Modernist violence is pseudoevent imposed by the novelist

Evidence

Yet such moments have become relatively rare in modern times: and there are others in which nothing real ever seems to happen, in which life is felt as waiting without end, perpetual frustration of the ideal (Flaubert); in which the only reality of human existence seems to be blind routine and the drudgery of daily work, forever the same day after day (Zola); in which, finally, the very possibility of events seems to have disappeared, and the writer seems relatively reconciled to a framework in which the truth of the single day can stand as the microcosm of life itself (Joyce). In these historical situations, even when the literary work itself seems violent and agitated, such explosions will turn out on closer inspection to be mere imitations of events, pseudoevents, imposed from above by the novelist, who despairs of evolving any genuine events from the colorless stream of experience itself. — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 401

Categorization

• XREF: The Flaubert/Zola/Joyce tripartition of modernism’s felt condition echoes Lukács’s later essay ‘Narrate or Describe’ and connects to Benjamin’s and Adorno’s differing accounts of modernity’s loss of experience (Erfahrung). — connects to: Literature functions as a pacifying force on the violent outsider — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 116; Postmodernism’s false affirmation converts repressed despair into media violence. — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry: Selected Essays…, 65; Modernist mythic method orders chaotic contemporary history into form (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Literature functions as a pacifying force on the violent outsider #contradicts (0.85) — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 116
• Fascism’s violence initially registered as absurdity rather than politics for the Existentialists #corroborates (0.72) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 256
• Postmodernism’s false affirmation converts repressed despair into media violence. #expands (0.70) — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 65
• Modernist mythic method orders chaotic contemporary history into form #corroborates (0.70)