REVIEW: Reality Hunger by David Shields

Over at Hipster Book Club my review of Reality Hunger by David Shields is up.

This book infuriated me while I was reading it. I was still infuriated when I wrote the review. But I kept thinking about its themes, and I’ve softened a bit.

Reality Hunger is still a clusterfuck of a book, an unnecessary polemic that can’t keep its argument straight. But if I cherry-pick some of its best ideas (the way Shields cherry-picks his quotes) I find some value in his assertion that readers today are smart enough to handle a story made up of various glittering shards, and writers should pare down their writing to its most honest elements in their natural form.

If you want a taste, an excerpt is here.

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