Experimental Fiction
Page 19
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Experiment with this: Learning to Create an Interactive Fiction
Write a short story using the title ‘It’s Your Choice’. Write four possible outcomes to the story. Post the story online and ask readers to select their favourite outcome.
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Further Reading
Atkinson, Kate (2013) Life after Life, London: Doubleday.
Eagleman, David (2009) Sum, Edinburgh: Canongate.
Filer, Nathan (2013) The Shock of the Fall, London: Harper Collins.
Frey, James (2003) A Million Little Pieces, London: John Murray.
Grey, Alex (1998) The Mission of Art, London: Shambhala Publications.
Harding, Paul (2010) Tinkers, London: William Heinemann.
Harvey, Samantha (2012) All Is Song, London: Jonathan Cape.
Heti, Shelia (2013) How Should a Person Be? London: Harvill Secker.
Joyce, Rachel (2012) The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, London: Doubleday.
Krauss, Nicole (2002) Man Walks into a Room: London: Penguin Books.
——— (2005) The History of Love, London: Penguin Books.
——— (2010) Great House, London: Penguin Books.
Larsen, Reif (2010) The Selected Works of Spivet, T. S., London: Vintage.
Le Roy, J. T. (2000) Sarah, London: Bloomsbury.
Martel, Yann (2002) The Life of Pi, Edinburgh: Canongate.
——— (2011) Beatrice and Virgil, Edinburgh: Canongate.
McCarthy, Tom (2010) C, London: Jonathan Cape.
McCleen, Grace (2013) The Professor of Poetry, London: Sceptre.
Mitchell, David (2001) Number9dream, London: Sceptre.
Moggach, Lottie (2013) Kiss Me First, London: Picador.
Niffenegger, Audrey (2005) The Incestuous Sisters, London: Jonathan Cape.
Ozeki, Ruth (2013) A Tale for the Time Being, Edinburgh: Canongate.
Roberts Symmons, Michael (2009) Breath, London: Vintage.
Royle, Nicholas (2010) Quilt, Brighton: Myriad Editions.
——— (2013) First Novel, London: Jonathan Cape.
Ryan, Rob (2010) A Sky Full of Kindness, London: Sceptre.
Schad, John (2007) Someone Called Derrida, Eastbourne: Sussex Academic Press.
Shields, David (2010) Reality Hunger, London: Hamish Hamilton.
Smailes, Caroline (2012) 99 Reasons Why, London: The Friday Project.
Thomas, Scarlett (2011) Our Tragic Universe, Edinburgh: Canongate.
Walker Thompson, Karen (2013) Age of Miracles, London: Simon & Schuster.
Winterson, Jeanette (1996) Art Objects, London: Vintage.
Conclusion
How can writers engage in experimental writing practice?
It can be said that some writers do set out to be experimental for a variety of reasons, outlined in the introduction of this book. And this experimentation can be done in a variety of ways, shown in the creative writing exercises throughout this book, but they are tried and tested ways. So, what counts as experimental these days? And how can it be achieved?
Notions of experimental or avant garde have always been problematic. And yet, throughout history, writers have engaged with experimentation, often as a means of interacting with the times in which they are living. In the twenty-first century, this is still the case, but how can and how are writers doing this? Writers, especially those working in universities, studying on postgraduate programmes are engaging with praxis, that is, creative writing as research.
What are the implications for the writer wishing to experiment?
By engaging in experimentation, writers are taking the risk of being marginalized by readers, who judge work by the aesthetic standards that the writer has rejected or abandoned. This may lead to problems for writers wanting to be published by mainstream publishers, who want to make a profit and are loathe to take risks in such difficult economic times through the publishing of new work that may only attract a small readership, and therefore no profit. And yet, with the success of C and Tinkers, it appears that it can pay to take risks. However, fundamentally, it seems that Britain, in particular, has lost its risk-taking culture; publishing, it can be argued, is paying too much attention to pleasing readers, even though readers are being starved of fresh writing talent by a very real emphasis on commercial success by cash-strapped publishing houses. So, what are the answers to these dilemmas?
With access to the net, writers and readers have never been in a better position to communicate with other readers and writers. Although not in a traditional sense, writers are still able to showcase their work and reach an audience online. It is a question of thinking outside the box, or off the paper page. Self-promoting work is now an acceptable way of reaching readers and being true to the writer’s integrity, and, in some cases, it is being seen as a very real threat to publishing houses. It is worth considering: Why should mainstream publishers have the monopoly on choosing work that they deem suitable for a readership if that means that a considerable amount of fresh, exciting, worthwhile fiction is never going to be read? Isn’t it true that some fiction rejected in one time is then revered in another? Isn’t it a question of the writer having faith in their work, and being true to their own artistic ideals? Considering the implications for the writer wishing to experiment in time, why is it still necessary for the writer to experiment?
Can this contradictory, complex world be represented by traditional-realist fiction?
This fast-paced, multi-narrative, multi-voiced world cannot be represented by simplistic, realist fiction. Writers need to reflect upon the speed of the twenty-first century, which is difficult if they are bound by plot. The linear narrative – beginning, middle, ending – does not ring true anymore. And so it is time for writers and readers to develop a spirit of adventure and make different journeys with different fictions to map the way. These different narratives are already emerging. As the Australian writer Gail Jones suggests, contemporary technologies are changing the ways in which stories are told and the ways in which experience is imagined.
As David Shield’s writes, ‘Facts quicken, multiply, change shape, elude us and bombard our lives with increasingly suspicious promises,’ so that we are ‘no longer able to depend on canonical literature,’ as we ‘journey increasingly across boundaries, along borders, into fringes, and finally through our yearnings to quest, where only more questions are found’ (p. 79). Indeed, it is time to create fictions that at least engage with such questions; it is time to challenge orthodoxy and narrative, to push work to a more exciting realm, not ape what has gone before, nostalgically recreating old fiction for a new generation. Surely writers and readers deserve more? Ben Marcus, author of a collection of experimental short stories The Age of Wire and String and The Flame Alphabet, which has been referred to as an anti-narrative, is of the same opinion. Reacting to points made by Jonathan Franzen that experimental fiction was damaging the future of literature and scaring off potential readers, Marcus fought back by saying that he considered experimentation to be healthy, and that writers should be pushing linguistic barriers and making new pathways. Twice named Granta’s best British young writer, and author of Politics (2003) and The Escape (2009), Adam Thirlwell also believes in the value of experimental fiction. The American novelist and short story writer, and author of The Virgin Suicides (1993), Jeffrey Eugenides agrees, acknowledging the need to describe something new about human experience or consciousness, which is what he considers to be the drive behind literary innovation.
The new era is about creating something new and fresh to capture the spirit of the twenty-first century. If writing does not evolve, it will be stale, dull, unadventurous. Alex Clark, a contributor to the Observer and former Booker Prize judge, has stated that writing should not be about producing something safe, it should be about producing something which unsettles, disturbs even. Certainly, writing should make readers think, question, challenge assumptions, unsettle, re-define, grow and not stay stuck in the past on a treadmi
ll of repetition, of being in a comfort zone, with no surprises, no shocks, no new adventures. Fiction has to evolve. ‘If fiction is to have any future in the technological dream/nightmare of the twenty first century it needs, more than ever, to remember itself as imaginative, innovative, Other’ (Winterson, Jeanette (1996) Art Objects, p. 178).
Index
abstract expressionism 59
Acid House, The 125
acupuncture 159
Age of Miracles, The 167–8
Age of Wire and String, The 195
alcoholism 73
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland 126
All Is Song 170
amalgamation of cultures 156
ambiguity 21
American Suburban Dream 58
American Transcendental Movement 61
Anderson, Truett 99, 127
anti-historical fiction 135
anti-linear fiction 30–1
aparigraha 76
see also Buddhism
Aristotelian principles 5
Armory Show 12
Artful 185–6
Art Objects 105–6
Association of American Painters and Sculptors 12
Austen, Jane 76
autobiographical narrative 176
see also Sarah
autobiography 112
avant-garde sensibility 13
avantgardism 125
Banks, Iain 3
Barthes, Roland 7
BBC 14
beatnik 60, 65, 67–8
beats 57–88, 92, 125
annihilation threat 58
anti-materialism philosophy 72
associated figures 60
beat generation 59
beatnik 67
Bebop improvisation 66
civil rights struggle 58
cut-up technique 83–4
drugs, experiment with 82–3
freedom of expression 64
free talking 64
free voices 64
hippie 68
hip youth culture 59
homosexual or bisexual 81
influences 63
inspiration 61
jazz 63, 65–7
junky lifestyle 60
language 80–1
middleclass life, romanticized view 58
modernism 62
post-war years 57
romanticism 62
sexuality, experiment with 81–2
sexual taboos 61
spirituality and 69–77
Bhagavad Gita 69–71
Buddhism 73
spiritual writers 69–72
tantric Buddhism 70
Upanishads 70–1
Vedanta 69
stream of consciousness 64
surrealism 62–3
techniques and style 63–4
three musketeers 60
Bebo 156
Bebop 65–6
belief systems 104, 166, 171
Bell, Alexander Graham 16
Bell, Clive 39
Bell, Vanessa 39
Bergson, Henri 50–1
Bhagavad Gita 69–71
biblical narratives 132–3
Billy Graham Evangelistic Association 58
Black Mountain School 112
Blake, William 62, 70
Bloody Chamber, The 103
Booker Prize 157, 159, 164
Breton, Andre 48, 61–2
Bristow, Joseph 111
Buchan, John 187
Buddha of Suburbia, The 150, 152
Buddhism 69–70, 73–4, 76–7, 92, 132
emptiness 77
mindfulness 159
non-attachment 76–7
teachings 73–4
Burroughs, S. William 59, 60–1, 72–3, 79–83, 112
Calvino, Italo 135–6, 143
C and Tinkers 194
capitalism 15, 41, 61, 124, 156, 177
Carter, Angela 103, 133
cash-strapped publishing 194
Cassady, Neal 60, 79, 82–3, 87–8
categorization 185
Cezanne, Paul 12
Chaplin, Charlie 14
Christianity 132
City Lights Books 81
classical ballet 13
collaborative fiction writing 160–1
Colossus of Maroussi, The 69
commercialism, gluttony of 120
commercial printing 16
computer mediation 97
conflict of duality 71
conflict of interest 155
consciousness, single centre of 107
Constellations of Genius 13
consumerism 58, 116, 167
conventional expectations 5
Counter Culture Movement 68
see also hippie
Coupland, Douglas 103–4, 106, 121–3
cross-formal experimentalism 163
Cult of Unthink 92
cultural identity 150
cultural technology, advent 97
culture series of fiction 3
Cunningham, Michael 22
cut-up technique 83–4, 112, 117, 125
cyber bullying 156
cyberpunk 123–6
fictional techniques 125
remixing techniques 125
science fiction 126
surveillance 124
themes 124
cyberscouts 189
cycling 157
cynicism 117
Dalai Lama 166
Danielewski, Mark Z. 181
Darwin, Charles 13, 17, 50, 164
Da Vinci Code, The 188
Death of the Author 7, 104–5
de Beauvoir, Simone 109
Decline of The West, The 72
defamiliarization, concept of 152
DeLillo, Don 106, 140, 142
delusion 123
depression of the 1930s and 1940s 57
de Saussure, Ferdinand 102
desirability, socio-cultural definitions 110
Dharma Bums 74, 82, 92
see also group sex
Diaghilev, Serge 12
Diamond Sutra, The 75
Dickens, Charles 25, 113, 189
dig and square 66
see also jazz
digital technology 187
Disco Biscuits 125
dislocation 21
Doctor Zhivago 22
Don Quixote 113
drug abuse 123
Dubliners 44
Eagleman, David 134, 159, 169, 172
Eastern mysticism 69
ebooks 187–8
advantages of 188–9
transition 188
eclecticism 151, 153
Education Act 17
Egan, Jennifer 161, 189
ego 47
Einstein, Albert 17
Electronic Nocturne 190
electronic revolution 98
Eliot, T. S. 13, 36, 71–2, 83, 167
Ellis Easton, Bret 106, 119–22
Enigma of Arrival, The 148
Enlightenment 98, 100, 127, 139
human liberation 100
key elements 127, 139
postmodernity 98
Escape, The 195
EU Ecolabel 158
euro zone debt crisis 156
evangelical Christianity 58
resurgence of 58
experimental fiction 3–8, 23, 25, 29, 35, 47, 63, 99, 103, 108–10, 119, 127, 164, 181, 185
autopilot expectations 7
checklist for deconstructing 8–9
content 6
craft 6
form 6
innovation and risk-taking 3
multiplicity of 9
procedures 6
reader approach 6–7
readers mindset 8
reading criteria 7–8
strategies 6
techniques 6
traditional realist fiction and 4–6
writers mindset 8
experimentalism, cross-formal 163
concerns 2–3
Gibson, William 3
McGregor, Jon 3
experimental writing 36, 59, 61, 66, 79, 90
experimentation 19, 22, 25, 58, 61, 63, 69, 79, 81, 106, 111, 125, 185
implications for writer 193–4
self-promoting work 194
fabulist fiction, genre of 135
Facebook 156, 175
Fact Fashion 158
Farewell to Arms, A 19
Faulkner, William 21, 29, 32, 49
female identity, instability of 112
femininity 36, 39, 117
forms of 110
oppressive forms 110
feminism
conventional sexuality with 36
first wave 36
French 112
rise of 58
Ferlinghetti, Lawrence 66, 81
fictiveness of fiction 119–26
consumer culture 119
content 119–22
cyberpunk 123
form 119–22
information age 122–3
technological growth 122–3
themes 119–22
writing strategies 119–22
Fielding, Henry 76
Fifty Shades of Grey 162, 188
Fight Club 116
Filer, Nathan 173
Finnegans Wake 21
Five Bells 22
Flame Alphabet, The 195
flapper 37–8
Fleeing Complexity 103
Fluxus Movement 112
Ford, Henry 16
fragmentation 21, 26, 122
freedom of a poet 33
Freewoman, The 36
French feminism 112
Freud, Sigmund 17, 38, 47
Frey, James 177
Fry, Roger 39
Gauguin, Paul 12
Gay Pride 110
see also Women’s Movement
gender crisis 35–40
definition 35
language 38
modernists views 39–40
multiple narratives 40
political freedoms 37
psychological experiences 39
representation 35
sexual conventions 38–9
social freedoms 37
switching gender roles 40
Victorian society 39
women representation 38
women’s movement 36
gender difference 115
Georgian Age 11
Ghostwritten 169
Gibson, William 3, 122–4, 135, 181
Ginsberg, Allen 59–60, 62, 68–9, 82