"All Art is Theft"

"All Art is Theft" explains nonfiction author David Shields who has written such books as "Enough About You: Notes Toward the New Biography" and "The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead" has published a new book that was released this past February titled "Reality Hunger: A Manifesto." The book, made up of many instances of appropriation, has caused some controversy both in the nonfiction/publishing world as well as in the media. A New York Times book review states that "One way in which the book expresses its thesis is in its organization: it is made up of 618 numbered paragraphs, more than half of them drawn from other sources, attributed only at the end of the book". (Sante) I cannot help but think of Andrew Keen. Would he appreciate Shields' revolutionary text for its use of writing taken from expert authors? Or banish it to the back of the bookshelf for its use of appropriation that he condemns in the video we watched? The New York Times describes the book by saying…

Consider the state of literature at the moment. Consider the rise of the memoir, the incidences of contrived and fabricated memoirs, the rash of imputations of plagiarism in novels, the overall ill health of the mainstream novel. Consider, too, culture outside of literature: reality TV, the many shades and variations of documentary film, the rise of the curator, the rise of the D.J., sampling, appropriation, the carry-over of collage from modernism into postmodernism. Now consider that all these elements might somehow be connected, might represent different aspects of some giant whatsit that will eventually constitute the cultural face of our time in the eyes of the future. That is what David Shields proposes in “Reality Hunger: A Manifesto." (Sante)


The book has become one of the most talked about nonfiction books of this year, landing Shields an interview with Stephen Colbert on his show, The Colbert Report. In the interview Colbert mentions the fact that the pages of Shields' book that included the citing for the excerpts have dotted lines on them. We learn that it is a gesture for the reader to cut those pages out of the book and the inclusion of the pages was a decision by the publisher. So where do you stand on the issue of appropriation in books, music, on blogs, or anywhere else it can be used? Is this a nonfiction manifesto or a product of a lack of creativity?

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David Shields
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