David Shields

An open call for new literary and other art forms to match the complexities of the twenty-first century.Reality TV dominates broadband. YouTube and Facebook dominate the web. In Reality Hunger: A Manifesto, his landmark new book, David Shields (author of the New York Times best seller The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead) argues that our culture is obsessed with "reality" precisely because we experience hardly any. Most artistic movements are attempts to figure out a way to smuggle more of what the artist thinks is reality into the work of art. So, too, every artistic movement or moment needs a credo, from Horace's Ars Poetica to Lars von Trier's "Vow of Chastity." Shields has written the ars poetica for a burgeoning group of interrelated but unconnected artists in a variety of forms and media who, living in an unbearably manufactured and artificial world, are striving to stay open to the possibility of randomness, accident, serendipity, spontaneity; actively courting reader/listener/viewer participation, artistic risk, emotional urgency; breaking larger and larger chunks of "reality" into their work; and, above all, seeking to erase any distinction between fiction and nonfiction.The questions Reality Hunger explores--the bending of form and genre, the lure and blur of the real--play out constantly all around us. Think of the now endless controversy surrounding the provenance and authenticity of the "real": A Million Little Pieces, the Obama "Hope" poster, the sequel to The Catcher in the Rye, Robert Capa's "The Falling Soldier" photograph, the boy who wasn't in the balloon. Reality Hunger is a rigorous and radical attempt to reframe how we think about "truthiness," literary license, quotation, appropriation. Drawing on myriad sources, Shields takes an audacious stance on issues that are being fought over now and will be fought over far into the future. People will either love or hate this book. Its converts will see it as a rallying cry; its detractors will view it as an occasion for defending the status quo. It is certain to be one of the most controversial and talked-about books of the year. (From the Hardcover edition.)

Blends criticism, anthropology, and biography to celebrate the power of literature, concluding that the fundamental truths found in literature render it an essential component of life.

"An impassioned, funny, probing, fiercely inconclusive, nearly-to-the-death debate, about life and art-cocktails included. Caleb Powell always wanted to become an artist, but he overcommitted to life (he's a stay-at-home dad to three young girls). David Shields always wanted to become a human being, but he has overcommitted to art. At antipodes since first meeting twenty-five years ago, they headed to a cabin in the Cascade Mountains and threw down. The focus? Life vs. Art. Over the next four days they played chess, shot hoops, hiked, relaxed in a hot tub, watched My Dinner with Andre, Sideways, The Trip, and talked about everything they could think of-genocide, marriage, sex, Toni Morrison, sports, porn, the death penalty, baldness, evil, James Wood, happiness, sports radio, George Bush, drugs, death, betrayal, alcohol, Rupert Murdoch, Judaism, bad book titles-in the name of exploring their central question. While confounding, as much as possible, the divisions between "reality" and "fiction" and between "life" and "art," their dialogue remains dazzlingly provocative and entertaining from start to finish"--

Two writers and professors present 40 short pieces of fiction that serve as humorous counterfeit texts, including a personal ad from Ron Carlson, a parking department complaint from Amy Hempel, and a list of works cited from Rick Moody.

The boy who became a rebel. The rebel who became a soldier. The soldier who became an icon. The icon who disappeared. This biography draws on extensive research and exclusive interviews to share previously undisclosed aspects of the enigmatic writer's life, from his private relationships and service in World War II to his legal concerns and innermost secrets. Raised in Park Avenue privilege, J.D. Salinger sought out combat, surviving five bloody battles of World War II and the liberation of a death camp, and out of that crucible he created a novel, The Catcher in the Rye, which journeyed deep into his own despair and redefined postwar America. For more than fifty years, Salinger has been one of the most elusive figures in American history. All of the attempts to uncover the truth about why he disappeared have been undermined by a lack of access and the recycling of inaccurate information. In the course of a nine-year investigation, and especially in the three years since Salinger's death, the authors have interviewed more than 200 people on five continents (many of whom had previously refused to go on the record) to solve the mystery of what happened to Salinger. - Publisher.