A ‘non’ that became a yes: David Shields’ Reality Hunger and the punk germ in the new literary nonfiction

Abstract

Abstract In his literary manifesto Reality Hunger, David Shields refers to an emerging movement of ‘reality-based art’ whose characteristics include ‘a deliberate unartiness, “raw” material, seemingly unprocessed, unfiltered, uncensored, and unprofessional […] Randomness, openness to accident and serendipity, spontaneity; artistic risk, emotional urgency and intensity’. This grab-bag of anti-art processes and aesthetics is part of an ‘as-yet-unstated’ contemporary literary mood urgently needed, Shields argues, to refresh the moribund star-machine that is literary culture. In its ‘hunger’ for something more ‘real’ in literature, Shields’ manifesto speaks clearly to punk sensibilities without ever saying ‘punk’. This article will trace the unstated affinity between Reality Hunger and punk processes, aesthetics and attitude, and in the process uncover an angry punk germ in the burgeoning movement of contemporary nonfiction writing to which Reality Hunger speaks directly. In doing so, it will contribute a new strand of enquiry to the question of how we understand and define punk literature, opening these questions onto the territory of literary nonfiction.