REALITY HUNGER a Manifesto

Having just finished reading REALITY HUNGER a Manifesto by David Shields (one of the brilliant panelists I heard at the Festival of Books at UCLA a couple of weeks ago), I felt so intimidated about writing anything, that the only way I could psych myself up to create this review was to think of the author as an intellectual snob. But then, if it's a truism that the fault we see in others is a reflection of our own selves, well, then, I must be guilty of some kind of reverse snobbery, based on the fact that I've never read Proust, or most of the other books he referred to with such cavalier familiarity! Otherwise, I have to say, the guy really is a terriffic writer! (Shields, that is, I don't know about Proust. I just said, remember?) Dealing with such topics as reality, hip-hop, collage, genre, doubt, thinking, brevity (and many unique approaches toward possible ways to write non-fiction, which he posits is truly a form of fiction anyway, --well that's my oversimplification --) the book is divided into 618 fascintingly readable sub-sections of its 26 chapters ( A to Z). If you love words and savor seeing them arranged eloquently on each page, then you'll probably enjoy this book. Oh, and he does talk about "truth." (But, of course he is only referring to personal or perhaps relative truth, and we know there's an ultimate Truth - but that's for another Blog.) SP