appalachia; I do a lot of library outreach. It's dirt-poor. If you were transported there from New York or Atlanta, you would think you were in some sort of alternate universe, because the poverty is so extreme. The neglect, the drugs, and the opioid crisis—all of those are crimes. The kid in Demon Copperhead is in such a horrible situation that he's taken away from his family...

https://fivebooks.com/best-books/crime-fiction-social-justice-karin-slaughter/

read a book

When the news is one report of human suffering — or environmental degradation, or violation of democratic norms — after another, people might be forgiven for averting their eyes from the headlines in favor of getting a better night's sleep. The only problem: In a democracy, tuning out means giving the foxes full run of the henhouse.

In recent years, I've been looking for a solution to this conundrum. How is it possible to be a well-informed citizen and simultaneously a calm, mostly cheerful, more or less sane human being?

The closest thing I've found to a workaround is the right dosing. I follow the news during daylight hours. At night, I read a book...

Margaret Renkl 

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/16/opinion/reading-novellas-short-novels.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner

"A new novel about a seductive and cunning American woman who infiltrates an anarchist collective in France—a propulsive page-turner of glittering insights and dark humor.Creation Lake is a novel about a secret agent, a thirty-four-year-old American woman of ruthless tactics, bold opinions, and clean beauty, who is sent to do dirty work in France. "Sadie Smith" is how the narrator introduces herself to her lover, to the rural commune of French subversives on whom she is keeping tabs, and to the reader. Sadie has met her love, Lucien, a young and well-born Parisian, by "cold bump"—making him believe the encounter was accidental. Like everyone Sadie targets, Lucien is useful to her and used by her. Sadie operates by strategy and dissimulation, based on what her "contacts"—shadowy figures in business and government—instruct. First, these contacts want her to incite provocation. Then they want more. In this region of centuries-old farms and ancient caves, Sadie becomes entranced by a mysterious figure named Bruno Lacombe, a mentor to the young activists who communicates only by email. Bruno believes that the path to emancipation from what ails modern life is not revolt, but a return to the ancient past. Just as Sadie is certain she's the seductress and puppet master of those she surveils, Bruno Lacombe is seducing her with his ingenious counter-histories, his artful laments, his own tragic story. Written in short, vaulting sections, Rachel Kushner's rendition of "noir" is taut and dazzling. Creation Lake is Kushner's finest achievement yet as a novelist, a work of high art, high comedy, and unforgettable pleasure."

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/207300960-creation-lake

The Greatest Fiction Books Since 2000

(according to one algorithm)

This list represents a comprehensive and trusted collection of the greatest books. Developed through a specialized algorithm, it brings together 411 'best of' book lists to form a definitive guide to the world's most acclaimed books. For those interested in how these books are chosen, additional details can be found on the rankings page... (continues)