"What is it about this work I like so much? The confusion between field report and self-portrait; the confusion between fiction and nonfiction; the author-narrators' use of themselves, as personae, as representatives of feeling-states; the anti-linear, semi-grab-bag nature of their narratives; the absolute seriousness, phrased as comedy; the violent torque of their beautifully idiosyncratic voices." That's David Shields describing the literature he loves in a passage from his work-in-progress, Reality Hunger: A Manifesto. The author of books as varied as Dead Languages and Black Planet: Facing Race During an NBA Season, Shields is more than willing to subvert convention or form to explore personal obsessions, to follow the beckoning of his own beautifully idiosyncratic voice. For the past three years, Shields and I have discussed via e-mail and over coffee and tea (and on car rides) our unease with writing more conventional fiction or memoir, driven by character, erected by plot. Our conversations (along with Shields's work) have helped to pave my transition into more exploratory forms of prose. I am indebted to him for his careful guidance, as mentor and friend. -Jay Ponteri

Loggernaut Reading Series: In Ben Marcus's essay "On Time Must Die," he describes what he refers to as the anti-story tradition of literary fiction, the kind of story that is less interested in happenings that take place in a specific moment in time and more interested in ideas and mental states, the wanderings of one's mind. Lately I've been thinking a lot about writing fiction that has very little to no plot, that doesn't necessarily require me to invent (or contrive!) such happenings, that allows me, as Marcus puts it, "to work around time" or without it. I'm able to write what matters the most to me: what's inside of my head, e.g., my thoughts, neuroses, dreams, memories, interests in literature and culture.

It seems to me that you've been writing fiction and nonfiction like this for many years, since your story collection, A Handbook for Drowning. That is to say, they're stories and essays that do away with the messy mechanics of plot (scene-writing, cause and effect, action and reaction) in favor of meditation in the forms of list-making, self-reflection, literary and cultural criticism, exploratory reportage. What's so unappealing to you about the kind of writing you did in, say, Dead Languages (a novel that made use of more conventional plotting)? And what's so appealing about writing stories like "A Brief Survey of Ideal Desire" and "The Sixties," fiction that seems more driven by ideas and self-rumination?

David Shields: I do think you've ID'd the excitements and the concerns of the form in which you and I are interested. Yes, one doesn't want contrivance, but is what is left only wanderings, neurosis?

I really want to think not.

I'm still very proud of Dead Languages; I think it's a good novel, and there are a disconcertingly large number of people who say, "Why don't you write a book like that again?" What is it about the plotting in a book like that—which, frankly, isn't plotted very heavily—that is unappealing to me now and what is it about self-rumination that I find so intoxicating?

For me, it has hugely to do with a quality of nervousness, of rawness, of existential excitement. When I think of the books I love, almost invariably they are books that are full of what I've come to call "reality hunger." They're impatient in their attempt to evoke consciousness. Recently I happened to pick off the shelves Bellow's Herzog. I found myself surprisingly excited by some of it. Some of the lines, some of the writing is really beautiful. I hadn't remembered responding to a novel in this way for a while. But pretty shortly the excitements of the work faded for me in the light of the endless narrative contrivance. The moments that are alive for me come way too few and far between. There are good meditations, but they're buried in an avalanche of formulaic narrative patterning, dutiful characterization. I want a book that is nothing but good moments, nothing but those exciting, nervous-making, existential lunges and plunges. This can of course happen occasionally in a novel, but overwhelmingly for me in such books the game isn't worth the candle, as they say; way too much gets sacrificed on the altar of plot (apologies, Mixed Metaphor God). There are exceptions, but as I say, in general, I'm much more excited by a work that does away with this empty armature. Does that make sense? What's your sense for yourself? Why has narrative ceased to interest you as much? For me, I feel I'm playing to my strengths and avoiding my weaknesses, whereas I've always felt that you're remarkably good at evoking other people, creating story, etc. I wonder why that has gone flat for you if it has....

LRS: I'm not sure why it's gone flat for me. When I place a narrator or viewpoint character in a scene that I'm fabricating (even when writing close to my life), I begin to feel like I'm avoiding or circling around what matters the most to me, yet when I strip away plot contrivance, what I'm left with feels more real to me—memories and mind-states and worries and thoughts about literature and culture and self-reflection and dreams and self-conscious mumblings, stuff we hide from everybody save our spouses and shrinks and sometimes we cannot even tell them. As of late I even have problems making up fictional names for my narrators; they remain nameless. Or I cannot imagine (anymore) asking myself this particular question when I'm writing: "How would such-and-such character act or behave in this certain situation?" I think Marcus's essay argues for the creation of new forms that can hold this stripped-of-contrivance story.

I like any prose (or poetry) that hits close to the bone, full of insight and details that feel fresh and hard-earned, not researched or guessed at. I especially think of your book Remote, how it so deftly presents reality through a variety of modes: anecdote, reportage, meditation, prose poem (lyricism), list, dreams, etc. Or of an interesting form that sprang from your last two books (Enough About You and The Body Politic): the (auto)biographical essay about another person (Bill Murray or Howard Cosell) that really, inadvertently, tells the story of David Shields. I wonder if you can elaborate more on this idea of "reality hunger" and how that maybe guides your drafting process.

Shields: I'm right now working on a new book called Reality Hunger: A Manifesto—which explores all of these issues ad infinitum. Hard for me to address all these topics without just attaching 14 chapters from the book-in-progress. The issue is so close to me, so crucial, so complex and fascinating it's hard to even begin talking about it. That said, I agree with much of what you said: I couldn't imagine making up characters named Bill and Hank and Henrietta. Seems ridiculous. As Dave Eggers said a while ago, "writing fiction feels like driving down the highway wearing a clown suit."

It's interesting to me that you and I were "trained" to become fiction writers, and for a variety of cultural/artistic/personal reasons, that emptied out for us. In the book I try to go into all of these reasons. For me, a very live idea—have I said this already?—is nervousness, placing myself and the reader in a state of danger. Without that, why bother? And the frame of fiction seems to me to reduce the danger quotient considerably—not always but usually.

Reality hunger: I'm very interested in reality-based art in a variety of forms: self-reflexive documentary (e.g., Ross McElwee), anthropological autobiography (George Trow, Renata Adler), stand-up comedy and performance art that risks a lot (Rick Reynolds, who grew up in Portland, Spalding Gray, early Sandra Bernhard). All of these people

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