Shtick-Lit

December 11, 2009

[CC licensed image by e^3000]

In Memoir: A History, Ben Yagoda uses (coins?) the inspired term "shtick-lit" to describe "books perpetrated by people who undertook an unusual project with the express purpose of writing about it." I wish I’d thought of that. It’s a great way to describe the genre that includes books like:

• Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages
• The Know-It-All: One Man’s Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World
• Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen
• A Year Without "Made in China": One Family’s True Life Adventure in the Global Economy
• So Many Books, So Little Time: A Year of Passionate Reading

These aren’t all bad books. Nor are they a wholly new phenomenon: in the 60s George Plimpton tried playing professional football and boxing, inspiring a new kind of journalism that seems a natural fit in the zeitgeist of a time that saw the publication of Tom Wolfe’s Electric Kool Aid Acid Test. For that matter one could consider the deliberate projects of Montaigne or Thoreau in this light…

But there’s something strange about the shtick-lit genre, particularly given that we live in a time in which autobiography and memoir have seemingly taken center stage (as argued by Yagoda and others). In an important way, shtick-lit reverses the dynamic of the memoir. Traditional memoir says "here’s what happened to me in my life." Shtick-lit says "here’s the result of a conscious experiment with my life."

In our time of easy celebrity and ubiquitous media, a time in which many of the celebrated are famous only for being celebrities– a most intense form of navel-gazing– much shtick-lit suffers from (a real or perceived) lack of authenticity. The story of one transforming– or attempting to transform– their lives is much more compelling than the story of one who is trying something for a month or a year.

The best of shtick-lit transcends the genre label, accounting for an experience that becomes real and permanent in the author’s life, something that changes them while remaining complex and essentially mysterious, or something that was inside the author– and necessary to them– from the start. So Many Books, So Little Time, like David Denby’s Great Books, grows from the author’s obsession and passion, not a clinical experiment, an attempt to manufacture passion or, worse, an attempt to "understand" something they observe in others but do not feel themselves.

Tags: books, memoirs, nonfiction, reading, shtick lit