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synkopenleben's review
5.0
The Art of Excess aims to prove three masteries that exist in system novels, “whale-like” tales that are “profoundly informed, inventively crafted, and cunningly theoretical” (2): a mastery of the world, of narrative means, and of the reader (2-3). The first mastery aims to represent a totality of knowledge, which is not limited to a small part of the world. It aims to become a representation of the world, from microcosm to macrocosm, similar to an encyclopedia.
The second mastery deals with narrative and rhetorical representations that exceed the mere perspective of the individual for an inclusion of many voices and experiences, as well as combining and recombining a large number of genres and narrative structures. The system novel eschews the realist novel’s bias for individual experience and subverts minimalist tendencies, the novel form of the Age of Narcissism, which is limited to a representation of “the local self” (LeClair 3).
The third mastery is concerned with transforming the reader, i.e. every reader, not only an implied one. These novels aim to make an impact that is universal, rather than catering to the individual.
Furthermore, the system novel includes five aesthetic strategies: First, the rhetorical transformation of text and reader through instilling and “deconfirming” expectations (22), which is linked with Barthes’ assumption that pleasure in a text is achieved through unsettling “the reader’s historical, cultural, psychological assumptions, the consistency of his tastes, values, memories” (Pleasure, 40; qtd. in LeClair, Excess 22). Second, the comic mode, which is achieved through parody, satire and carnivalesque excess, as a means of “overcoming reader suspicion and resistance” (22). Third, the narrator as an “orchestrator” of events, an authority that counters the Death of the Author by collecting and editing an excess of information that is presented through “illusion of anthropological neutrality” (23). Fourth, the introduction and mastering of self-referential and metafictional markers, as well as the creation of imitative forms, which lead to a “qualitative reframing”, or rather “reformulating the massiveness” (24). Fifth, the author as a modification of Hermes, the ancient god involved in “myth, literature and science” (24), a strategy he derives from Michel Serres (cf. 1982). Hermes is seen as a parasite that enters the mind of the reader, causes perturbations and is impossible to extract, a noise signal that disturbs and instills new concepts and information (cf. 25).
To summarize, system novels aim to transform and shape the reader, incorporate the world and its knowledge, either through parody or encyclopedism, and utilizes multiple genre conventions, narrative methods and styles. The system novel is deeply rooted in its informational excess, which is displayed through “synecdoche” and “by the selection, structure, proportion, and scale of information” (20).
The second mastery deals with narrative and rhetorical representations that exceed the mere perspective of the individual for an inclusion of many voices and experiences, as well as combining and recombining a large number of genres and narrative structures. The system novel eschews the realist novel’s bias for individual experience and subverts minimalist tendencies, the novel form of the Age of Narcissism, which is limited to a representation of “the local self” (LeClair 3).
The third mastery is concerned with transforming the reader, i.e. every reader, not only an implied one. These novels aim to make an impact that is universal, rather than catering to the individual.
Furthermore, the system novel includes five aesthetic strategies: First, the rhetorical transformation of text and reader through instilling and “deconfirming” expectations (22), which is linked with Barthes’ assumption that pleasure in a text is achieved through unsettling “the reader’s historical, cultural, psychological assumptions, the consistency of his tastes, values, memories” (Pleasure, 40; qtd. in LeClair, Excess 22). Second, the comic mode, which is achieved through parody, satire and carnivalesque excess, as a means of “overcoming reader suspicion and resistance” (22). Third, the narrator as an “orchestrator” of events, an authority that counters the Death of the Author by collecting and editing an excess of information that is presented through “illusion of anthropological neutrality” (23). Fourth, the introduction and mastering of self-referential and metafictional markers, as well as the creation of imitative forms, which lead to a “qualitative reframing”, or rather “reformulating the massiveness” (24). Fifth, the author as a modification of Hermes, the ancient god involved in “myth, literature and science” (24), a strategy he derives from Michel Serres (cf. 1982). Hermes is seen as a parasite that enters the mind of the reader, causes perturbations and is impossible to extract, a noise signal that disturbs and instills new concepts and information (cf. 25).
To summarize, system novels aim to transform and shape the reader, incorporate the world and its knowledge, either through parody or encyclopedism, and utilizes multiple genre conventions, narrative methods and styles. The system novel is deeply rooted in its informational excess, which is displayed through “synecdoche” and “by the selection, structure, proportion, and scale of information” (20).
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