Reality Hunger: A Manifesto A Manifesto

More people should read #RealityHunger by David Shields

It's not a book about #AI, but I think of it often when people post about AI

bookshop.org/p/books/real...

phew! just finished reading yr #realityhunger posts (🤯 incredible Qs, 209! 🫠). & welcome now to #hwa3: where aristotle, kanye west, laurie anderson, & my double chin all want something r/Real from you. and/or in which i'm apparently stuck in this red t-shirt in perpetuity. 💟💌❣️ see you inside, Ashley

so the real Q might be: who decides what good writing is, and what kinds of thought get excluded when coherence becomes the highest value? #realityhunger is poking exactly at that pressure point.

shields is less interested in facts themselves, but rather the emerging cultural impulse to sort, systematize, and break the world into fragments. #realityhunger is asking what that habit of categorizing has done to art, narrative, and truth.

"We have no memories from our childhood, only memories that pertain to our childhood" so EVERY time I tell a story about my past, I'm telling a story ABOUT a story. UMMM WHAT?!?! #realityhunger #storiesofstories

so if we translate memories into words, not images, and I remember something, I'm remembering my description of it, not the thing itself. That's terrifying. #realityhunger #translationloss

"Anything processed by memory is fiction". assuming this is true, then EVERY memoir is fiction and EVERY autobiography is a novel. WHY are we still fighting about genres? #realityhunger #memoryisfiction

"You're in costume, and you're not really fooling anybody." THISSSSSSS!!! Why do we pretend fiction isn't pretending? At least nonfiction admits what it is (or does it). #realityhunger #clownsuit

i just finished the book and i don't know if i am a fan but it was quite intriguing. #realityhunger

"When did you know you were going to catch the ball?"
Ichiro: "When I caught it".

this is what he means by being "present in reality"—no B.S., no story, just the thing itself. #realityhunger #ichirozen

"As a work gets more autobiographical, more intimate, more confessional, more embarrassing, it breaks into fragments". is he saying truth is inherently fragmented or that we can't handle sustained truth? #realityhunger #fragments

"What happens when an essay begins to behave less like an essay and more like a poem?" isn't that just short story? i feel like he's overcomplicating simple ideas #realityhunger #genreanxiety

this is so well said especially with someone who has poor memory i don't rmr stories but i do be remembering some plots that made me think a lot. #realityhunger

ngl idk whose talking sometimes like its really confusing if the author is speaking or something else in a different point of view. #realityhunger

while reading, it's making me how some things said are so obvious in a way yk #realityhunger

the quote, “attention equals life or is its only evidence”, this line kinda sums up our society because a lot of us crave the attention we don't get and this somehow makes ppl think its some way of living. #realityhunger

im wondering how we believe things so fast like "true stories" if we read that we believe its a true story. #realityhunger

so art isn't the truth but it lets us see the truth like this makes me wonder our we see things and it could fool us in a certain way yk #realityhunger

i like the way he talks about these novels in a funny way #realityhunger

the novel was always mixing nonfiction with fiction. Henry James tried to "purify" it. so modernism equals killing the novel's diversity? somehow that tracks #realityhunger #hybridform

I guess after reading fiction and nonfiction feels like , fact or cap but like is it showing or portraying, I mean theirs no narrative, it’s “creativity” and just clumped together. It’s selective to say the least #realityhunger

“I seek to fill a place that once had meaning with meaning again” this quote sat with me , because it’s something I’m dealing with right now. Trying to find meaning in a place that had meaning, hopefully I do! #realityhunger

"The origin of the novel lies in its pretense of actuality". Defoe faked a journal showing fiction as fact. So lying to readers makes it a novel? what is going on atp #realityhunger #foundedonfiction

Line 179 🔥🔥. I think if all of us were to finish our to do list, finish our day and lay in bed. Isn’t it true all of our memories creep up on us in the “dark” . At least I learned this from the book 😁 #realityhunger

I get the question about selection as an art, I mean like I said before the chapters are just fragments, he chooses what to put, and it’s creative in a sense but also confusing. Selective. Good way to define it. It’s story telling, basically social media !! #realityhunger

Line 130 “Act Naturally” this type of advice should be given to a lot of people pleasers, media pleasers. A lesson a short phrase teaches shows its emphasis on what sheilds is trying to portray #Realityhunger

I really like lines 121 and 122. In this day and even with media. What really is a fact? 11 #realityhunger

im surprised how this book kept me reading cuz honestly my attention span is not the best fr #realityhunger

its really interesting ab the way he talks ab "genre collapse" like it reminds me of how every art and social media kinda like mixed together. #realityhunger

so he's saying the Bible incorporated real laws and folktales, so it's a collage? is he arguing that scripture is like a remix? That feels absolutely insane/crazy BUT ALSO kinda true? #realityhunger #scriptureasremix