Ronald Sukenik's "The Death of the Novel" and other stories

Ronald Sukenick's The Death Of The Novel And Other Stories

Sukenick's short story "The Death of the Novel" is a modernist approach to storytelling, aiming to give the author complete liberty in expressing his inner convictions, along with draping it all in the elements of modern literature, such as sexual relations between man and woman. The short story is also a way to put into writing what the writer mentions in the story's first paragraphs, notably the fact that reality does not exist, except in the perception of each individual and, as such, it is subjective.

"The Birds" and "Momentum" are similar artistic trains of thoughts, with the author simply letting his imagination run freely, as well as letting it take any form it wants. In both stories, he experiments again with different ways of expression, emphasizing the idea that reality is created by each artist in his own manner and with his own means of expression.

In order to argue for the elements previously mentioned, I will need to refer to the issue of form, as it appears in all the three stories and, even more, as it differs from story to story. In "Momentum," the storyline is followed by short explanations in the left-hand side of the text. For example, the storyline makes reference to the two hundred Algerians drowned in the Seine and how "things were becoming real again."

The line itself seems to make no sense, until the author explains his notion of real in a side note. It means locating the present in terms of the past and the self in terms of the present. This means that real means an intrinsic connection between past and present, with the self in between these temporal references. The self affects the characteristics of the past and present, but, at the same time, the past and present are, in fact, the accumulated experiences affecting the development of the self.

It also means, as previously emphasized, that the self is essential in defining reality. In other words, reality does not exist by itself, but rather it is created by all the individuals according to their own interpretations. With "Momentum," the form is also expressed through the complete absence of any forms of punctuation. As such, the story develops as a train of thought where the ideas seem to move from one aspect to another, enumerating characters, facts or actions.

The side note mentioned also has two authors at its end: Wordsworth, Proust. This was probably the first and strongest response I had when reading Sukenick's work: it sounds like Proust, in the way there is no censorship (in the case of "Momentum," not even punctuation marks) to the writer's train of thought. With "The Death of the Novel," this impression is even stronger, as the writer mentions, from the first page of his story, that "reality is, simply, our experience"

This reminds me of the part in Proust's works where the author takes a bite out of his Madeleine, a way to remember a woman named Madeleine and, thus, to start the entire train of thought through his different experiences, recreating his own reality. It is the same in "The Death of the Novel." Sukenick uses a similar set of elements to present his reality, in this case, one centered on his experiences with different women.