‘Reality Hunger,’ Documentarism, and Fragmentation in Twenty-First-Century Anglophone Novels

Abstract

The twenty-first century has witnessed the emergence of a new wave of Anglophone novels which are characterised by ‘documentary’ and/or ‘fragmentary’ aesthetics. The present article examines these tendencies, and their common denominators, on the basis of an engagement with David Shields’ influential “manifesto” Reality Hunger (2010). Reading Shields’ text as a particular form of cultural diagnosis, we will touch upon questions regarding the place of literature in twenty-first-century media societies in which the very concepts of ‘reality’ and ‘fiction’ are undergoing considerable change. By discussing Jarett Kobek’s I Hate the Internet (2016) and Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad (2010), we illustrate central implications of Shields’ theses while also relativising some of the more radical claims in connection with the perceived crisis of literary fiction.