Reality Hunger
| Author | David Shields |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Genre | Collage |
| Publisher | Knopf, Vintage |
|
Publication date
|
February 23, 2010 |
| Media type | Print (hardcover) |
| Pages | 240 |
| ISBN |
Reality Hunger: A Manifesto is a non-fiction book by American writer David Shields, published by Knopf on February 23, 2010. The book is written in a collage style, mixing quotations by the author with those from a variety of other sources. The book's manifesto is directed toward increasing art's engagement with the reality of contemporary life through the exploration of hybrid genres such as prose poetry and literary collage. In Vanity Fair, Elissa Schappell called Reality Hunger "a rousing call to arms for all artists to reject the laws governing appropriation, obliterate the boundaries between fiction and nonfiction, and give rise to a new modern form for a new century."
Reality Hunger consists of 618 numbered passages divided into twenty-six chapters. Approximately half of the book's words come from sources other than the author. Because of Random House lawyers, attribution for the quotes is given in a fine print appendix at the end of the book, but with Shields's encouragement to cut those pages from the book so as to preserve the book's intended disorienting effect.
The title of Reality Hunger comes from Shields's idea that people today, living in an increasingly fragmentary culture, are experiencing a growing "hunger" for doses of real life injected into the art they experience. According to his argument, traditional genres, such as realist fiction, are failing to adequately reflect lived reality because they have gone largely unchanged since their early development, and are therefore obsessed with current events because society rarely experiences any.
The role of plagiarism in art also constitutes a major theme. Shields argues that plagiarism is something that artists have always partaken in, and that only recently has the act acquired the stigma it has, due in large part to copyright legislation and the culture surrounding it. Rather than shy away from wholesale appropriation, Shields encourages it, stating that “reality-based art hijacks its material and doesn’t apologize.” In support of this argument, the work includes a chapter on hip-hop, which, in addition to examining other facets of the genre, discusses the genre's use of DJing, sampling, and remixing.
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