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What is the Dialogue of Experimental Literature?
What is Experimental Literature? What is traditional literature? At the time it is written, most literature pushes beyond the style of writing that precedes it. It's naturally different from the era that went before. Post-Modernist works very consciously exhibit more progressive aspects than even Modernist works.
Sometimes the specific piece of writing is different from everything, and is on the cutting edge of innovation in style, technique, structure, use of language, concepts of consciousness explored, what constitutes a plot, characters, allowable subject matter, presentation, or something else unexpected. The works on the forefront of breaking apart the complacent, and routine ways of looking at literature and life itself are generally the most experimental. They are often eccentric, quirky, even puzzling, and not necessarily to the taste of the mainstream, at least at the time.
Knowing the rules of what pushed the previous rules before and thus became "traditional," and what experiments have been done already, and what is waiting to be explored is useful for writers who want to make their writing win a place in the history of literature. Even looking into this briefly can be very helpful and inspiring.
Literature that is innovative generally is read by people who have a propensity to read other innovative literature, at least the most famous, and so they will naturally place what they are reading in that context. Often new work comments on the tradition in some way, so just a change in structure, for example, can be an ironic twist that is more meaningful if we know what it's a twist on.
Each new meaningful difference that causes excitement in the readership puts the writer's voice in the dialogue of experimental fiction. This ongoing dialogue may be more important than many writers realize, who feel they can forge ahead without knowing anything of what went before. This sometimes works, for sure, but developing a personal manifesto that grounds your innovation in a rationale based on some study of the dialogue of experimentation may provide a richer context to reference the avant-garde writing. Being able to describe what it is, perhaps in essays about literary theory, helps readers understand.
In most cases of great literature, the writing could potentially be considered experimental, because the authors are forging new ways of looking at reality, if literary art is the ambition. Genre novels more likely go by formulas and stay within the status quo, and, often, sell quite well while doing so, entertaining many a reader warmly and thoroughly. Many, many people are far happier with romance novels and Westerns, mysteries, and mainstream fiction. Many people scratch their heads at experimental work, or see it as pretentious, or inadequate.
Experimental fiction isn't everyone's cup of tea. But perhaps it's the messy tea that deposits leaves in the bottom for the Tea Reader Lady to see the future in.
The future can be broached through the pushing past the rules, with the brilliance of literary fiction, particularly in the methods of approaching those set patterns we have in our heads, which correspond to traditional literature. The habitual methods of perception can be stepped back from and the mind looked at afresh through the window of experimental fiction. Something entirely new can spring forth and delight.
If we look at the future from the outlook of mainstream fiction, we may see things in the perspective we've adopted as a default social construct of what the world is. The future may look something like the present to us because our minds are in the present zeitgeist.
If we shake apart perception, as so many new movements in literature have done, such as Phenomenological literature, The French New Novels, and Magical Realism, we may use literary projects to evolve in ways exciting to the growth of consciousness.
While we may look at the classics as established, monolithic pieces of fiction, solid, normal, they may actually have seemed surprising, confusing, even shocking and transgressive at the time they were written.
This is true of all the arts historically. When the now classic composer Igor Stravinsky's Rite of Spring ballet was first performed in Paris, in 1913, a riot ensued. The dissonance, and multiple rhythms, and "plot" and passion pushed beyond classical music so shockingly that it has become a premiere historical example of the effect of experimentation, the public's initial discomfort giving way to the greatest praise.
When Russian Sergei Parajanov's films were produced, especially with his work beginning in mid 1960s, he was sent to prison more than once for being a surrealist, which was not part of the party line. His films brought a kind of visual beauty and aliveness many consider never to have been seen before in film.
French painter Edward Manet's Olympia painting caused a scandal in 1865, and is now used to represent innovation within the age of Realism, which was itself very cutting edge at the time, hard as that may be for some to imagine, both for visual arts and literature. It has come to seem obvious, over the years, but was caused a stir when it began, was the experimental literature of its time.
Realism, manifested in all of the artistic forms, which now seems so traditional, was shocking to the public as it went through experiences such as Manet's painting. The painting took the Realism approach to common everyday life, aggressively moving beyond the mythical, romanticized portrayal of the world by depicting a subject that some saw as ugly and unmysterious, which had only been shown before romanticized and made otherworldly and foreign.
His painting mimicked many others through art history on the same subject, the differences from them being noteworthy. He also used innovative painting methods such as the color patch, which is more sketchlike, raw, and flat. New methods of painting, and referencing older images in order to make an artistic statement about reality which has a visceral response puts him squarely into the category of experimental.
Pushing beyond what has saturated the mass psyche and creating something of some merit which is different, is experimental art of any type. Progression in all the arts coincide to some degree. These days, multi-media presentations of art and writing and music and more combined, such as www.MadHattersReview.com, an online multimedia magazine that integrates the arts.
The moving forward in the lava-like edge of literature can be great fun in many directions. Absurd fun in very short impossible stories told in unprecedented ways has an enthusiastic following. Bizarro and Absurdism are such styles. Similarly unrealistic, Irrealism and Surrealism and Slipstream and New Wave Fabulism and Magical Realism all explore realms of the somewhat fantastic, imaginal, but are not Fantasy genre fiction, each style making a kind of innovative imprint on the world-view, creating new synapses in the mass brain. The experimental works of the time which became the classics in dance, music, visual arts, film, and literature have sometimes led to upheaval, and their authors have sometimes ended up dying in poverty. This was particularly true of repressive regimes and eras, of course.
Still, those passionate people who have successfully, boldly pioneered new trends in the arts have generally been the ones rewarded with the highest acclaim for expressing their creative, visionary, transformative genius. They have changed the face of literature and society and the make-up of the mass human psyche.
And very often, the avant-garde, forward thinking writers have been rewarded with honors from the beginning, from their first publications, because the reading public recognized something fresh, exciting, groundbreaking. A new voice, something that gets people thinking, talking, writing, is deeply valued.
And even if a few discriminating readers take heart on finding a writer who speaks to their obscure souls, it can be worth it to provide some scintillating stained glass literary windows on the world for them to look through, with writing.
Often, the most innovative experimentation, such as James Joyce's intellectual, symbolic, dense writing style, gains recognition and is used to exemplify the generation's literature.
Writing that is safe, guaranteed publication, even best seller status, is less likely to make it into the history of literature as taught in universities, put in anthologies, and referenced in literary criticism. The dialogue of literature, as with all of the arts, has always been made up of one innovation after another. The new innovations speak to each other across time and space and concepts.
A few writers of Experimental Fiction:
Thomas Pynchon, James Joyce, William Burroughs, Gertrude Stein, Virginia Woolf, Paul Auster, Claude Simone, Samuel Beckett, Mikel And, Donald Barthelme, John Barth, Manuel Puig, Harlan Wilson, Raymond Federman, Ronald Sukenick, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Harold Jaffe, Raymond Queneau, Carlos Fuentes, Kelly Link, Vladimir Nabokov, Julio Cortizar, Don Webb, Djuna Barnes, Carol Novack , Kathy Acker, Forrest Aquirre, Rachel Kendell, John Crowley, Peter Moon...
...and Italo Calvino, whom I focus on most in my Experimental Fiction Writing class through www.writerscollege.com.
A few types of experimental fiction:
Anti-Stories, which were made popular in the '60s by an anthology by that name made up of writers such as John Barth, Donald Barthelme, and the Argentinan Jorge Borges, don't follow the usual causal plot line, and may divide up into various parallel endings, for mysterious motivations, leave readers wondering if it's even supposed to be believable. They experiment with ways of creating fiction that throws out all rules of what is considered a story at all, refusing to be held to convention of what is required to be entertaining.
Irreal Fiction, including writers such as Franz Kafka, and again, Jorge Borges, throws out the desire for realism, or even an ending that answers any questions we may have, but pulls the rug out from under us instead. We may not even care what happens to the characters, but the style itself may be very compelling and richly imagistic.
Magical Realism, associated with Gabriel Marquez and other Latin American writers, creates scenes which seem normal overall, but within them, unexplainable things can occur at times, such as characters flying, with no one getting hot and bothered about it, treating it as normal. Realism and fantasy are both valued, together, in a way that says something about society and humanity and nature.
French New Novels, beginning in the 1950s, left behind character analysis and instead described locations and occurrences with exaggerated objectivity and precision. Alain Robbe-Grillet and Claude Simone, for example, were well-known for their minute dissecting of visual reality in cinematic ways, such describing characters cutting up film, portraying the scenes in a similar way, and creating space in between the cuts in perception that allow freedom of exploration through the lack of ordinary linearity. Paul Auster is a modern writer who has run with this style.
New Wave Fabulism, as exemplified in Conjunctions Magazine devoted to that style in 2002, writing that has elements of fantasy, literary fiction, and even horror at times, became cohesive in their combination of experimental innovation and fantastic subject matter, though this rarely includes overused conventional types of fantasy characters. This style gives the fantastic a chance to explore high literary themes and experiments.
Slipstream is high quality innovative literature of the strange events of life that are hard to explain using mainstream logic, such as presented in 2002's anthology, Feeling Very Strange, and includes writers such as Paul Auster, Kathy Acker, again, Marquez, and Kelly Link. Fortean themes with exotic and weird but not conventional fantasy elements are present. Part of the story will be normal, and then it may slip midway into something a little odd.
Meta-Stories are about stories themselves, being self-reflexive, acknowledging that we are reading them rather than becoming immersed in the action.
Surrealism plays with unexpected juxtapositions in an often whimsical way, symbolic, originally highly influenced by Sigmund Freud, bringing forth the unconscious onto the page, which might involve writing from a kind of trance-like state. It evolved out of the previous experimental movement of Dada. Surrealism is symbolic, unexplainable otherwise, but generally seen as meaningful in a dreamlike way, full of colorful images never before seen in real life.
Lyrical Fiction uses poetic language, rhythms, and images to create melodic sounding stories. Carol Novak is an example, and the lyric quality may be used to create a kind of trance that helps access the unconscious.
Bizarro, which has a cult following, growing out of the Irreal movement, is literature of the absurd, which is mainly for the sake of enjoyment, high weirdness being part of the draw. Eckhard Gerdes and D. Harlan Wilson, for example, don't require conventional literary rules in the worlds in which nothing is predictable. Life is fun, often perverse, and often, the writing is illustrated.
Quantum Fiction, a term coined by Vanna Bonta, may have elements of fantasy and Sci Fi, but has elements of quantum physics, taken into the level of New Physics. New Physics uses scientific tests to show that our consciousness influences the world around us. Brian O'Leary is an example of that. Parallel lives may intersect with each other and the Many Worlds Theory may define reality as being multi-dimensional. Vera Ulea is a burgeoning proponent of it currently, defining it in her own terms very eloquently, and passionately.
Transgressive Fiction, in which characters break past conventions and taboos in some extreme way, may push the reader's comfort level as well, in a somewhat aggressive manner. Many times, topics include sex, and violence, though some trangressive fiction focuses more on topics that have been taboo in our culture for more political reasons.
Lucid Fiction, which I particularly promote, can include any of these sorts of experimental fiction, as well as others not listed here. It could be looked at as stories eating themselves, because rather than going along with what could be looked at as an “addiction” to drama and conflict, in one story after another, it often uses stories to escape the need for stories. It may includes a fuller range of the self than other types emphasize, including New Physics and Fortean perspectives, the aura, the Higher Self, the flow of consciousness that includes more than just one individual, as it often presents insights into the nature of consciousness and reality itself through experiments with the structure, plot, and character. It is the literature of a new paradigm of a dreamlike illusion our society has lived in as it becomes more lucid and we see beyond the deceits imposed by mass media, politicians, etc.
A few experimental fiction magazines
Dream People
Berkeley Fiction Review
Saucytooth's Webology
Bust Down the Doors and Eat All the Chickens
Sleeping Fish
Journal of Experimental Fiction
Lit Chaos
Bewildering Stories
Fence Magazine
Conjunctions Magazine
Coe Review
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