Word: realisms
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These and other episodes are presented out of order because, writes Sinyavsky, "the past cannot be grasped in sequence." Realism, too, is all thumbs. In order to re-create the bizarre atmosphere of his KGB interrogation, the author restages the experience as a one-act farce. Karl could have been one of the Marx Brothers. Some typical dialogue between writer and inquisitor...
...realism of the Nintendo game also contributes to its wide appeal, separating it from the rest of its competition...
Faced with these developments, Wolfe decided to write Bonfire in order to prove a point, "namely, that the future of the fictional novel would be in a highly detailed realism based on reporting, a realism . . . that would portray the individual in intimate and inextricable relation to the society around him." This realism, argues Wolfe, was what characterized the success of writers as varied as Zola, Dostoyevsky, Dickens and Lewis, whose Elmer Gantry prefigured the Jim Bakker affair by more than half a century. Nor is Wolfe too modest to add that such realism is what "created the 'absorbing' or 'gripping...
...outcry among educational traditionalists for a return to established and proven literary curriculums. Thus it is no surprise that the first wave of letters in reaction to the Harper's article, according to editor Lewis Lapham, has been strongly supportive of Wolfe's call for a return to fictional realism...
...also some strong dissenters. Novelist John Updike, for example, despite receiving favorable mention from Wolfe, is not amused by the manifesto. "It's the sort of thing ((Wolfe)) says," he complains. "It seems sort of self-serving and superficially felt. It seems to me that isms, including Magical Realism and Minimalism, are all honorable alternatives to being realistic." Updike is echoed by fellow novelist John Barth, whom Wolfe calls "the peerless leader" of the retreat from realism for his "neo- fabulist" style. Barth says Wolfe's manifesto "is much too narrow a view. I see the feast of literature...