Experimental Fiction

by Armstrong, Julie;

  At this moment in time, what criteria may writers and readers consider when they are deconstructing experimental fiction?

  By no means is this list exclusive, but these are some points readers and writers can consider when reading and writing experimental fiction.

  Checklist for deconstructing experimental fiction

  Does the work subvert some, or all, of the intentions of traditional realist fiction?

  Does the work engage with contemporary debates, for example, debates concerning science, culture, politics? How? Why?

  Is the work seeking to challenge our intellect and/or question our assumptions regarding fiction?

  Are there patterns, repetition, rhythm, gaps between words or phrases, sites of tension and intensity within the fiction? If so, what is their effect?

  Is it a work that sets up its own rules while subverting the conventions according to which readers have understood what constitutes a work of literature?

  Is the work rejecting rigid boundaries – thinking outside the page?

  Does the text unsettle the limitations of genre and convention, subvert familiarity?

  Is the fiction drawing the reader’s attention away from the story to the act of story telling itself? How? Why? What is the effect?

  How does the work articulate emotional states?

  What is the structure, mood of the fiction?

  How is language being used?

  Are their gaps and/or silences within the work? Is the reader required to fill them?

  How is punctuation and syntax used?

  Is there a mixture of fact and fiction? If, so, why? What purpose does it serve?

  Does the work destabilize the real world? How? Why? What is the effect?

  Is there author intrusion? What impact does this have upon the reading of the work?

  Does the work experiment with form and typography?

  Does the work mix and/or subvert genres?

  Is there a denial of closure, simply flickering of meanings?

  It is hoped that this book will open the eyes of readers and writers to the multiplicity of experimental fiction that is available for them to enjoy, and to prompt those who are interested to engage with further lines of inquiry. It is worth noting that the world is constantly changing and contemporary writing will inevitably change to reflect these changes. Nothing stays the same for long.

  Section One

  When Was/What Was Modernity(ism)?

  When was modernity?

  The period of modernity emerged in Europe and the United States between 1880 and 1950, although it may be questionable whether modernity has ended, something that will be explored later in the postmodern section of this book.

  Specifically, Virginia Woolf noted December 1910 as a period of change, when, in her view, the character of human beings altered, of particular significance being the roles of women. The period saw demonstrations in London by the suffragettes. Indeed, 1910 was a turbulent time in history, a time which made a break with previous tradition and history. The year witnessed a general election and the death of Edward VII, which marked the beginning of the Georgian Age.

  The exhibition Manet and the Post-Impressionists was opened by Woolf’s friend, the British artist and critic Roger Fry, at the Grafton Galleries in London. ‘Post-Impressionism’ was a term coined by Fry to describe the development of art since Monet; it was not a formal style or movement, but more of a negative attitude towards Impressionism. This eclectic group of artists were working in a different way from their predecessors by extending Impressionism, rejecting its limitations to focus more on emotional, symbolic, spiritual, intellectual and structural elements of their work. Although continuing to use vivid colour, thick application of paint, distinctive brush strokes and real-life subject matter, they broke free from naturalism to emphasize geometric shapes to make the form more abstract. Each artist took an aspect of Impressionism and exaggerated it, pushing previous ideas into new directions. For example, Vincent van Gogh used exceptionally vibrant paint with a renewed sense of energy and emotion. Georges Seurat took the ‘broken’ brushwork and developed this technique into lots of tiny coloured dots, known as pointillism. Paul Gauguin incorporated symbolism into his paintings. And Paul Cezanne extended separation of colour into separation of whole planes of colour. The exhibition received a mixed reaction, one of admiration, shock, disbelief and mockery. Woolf was inspired by the artists’ techniques, especially those concerned with the use of colour, brushwork, perspective, composition, light and shade.

  During this time, painters such as Kandinsky and Klee were producing a new kind of artistic practice. Kandinsky was credited with producing the first purely abstract work, whereas Klee was influenced by surrealism and incorporated signs, symbols, images and metaphors into his paintings. His work was considered to be a form of writing. Indeed, Klee refused to make a clear distinction between art and writing.

  In 1913, there was the ground-breaking Armory Show organized by the Association of American Painters and Sculptors, the first exhibition of modern art in America; it was the first time the phrase ‘avant-garde’ was used to describe painting and sculpture. The show represented a search for new beauty, new versions of truth and a new way of seeing and was said to have shaken the world whilst attracting 87,000 visitors in New York before moving on to Chicago. The most controversial work was Marcel Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase, an oil painting which depicted a semi-abstract human figure in brown, assembled in such a way as to suggest rhythm and movement.

  In May of the same year, there was also the shocking premiere Le Sacre Du Printemps, a ballet and orchestral concert work by Igor Stravinsky written for Serge Diaghilev, the creator of the Ballet Russes, a company which revolutionized dance and commissioned scores which shaped twentieth-century music. Diaghilev was searching for a total art form, one that was a move away from the confines of convention and morality of the nineteenth century, an avant-garde sensibility articulated in the writings of the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, who advocated a rebirth of modern society that Diaghilev, Stravinsky and the dancer and choreographer Valslav Nijinsky sought to portray in Le Sacre. The score experimented with rhythm, metre and tonality so that the music was dissonant and odd. The choreography represented a shift away from classical ballet: sharp angles of the body, rather than smooth curves, flexed feet instead of pointed toes. The score and choreography, coupled with the subject matter, a pagan celebration in which a virgin sacrifices herself to the god of spring, conveyed nihilism and chaos and almost caused a riot when it was first performed in Paris in 1913.

  Although some artists and critics considered 1910 to be the year of change, others, notably Ezra Pound, declared 1922 to be the year of a new age; this was the time James Joyce completed Ulysses and T. S. Eliot published The Wasteland. According to Kevin Jackson, author of Constellations of Genius, 1922: Modernism Year One, these two works have become the ‘twin peaks of modernist literature’ (Jackson, p. 12). Ulysses and The Wasteland have been described by Jackson as ‘complex works, full of extensive and strange learning, and they demand a degree of attention far higher than that which the average browser is generally willing to give’ (Jackson, p. 13). Undoubtedly, this was a time when realist fiction and literary conventions were being dramatically challenged, not just by Joyce and T. S. Eliot, but by many other writers too; for example, Wyndham Lewis published his experimental prose Tarr. In this work, Lewis experimented with punctuation, introducing ‘paintery strokes’ into literature, an equals sign between sentences. Franz Kafka meanwhile wrote visionary yet nightmarish fiction addressing anxieties and changes occurring in the twentieth century, citing Darwin and Nietzsche as his influences. He explored themes of alienation in works such as The Metamorphosis (1912).

  The year 1922 was remarkable:

  Newspapers told of the final collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the end of British Liberalism with the crushing defeat by the Conservatives at the end of 1922 … In the world of the arts, Dada w
as put to rest; and Proust died. (Jackson, p. 16)

  Although the First World War (1914–18) brought about significant technological change, 1922 heralded the birth of mass media. In 1922, the first facsimile image was sent by telephone line; in addition, there was the launch of the BBC and the wide circulation of films, with Alfred Hitchcock directing his first film and the likes of Charlie Chaplin and Rudolph Valentino being adored by the masses. In 1922,

  … there was a frenzy of innovation. Modern linguistic philosophy can be dated from the publication of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus that year. Modern anthropology began with the triumphant publication of Malinowski’s Argonauts Of The Western Pacific. Kandinsky and Klee joined the Bauhaus … Louis Armstrong … launched himself as the greatest performer in the history of jazz. African-American culture came of age with the first major manifestations of what became known as the Harlem Renaissance … (Jackson, p. 17)

  Whether the actual date of change was 1910 or 1922, there is little doubt that the beginning of the twentieth century challenged the ways the world was perceived and transformed beliefs of what art and criticism could be. The work of artists such as Cezanne and Picasso looked at things from more than one perspective, provoking the questions: Is this what I see? Is the artist’s function to convey an idea? What makes good art? So, what brought about this shift in worldview? And what was modernity?

  What was modernity?

  In his book Modernism, Leigh Wilson says that modernity was the ‘the events, forces, practices and innovations which, from the late eighteenth century onwards, created the world, and the worldview, of the West’ (Wilson, 2007, p. 55). As the ordered, stable worldview of the nineteenth century shifted to become more complex and chaotic, the spirit of the time became one of contradiction, angst, rootlessness, disorientation, urban dislocation and, yet, optimism, making the world new. Indeed, a phrase that encapsulates this time was making new. Modernity then expressed modern life as a break from the past and its classical traditions; it was a condition of being in the modern world, a time of innovation and the rise of capitalism, when a new world emerged and a faster-paced existence came into being, one that was very different from that of the traditional Victorians. In part, it was the Industrial Revolution and its fallout that

  constructed modernity … the explosion in population experienced at this time, and the movement of large numbers of people from rural to urban areas to work in the new ‘manufactories’, eventually forced governments to begin to take responsibilities for the well-being of their citizens through the provision of sanitation, housing and, eventually, education and medical care. (as above, p. 56)

  The First World War was also attributed with a shift in the way the world was observed, which led to numerous cultural, social and technological advances; these advances had implications for developments in science, communication systems and the growth of urbanism. There were rapid advancements in biological sciences; these heralded significant results in terms of medical practice, which evolved from a primitive to a more sophisticated, enlightened practice, with the use of anaesthetics and a growth in surgical techniques and preventative treatments. Further to this, experiments in electricity led to the discovery of X-rays and radioactivity.

  The First World War also played its part in changing the status and roles of women. Many women took on roles and responsibilities previously undertaken by men; they became the head of the household and breadwinners. Women worked in factories and drove ambulances; some became nurses. This shift in roles had a radical impact on women and brought about the onset of early feminism and established the Suffragette Movement.

  The railway was hugely influential in transforming existence; it enabled the growth of cities and transformed landscapes by blurring the division between urban and rural. There was an increase in mobility and communications, and the creation of the railway’s own time led to an eradication of old notions of time and space. In 1911, the Greenwich Mean Time was adopted as the universal standard. At the turn of the century, the telephone, invented by Alexander Graham Bell, became widely available, enabling almost instant communication throughout the world, which completely altered perceptions of time and space.

  In the late nineteenth century, the first cars were produced, and by 1908, with the introduction of the Model-T by Henry Ford, mass production arrived. The development of cars cut the time it took to transport people, information and goods from one place to another, which too had implications for time and space, communication and the individual’s vision of themselves, and the world.

  As a result of evolutions in technology, new forms of entertainment came into operation; these included the wireless, gramophone and cinema. The cinematograph was created by the Lumiere brothers and was first demonstrated in Paris in 1895; this was then quickly followed, a year later, by a showing in London. The moving picture gave the opportunity to reach wide audiences, linking people across time and space and synchronizing society. The first films, shown in music halls and at fair grounds and circuses, were short, only a few minutes long and portrayed music hall acts or sporting events. However, advances in film technology soon made it possible to extend the running time and longer narratives screened in cinemas became popular. By the end of the First World War, a film industry was established in most industrialized countries.

  Photography began to assume the status of fine art and questioned traditional modes of representation. The photographer Alfred Stieglitz opened a salon in New York and showed the latest European works by Picasso and other friends of Gertrude Stein. Commercial printing technology made photography popular.

  In Europe and America, there was an emergence of mass print media so that it became cheaper to print exact copies of manuscript rather than to alter one by hand. Edison had invented the phonograph, which led to a wave of magazines, newspapers, printed sheet music and children’s books being produced and read, following a steady increase in literacy since the 1870 Education Act. The term ‘bestseller’ was used in the 1890s; these novels appealed to a mass readership, who sought entertainment as opposed to intellectual stimulation. Subsequently, bestsellers were published in journals.

  There were also developments in science which further altered and shaped worldviews. In 1905, for example, there was the publication of Albert Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity, which challenged Newton’s model. Einstein’s theory argued that the speed of light was absolute, and the two absolutes of the Newtonian model, space and time, therefore, could not be. And Max Planck’s quantum theory denied a complete understanding of reality, which, in turn, had an impact on worldviews.

  These changes in science led to an interest in human life beyond that of science, to include psychology. Sigmund Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams brought about a fascination with the unconscious mind, and in 1859, Darwin’s Origin of Species threatened to undermine the Bible’s legitimacy to explain the unexplainable. And so, during this period, there were shifts in values and beliefs, in particular those surrounding the bourgeois family, morality, the new woman and homosexual, all of which will be explored in this section of the book.

  However, it is now important to move from discussing historical events, innovations, values and beliefs to looking at modernist cultural expression and the implications this had for some fiction writers who sought to experiment with their creative practice.

  What was modernism?

  Modernism can be seen as a response to the condition of modernity, a transformation that swept through the arts in response to the huge developments in technology, science and psychology and the social and ideological changes in beliefs, systems, ways of life and attitudes to class structures and values – the new mapping of landscapes and frontiers.

  Modernism questioned much of the form of pre-twentieth-century artistic practice and was viewed as an attempt to break with realism; it represented ‘a paradigm shift both in the history of literature, and in the way literary history has been constructed’ (Pykett, 1995
, p. 10). In addition, it has been described as a ‘cultural temper pervading all the arts’, one which was ‘opaque, unfamiliar, deliberately disturbing, experiment in form’ (Turner, 1990, p. 19). The ideas that came out of modernism were progressive and pushed back boundaries, and the artistic works created during this movement were concerned with a knowledge of the past, but were also imbued with a sense of the future has not happened yet. One of modernism’s most ‘ … distinguishing features is the way it crossed many conventional boundaries, including boundaries of nation, but also of discipline’ (Wilson, pp. 3–4). However, for the purposes of this book, it is appropriate to illustrate how modernism impacted upon fiction.

  How did modernism impact upon fiction?

  Artistic evolution is not simply an aesthetic event arising from nowhere; it arises from social and ideological change as has already been established. The historical, scientific and technological shifts that took place, in particular during the first half of the twentieth century, especially those affecting transport, culture and communication, resulted in an upheaval in culture, one that overturned many previous aesthetic tenets and principles of art works, including those of fiction.