Representation Hunger

Humans crave a representation of their live making art exist. As chapter K says, people want to see aspects of their lives in TV. Those aspects, distortions of their realities, make them happy as they see richer or sexier lives with the same human problems. Others get some type of catharsis by seeing someone worse off or simply funny. When I read the first Harry Potter book, probably around seven, I honestly wanted a Hogwarts letter and incorporated the book series into my games (like fake Quidditch). I think commercial and superficial "art" reveals that humans by nature want literature that shows their lives reinvented. 

Michael Kimball (from the article) allowed people to see their lives in a summarized simple way that made them happy. As David Shields points out in chapters K, M and N, people want to see their dreamed reality in literature, as Kimball's postcards showed people's lives. The writer of the Guardian article, referring to the postcards, wrote, "It felt like being exposed, but also strangely satisfying; the postcard doesn't sum up my life, but what got me to where I am now. It's a snapshot of a moment." As a short and oversimplifying type of literature, the postcards show what people want to read. People like enjoy reading them and apparently can even cure their depression from it. Memoirs are the same. This genre is defined as a written account of someone's memory of certain events or people. Authors craft a version of their lives when choosing what and how to write. As everything we do and say is rhetorical, and people like to win, whenever you can show a reality you'll want to show your version of it. Art seeks to find fulfillment--its purpose is to satisfy its creator (I've never heard of anyone who writes or creates some type of art to hurt him or herself). It is clear that literature is biased in the author's interests. As people share existential problems, readers often find a similar satisfaction as the author.

Shields is trying to show that nonfiction doesn't exist. It is an abstract idea that is incompatible with the human mind. Section 385 describes that point: "The roominess of the term nonfiction: an entire dresser labeled nonsocks." Shields also quotes, "We make a mistake in thinking of memoir as nonfiction. It's really nonpoetry" (pg. 134). These chapters of Reality Hunger pointed out that the usual term of nonfiction doesn't work on human-made works.