Reviews

How Literature Saved My Life by David Shields

__karen__'s review against another edition

2.0

I found the concept of this book far more interesting than the story itself. Perhaps I wasn't in the mood for a read like this, this evening? Not sure but It just didn't resonate for me.

silvina's review against another edition

4.0

Think of this book as series of long e-mails by an enthusiastic friend that doesn't know when to stop writing (which you love), because they get exited (just like you) when they find someone that is similar to themselves (i.e. likes the same art they do).

Because art equals life. To you/me. It's the most important thing. Without it I can't see meaning in anything, I can't function. I expect everything from art/literature. I want it to tell me the Absolute Truth, I want it to change my life, to be a remedy, to make me happy. But it never quite does it. And it becomes unbearable.

(literature matters so much to me I can hardly stand it).

Nothing I've read has saved my life, or even attempted to. I'm left alone with books that don't care whether I live or die.

Specially those that I ("everybody") should/must read. Those books. The mandatory ones. The ones that alienate you. That hate everything you are. But

I don't want to read out of duty. There are hundreds of books in the history of the world that I love to death. I'm trying to stay awake and not bored and not rote. I'm trying to save my life.

But even the books that are like myself (this one), don't quite manage to save me. Because they are just an echo of what I already know (but with better punctuation and prettier sentences).

I want work that, possessing as thin a membrane as possible between life and art, foregrounds the question of how the writer solves being alive.

This book (a self-help book for the disillusioned avid reader?) kind of gets to do that for a while. But not really. It asks a lot of questions but doesn't really answer them. Maybe it gives you the tools to figure it out by yourself? Probably not.

Spoiler

Twelve books I swear I'll google: Speedboat, Maps to Anywhere, For the Time Being, The End of the Novel of Love, Humiliation, Vanishing Point, A Way in the World, Bluets, Within the Context of No Context, The Ongoing Moment, The Two Kinds of Decay, Shadow Train.

I know what the answers are, though. Sort of. I know that art doesn't equal life. That I know, but I pretend not to most of the time. Because it's a sort of refuge in a way. And literature is (made of / a) language, and

As a writer, I love language as much as any element in the universe, but I also have trouble living anywhere other than in language. If I'm not writing it down, experience doesn't really register. Language has gone from prison to refuge back to prison.

Maybe literature goes from refuge to prison to another refuge (a different one, less needy, less naive, more aware that The Artist is just some person that doesn't know much about anything, but tries to offer something anyway).

Spoiler

I wish I could start a sentence with As a writer...
Can I start one with As an editor?

Collage is not a refuge for the compositionally disabled.

Editing is not a refuge for the compositionally disabled.

The collage-narrator, who has the audacity to stage his or her own psychic crisis as emblematic of a larger cultural crux and general human dilemma, is virtually by definition in some sort of emotional trouble.

Yeap.

Maybe art isn't life but the absence of art isn't death (of the mind?) either. Maybe it can't save my life but it can also sort of maybe in a way not not save it.

I wanted literature to assuage human loneliness, but nothing can assuage human loneliness. Literature doesn't lie about this—which is what makes it essential.

I feel like it does lie about it sometimes. But now I know better than to believe it. Sort of.

It's so essential I can hardly stand it. Still

Acutely aware of our mortal condition,

I can't help but keep seeking that life-changing, destiny-altering great literary creation. That I will never find.

(literature matters so much to me I can hardly stand it).

areaxbiologist's review against another edition

4.0

Reasons why Shields is unlikeable: 1) Reads gf's journal 2) Spends a lot of pages recounting sexual exploits 3) Takes a potshot at Toni Morrison 4) Thinks everyone needs to get over copyright law 5) Already labels books as artifacts 6) "James Joyce? Brother worked too hard." REALLY.

I can dislike him all I want, but he kept me up half the night thinking about writing strategies, recognizing what a book is trying to become and hoping he's wrong about the future Shakespeare. Contradictions make the harmony. Too true Shields, too true.

bghillman's review

5.0

Formally weird and actually best read as a memoir, I very much enjoyed reading this and learned of about 50 or so books I need to read. He doesn't like structure or narrative. These qualities would bother me if this was a novel. Maybe this explains why he loves Speedboat and I don't.

theheidimce's review against another edition

2.0

The best word I can think of to describe this book is arrogant. The only book worth reading anymore is the kind of book only I am currently writing. And even I am fighting everyone tooth and nail to let me write it. Shields has an overwhelming obsession with David Foster Wallace (it seems subtext to almost every line). There are some lovely turns of phrase and interesting ideas, but I spent most of the book wanting to punch the author in the face.

zachkuhn's review

4.0

I like his style. He calls it "collage." I like David Markson's fiction for the same reason. He's the nonfiction Markson. How's that?

tippycanoegal's review

1.0

Oh man, I really wanted to love this (I like Shield's earlier work), and we were off to a great start as the first author discussed is one of my favorites, Ben Lerner. But this particular grouping of essays never again engaged my full attention. I very much like knowing how people interact with literature in personal ways, but although Shields is a talented writer, he takes self-referential to such an extreme that the air just got sucked out of the room for me. I also found that some of his writing moved into the territory of the mean-spirited (his granular, and ungenerous, discussion of the sexual habits of an ex-girlfriend was utterly without empathy) and that was it for me. Done and done.

daneekasghost's review

4.0

Not what I expected at all, it took some time to recalibrate and take in what I was reading. It's a "collage" of Shields wrestling with literature (sometimes with lots and lots of quotes, sometimes with autobiographical notes, sometimes with a list). I enjoyed the journey and I think it was the perfect length, I finished it in a weekend.