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An open call for new literary and other art forms to match the complexities of the twenty-first century.
Alfred A. Knopf
March 2010
On Sale: February 23, 2010
240 pages
ISBN: 0307273539
EAN: 9780307273536
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
Reality TV dominates broadband. YouTube and Facebook dominate the web. In Reality Hunger: A Manifesto, his landmark new book, David Shields (author of the New York Times best seller The Thing About Life Is That One Day Youโll Be Dead) argues that our culture is obsessed with โrealityโ precisely because we experience hardly any. Most artistic movements are attempts to figure out a way to smuggle more of what the artist thinks is reality into the work of art. So, too, every artistic movement or moment needs a credo, from Horaceโs Ars Poetica to Lars von Trierโs โVow of Chastity.โ Shields has written the ars poetica for a burgeoning group of interrelated but unconnected artists in a variety of forms and media who, living in an unbearably manufactured and artificial world, are striving to stay open to the possibility of randomness, accident, serendipity, spontaneity; actively courting reader/listener/viewer participation, artistic risk, emotional urgency; breaking larger and larger chunks of โrealityโ into their work; and, above all, seeking to erase any distinction between fiction and nonfiction. The questions Reality Hunger exploresโthe bending of form and genre, the lure and blur of the realโplay out constantly all around us. Think of the now endless controversy surrounding the provenance and authenticity of the โrealโ: A Million Little Pieces, the Obama โHopeโ poster, the sequel to The Catcher in the Rye, RobertCapaโs โThe Falling Soldierโ photograph, the boy who wasnโt in the balloon. Reality Hunger is a rigorous and radical attempt to reframe how we think about โtruthiness,โ literary license, quotation, appropriation. Drawing on myriad sources, Shields takes an audacious stance on issues that are being fought over now and will be fought over far into the future. People will either love or hate this book. Its converts will see it as a rallying cry; its detractors will view it as an occasion for defending the status quo. It is certain to be one of the most controversial and talked-about books of the year.
 Media BuzzColbert Report - April 14, 2010
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