The Tropic of Orange readings for today have had me thinking about realism: what it means and the extent to which it is an outdated literary prejudice. The novel started me thinking on these questions because, in these last two sections, it has markedly shifted further towards the surreal or magical and away from standard realism. For example, the beginning of the homeless news program, the distortions of space in Rafaela’s bus ride, and the dragging of the tropic of cancer by Arcangel all have the distinctive ring of unreality to them. In fact, at least to me, these latter parts of the novel have become fully saturated with unreality, no longer being split between elements of the normal and elements of the abnormal but overwhelmed with the latter instead.
But what does it mean to write something that’s realistic anyway? To suppose the possibility of writing something that represents what is real is to implicitly subscribe to two contentious philosophical positions: there is a solitary ultimate standard of what is real and we are able to represent it through language. Of course, when we read a realist novel, we don’t imagine that much controversial philosophy is anchoring it. To differentiate what is realistic from what is not seems simply intuitive or common-sensical: a photograph more realistically depicts a person than a stick-figure drawing of them because that is just the case. No need for further debate.
Yet, maybe there is more to debate. A philosopher of art, Nelson Goodman, argues that realism is purely a function of culture. A culture builds up certain ideas of realism, which are prefigured into a network of symbols, so that whatever accords to this historically contingent standard gets dubbed “realistic” while everything else falls into other categories as in some way distorted. Goodman cites as an example of the point the work of an anthropologist who noted that, when he presented photographs to sets of native peoples, they turned the photographs over and on their sides in confusion, allegedly not seeing anything like a representation of something familiarly realistic. Goodman also mentions how the means of inscribing depth into a painting are in contradiction to the geometry of optics, thus defying the order of the “real” images we see in our experience.
Whether we would concede to Goodman’s arguments or not, the fact still remains that realism is not so simple a concept as we might think. Realistic novels, in fact, do not match reality especially, or at least not to my judgment. They use simple language; they introduce characters who are recognizable; they are, broadly speaking, familiar. But familiarity is not the same as realisticness, at least not so in theory if not in practice. Goodman would equate the two, but I think we all share the impulse to consider this equation somehow wrong.
Interestingly, many art movements stylize themselves as more realistic than their predecessors, even if they don’t seem like something we would count as realistic. For example, if I’m not mistaken, the cubists thought themselves to be treating what is real more accurately, it being the case that they understood the real constraints of perspective better than other artists. When artists make a claim like this, often critics may respond to say this is not realism but hyper-realism, which is a term that seems paradoxical. How can something be hyper-real? Does that mean it is more real than what is real? If realism is familiarity, as Goodman would have us belief, then is hyper-realism hyper-familiar?
Does Picasso’s Guernica look “realistic” to you?
Many books do illustrate a flattened world in the classical form of what is considered realism. My fiction 1 teacher always urged students to just tell the story- just say what happened. This means that he wanted the students to simplify prose and create a sort of concreteness that readers could easily follow. While reading ”Tropic of Orange”, I have experienced moments of difficulty following the literal narrative of the text because of the twisted reality that I have not been trained to read. That said, I have enjoyed the moments of blurred lines because i think it is a sort of hyper-reality where we understand the characters on a deeper level. The author achieves this by focusing not on the crisp concise ”this happened then this happened” train of events, but instead on how it is told and the different syntax and voices utilized within each chapter. This imitates real life in many ways, as mentioned above as a sort of hyper-reality. It goes beyond the layer of events and extends into the emotional and perceptual realm of many different characters. The world in the ”Tropic of Orange” extends beyond the physical realm, just like our real lives do… To present reality is a singular truth of outward events, untouched my unrealistic occurrences is not realistic because our experiences are inward and personal as much as they are external. This might complicate the story line of the book, but the occurrences of real life are also difficult to understand and disjointed. The text also shows us the vast differences in the human experiences per individual and perspective. While we are all subject to life and the human condition we all have our own set of eyes and consciousness that differentiates us. A classically realistic book often does not pay attention to this and instead focuses on a singular truth, but that is not necessarily realism. I think in attempt to identify what is realistic, we must realize that nothing is absolute and there is not one true narrative- that life is far more complicated and disjointed. The ”Tropic of Orange” seems to juggle the obscurity of real life for all of its madness rather than attempt to pin it down into a singular truth.
Great point that “magical realism” can, in a way, be “realer than real.” If the point of realist fiction is to highlight parts of the human experience anyways, it should also make sense that any exaggerated genre can accomplish the same goal. The platform is different and more extreme, but the content reflects an even more clear truth than perhaps realism could.
This reminds me of a comment Buzz will make later about plugging into reality and building a myth around it or plugging into a myth and building reality around it. Whatever it is, it’s constructed, and realism is as ideologically driven (values an illusory verisimilitude above all else, even though it must distort and streamline to achieve what is recognizably reality). The poem Kenneth Goldsmith once wrote a book comprised of everything he said in a 24-hour period. Perhaps that’s realism? But once it enters art–as transcription, or even as concept–it becomes something else entirely. I think what we call realism at its best takes seriously the problems and possibilities of accommodating the real by doing things like introducing nonsense, ignoring conventions of plot, etc. These tricks and tropes, but more authentically reflecting the real, give the lie to realism as an un-reflective attempt at telling it like it is. Ah, questions of genre are always fascinating. Thanks for getting this conversation started, Anthony. Fitting topic for a philosopher given its roots in the philosophies of mimesis and imitation in Aristotle and Plato…