Reality Hunger: A Manifesto

The contemporary vogue of not tucking in your shirttail (which I dutifully follow): a purposeful confusion of the realms.

Living as we perforce do in a manufactured and artificial world, we yearn for the “real,” semblances of the real. We want to pose something nonfictional against all the fabrication—autobiographical frissons or framed or filmed or caught moments that, in their seeming unrehearsedness, possess at least the possibility of breaking through the clutter. More invention, more fabrication aren’t going to do this.

When I asked him why the stories were so tight-lipped, he explained to me the jailhouse concept of “doing your own time,” which means that when you’re a prisoner you’re expected not to burden the other prisoners by complaining about your incarceration or regretting what you had done or, especially, claiming you hadn’t done it. “Do your own time”: a seductive slogan. I find that I quote it to myself frequently, but really I don’t subscribe to the sentiment. I’m not, after all, in prison. Stoicism bores me. What I ultimately believe in is talking about everything until you’re blue in the face.