Here's the original list, with lots of good discussions in the thread, and other books which haven't made it to the expanded list:https://twitter.com/thewastedworld/status/1017427669338607616 …
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A Theory-Fiction Reading List 2.0: Now with more titles, attempts at sub-divisions, and fewer misspellings.pic.twitter.com/HThnNKmKz4
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The first half of the list deals with theoretical titles which utilise fictional forms, while the second half is fiction with theoretical content. The second page occupies the middle-ground between these two, including the texts out of which "theory-fiction" emerged as a concept.
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The sub-divisions are of course tentative, and many of the titles could have been placed elsewhere. The purpose here isn't to birth a genre, but to give an overview of the interzone between two established forms, where high theory is brought down to earth.https://twitter.com/thewastedworld/status/1027606571352649728 …
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Recently,
@ballardian spelled out the issue quite nicely: "I don’t think theory-fiction is a genre, [it] is more like an attitude [...] The world is so chaotic that no overarching theory can ever hope to explain it. So, the form itself leaks and cracks."https://twitter.com/ballardian/status/1040934692831129600 …Show this thread
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How did you come across Kamo No Chōmei? It seems like it is the only Far East Asian literature you have listed.
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From memory, it was recommended in the first thread. Ugetsu Monogatari is also on there (thanks
@LaniAlden!), although you're right that the list is strongly skewed toward Western literature. -
Maybe https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dream_of_the_Red_Chamber … Though I am not sure where it would be placed on the theory-fiction continuum.
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Possibly somewhere in the fiction-as-theory camp. It also just occurred to me that the Zhuangzi is a notable absence on the theory-as-fiction list. I guess I'll have to start on List 3.0.
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Yes Zhuangzi definitely theory as fiction. Yijing/I-Ching perhaps have some poetic(ness) to its theories...
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If I were to give a strict definition of theory-fiction, I would (following Fisher) restrict it to the era of late capitalism. The main reason for including earlier books was one of genealogy: Lucretius, Nietzsche, and Kafka all feed into the CCRU milieu that birthed the concept.
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I'm finding myself reading Flaubert's Temptation of Saint Anthony right now and it seems it would possibly fit the list ?
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Not to do the endless recommendation thing, but I would also throw Flann O'Brien's 'The Third Policeman' onto list 3.0 (in 'Theoretical Fiction 1', I guess). Then again, I am known to try and force that book onto any and everyone, given an opening to do so.
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Thinking it over, I have a real soft spot for the (more classically fiction, hence probably not list-apt) philosophical novels : Glass Bead Game, Magic Mountain, Bouvard et Pécuchet.
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All great suggestions. The philosophical novel is itself such a massive category that it deserves its own list. Speaking of Mann, the prelude to Joseph and His Brothers is an excellent example of fiction and nonfiction overlapping.
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I'm perhaps less enamoured of theory-fiction as a contemporary genre form than some are (mostly just a taste thing), but I would love to compile a list of attempts to render more or less coherent accounts of fictional /theoreticians/, which seems like quite a specific gesture.
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Oh that’d be an interesting project. Eliot’s Casaubon and Pynchon’s Cherrycoke come to mind.
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Yeah, I also thought of Pynchon here. This one reason I raised O'Brien: 'de Selby' is a prime example of this technique.
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Nice list. I've read some of these, but not others. You might get some use out of this projecthttp://www.modernmythology.net
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Interesting, thanks!
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