Sticking to it

Why Stick to Realism When the Universe is a Giant Joke? The Fertile Chaos of Literary Absurdity.

by Vincent Francone, Editor-in-Chief

It starts way before the Modernists and the many branches of that mighty oak. But it is with them that we begin drilling, specifically thinking of Joyce, as I always think of Joyce, who may not have had the absurd on his fertile mind, though considering the improbable multitudes in his last two novels, who’s to say? And for all my bowing to the absurdists, ludics, magic realists, and artistic goofballs populating any well-stocked library, aside from the “Circe” episodes of Ulysses, was Joyce a surrealist? Nah. He dabbled, played, experimented to fuck, but his aim was representation. Ulysses, even Finnegans Wake, strives to document more than distort. That’s my theory, and I’m sticking to it.

Which then gets me thinking of Rodrigo Fresán’s The Invented Part wherein the writer makes a point about irrealism—a term I’m happily stealing—being a truer manner of portraying day-to-day reality. Life being patently absurd, why must artists be in thrall of realism?

Who are the realists? Gorky? Hemingway? Austen? Sinclair? Stendhal? Those English kitchen sink dramatists? Nothing wrong with any of the above, but are their novels truly better renderings of experience than those from Sterne, Rushdie, Bulgakov, or Winterson? And while the works of Woolf and Lispector maintain (some of the time) a foot in “real world,” they are prone to spiritual and philosophical probing that befuddles the reader receptive solely to pot boilers. All power to them, those dearly departed madwomen of the modern novel!

My thesis, assuming any of this resembles one, is simply that there are ways to represent beyond realism, and perhaps, to echo Fresán, the irreal does a better job.

Funniest joke in Western Literature: Kafka’s Gregor Samsa wakes up to find himself transformed into a giant bug. Soon into this plight, he is visited by someone from the office. Gregor’s concern is that he will lose his job, no small thing, but… dude, you’re a FUCKING BUG! Bigger proverbial fish to fry. But the job (and the money and the responsibility) is never far from our thoughts, is it? We get sick, we immediately worry if calling in will lessen our position, what with Andersen and Smitty trying to undercut us and Bill (fuck that guy) kissing the boss’s ass and spreading gossip. Don’t get me started on Becky from HR! Can we risk a day of much-needed convalescence? Nah. Take some Dayquil and power through, bro. Grind! This is reality. It’s truly absurd. No story better conveys that than The Metamorphosis. 

But enough of this blah and blather. What we want is life in all its rich farcicality. What we too often get is chiseled cold bone tales of verisimilitude hawking their shopworn wares. And they call us sloppy when we reject the overly cautious and cheer the ambitious near miss? Pshaw say we the unmoved by reason. I get it—there’s a lot to be said for craft and precision, but are there not places where such digestibles are aplenty? What might we humble little Jabberers do to distinguish ourselves and our likeminded waywards? While no one is advocating for the elevation of the curiosity for its curious qualities alone, there’s something to be said for aiming for the sweet spot, even when the arrow mixes metaphors. 

It is this sweet spot and the near hitting of it that most excites the editors of Ye Olde Jabber. Which is why we, in our brief tenure, have done what we can to cultivate a cyberspace for work like this and this and this. We’ve promoted stuff that aims to shake you break you and dance a bit as you furrow your brow. We’ve championed the absurd, unheard, and unloved. We will further endeavor to do so, so you do not sob. O o o o as Hamlet said dying his death at a loss for words but somehow found the right sound. The rest is science.

If you haven’t already, check out our collection of AI-Generated satire, A Book Nobody Wrote.

Jabber announces the next stage in literary production: A Book Nobody Wrote. This exciting venture into the brave new world of artistic composition will not only give voice to the voiceless/bodiless/soulless, but will further our collective journey into entropy.

In this satirical collection you will discover 45 unique short stories written entirely by artificial intelligence. May the floodgates give way to a new, disappointing future for us all.

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