The Literature of Exhaustion or the Library of Babel

Barth’s essay, “The Literature of Exhaustion”, is considered by some the manifesto of postmodernism. More than talking about postmodernism, Barth talks about a new kind of literature, with a new technique, starting from Joyce’s and Kafka’s prose, a “literature of exhaustion” in opposition with the literature of consumption. He also depicts the “things worth remaking”, rewriting, from the perspective of the present, and last, but not the least, a major role in the new literature is being given to Borges’ prose.

One of the ideas that I liked here is his opinion about writers that write in the old style, and writers of the new technique:

"A good many current novelists write turn-of-the-century-type novels, only in more or less mid-twentieth-century language and about contemporary people and topics; this makes them considerably less interesting (to me) than excellent writers who are also technically contemporary: Joyce and Kafka, for instance, in their time, and in ours, Samuel Beckett and Jorge Luis Borges."

Moreover, the “technically old-fashioned artist”,

“write not as if the twentieth century didn't exist, but as if the great writers of the last sixty years or so hadn't existed (nota bene that our century's more than two-thirds done; it's dismaying to see so many of our writers following Dostoevsky or Tolstoy or Flaubert or Balzac, when the real technical question seems to me to be how to succeed not even Joyce and Kafka, but those who've succeeded Joyce and Kafka and are now in the evenings of their own careers)”

The truth is that many readers stick to the old prose, not accepting this new type ... who would read something, unable to understand it? A literature of words and silence, a literature that goes beyond syntax … I think that literature split itself into a literature of consumption, the one accessible for everyone, with its own readers and writers, and a “literature of exhaustion”, where a few writers and readers have “access”. In this latter field, writers write with new techniques old themes, crossing borderlands, engaging the readers into the new prose, offering them the freedom of their own interpretations … because let’s face it, if we read Hawthorne, most of the interpretations are made by the writer himself; for the few things that are not told in the text, the readers can have two or three interpretations … if we read Joyce, some readers can sympathize with the characters, some can hate them, some can see in a word a world, and so on … Literature is the one that chooses its readers and writers. We cannot write in a style and about something we cannot understand, we cannot read (reading as understanding) something that is beyond our limits …

Barth also depicts the “things worth remaking” and the “things worth doing”. We have always wanted new things; we have always rebelled against Tradition. As it is well known, postmodernism rewrites old stories, old themes, from the point of view not only of the present, but also of the writer’s personality. As Kierkegaard says, “Every moment leaping into infinite, and every moment falling surely back into the finite”.

In his analysis of Borges' style, Barth depicts the core of the new literature:

"The infinite library of one of the most popular stories is an image particularly pertinent to the literature of exhaustion; the 'Library of Babel' houses every possible combination of alphabetical characters and spaces, and thus every possible book and statement, including your and my refutations and viridications, the history of the actual future, the history of every possible future."

 

Photo source: here.