Experimental Fiction

by Armstrong, Julie;

  Modernism impacted upon fiction in new and exciting ways. Literary works created during this time attempted to capture this unsettling and yet highly exciting period of history; it brought a fresh consciousness to creative practice, with writers rejecting previous literary conventions in order to explore new techniques and strategies.

  Modernism’s impact led to an increase in experimentation by writers, which, in turn, resulted in many new literary techniques and forms evolving to express the complexity and chaos brought about by the acceleration of change. For some writers, the shifting and turbulent society was an incentive for them to turn their focus inwards – rather than to focus outwards – on a world where the individual’s place was uncertain and confused.

  In modern fiction, there was a move away from the traditional realist novel. Literary works were no longer so concerned with linear plot; they were most interested in the fragmentation of form. There was also a preoccupation with the relativity of time which led to a disruption to linear flow, a breaking down of beginning, middle and end. In 1926, Thomas Hardy remarked, somewhat concerned, that everything had changed; there used to be a beginning, middle and an end, but this form had ceased to exist. Indeed, there were experiments in narrative sequencing, generating consciously confused narratives which moved backwards and forwards in time; this experimentation brought about the rejection of pinning excitement on linear plot, and it also led to a decline in the use of dramatic tension, suspense and closed endings. For example, Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time is a novel which explores memory and is in constant flux; it moves backwards and forwards in time, moments of the past and the present having equal reality.

  Fiction became self-reflexive, that is, the work was not a representation of reality as realist art was, but a representation of the processes of representation: a work that explored its own structure. So the way the story was told became as important as the story itself. For example, in Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, Hemingway treats narrative and dialogue as self-conscious exercises by which the author himself recognizes to be exercises. As Leigh Wilson writes:

  One of the things which distinguishes what we now call modernism from many previous kinds of writing was the extent to which the literary and the critical were intertwined. Modernist writers were highly conscious of critical questions surrounding their writing, questions of how they wrote and what writing was for, and the links between themselves and other innovative writers. (p. 125)

  This led to a rethinking of the relationship between fiction and reality, an exploration of how one saw the world rather than what one actually saw. This was confusing to some readers who were unaccustomed to plotless novels, readers who were more familiar with literature that entertained and told stories as a means of escape from the harshness of reality. Instead, fiction posed questions; for example, what constituted reality? How could the world be perceived?

  Trying to discover new ways of describing character and human experience fascinated the modern writer, now that human existence had changed and the essence of human nature was being debated. So, writers experimented with new techniques within their fiction in an attempt to explore and grapple with a world that they could no longer understand. And now that fiction was no longer focused on narrative interest, writers became absorbed with the psychological mood of characters, also, atmospheres, epiphanies and the blurring of the boundaries between fact and fiction. Modernist writers were keen to communicate the inner experience and thoughts of their characters as they occurred rather than their exterior worlds. Virginia Woolf illustrated one of the most endorsed priorities of modern fiction when she wrote:

  Look within and life, it seems, is very far from being ‘like this’. Examine for a moment an ordinary mind on an ordinary day. The mind receives a myriad impressions – trivial, fantastic, evanescent, or engraved with the sharpness of steel. From all sides they come, an incessant shower of innumerable atoms; and as they fall, as they shape themselves into the life of Monday or Tuesday, the accent falls differently from of old … Life is not a series of gig-lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end. Is it not the task of the novelist to convey this varying, this unknown and uncircumscribed spirit, whatever aberration or complexity it may display, with as little mixture of the alien and external as possible? We are not pleading merely for courage and sincerity; we are suggesting that the proper stuff of fiction is a little other than custom would have us believe it. (Woolf, ‘Modern Fiction’, Collected Essays (note 1), p. 107)

  And so, new forms and writing techniques came into being, for example, symbols, motifs, fragmentation, dislocation, juxtaposition, collage, ambiguity, montage, stream of consciousness and multiple narratives, as the focus came to be on a character’s conscious and subconscious mind, as opposed to character development and plot. D. H. Lawrence employed numerous symbols in his work. In Sons and Lovers, the swing became a symbol of the love–hate relationship between Paul and Miriam and the ash tree a symbol for the dark, mysterious forces of nature. William Faulkner also used symbols in The Sound and the Fury. Quentin’s watch conveyed a character trapped by time, unable to move beyond his memories of the past, whereas his brother Jason had no use for the past, focusing on the present. So, the text experimented with form; there were frequent time shifts. Also present are a stream of consciousness, unconventional punctuation and sentence construction, multiple points of view and multiple voices, which reflected a world invaded by the disembodied voice of technology, in particular the radio.

  The way language was used was another way modernism impacted upon literary works. In modernist fiction language was used not simply to convey a message or to tell a story, but to be an artistic tool in its own right; it became musical, lyrical, multilingual and was used in new imaginative and inventive ways. James Joyce in Finnegans Wake used ‘riverrun’, two words together which suggested a constantly flowing river of meaning, one which invited the reader to become an interpreter of meaning. James Joyce and also Gertrude Stein experimented with syntax, so that narratives had richness, complexity and an ambiguity of form, and content, which provoked readers to look at writing, and the world around them, with fresh eyes.

  What is the impact of modernist texts on contemporary texts?

  It can be seen that modernism impacted dramatically upon modernist fiction, new literature emerged, a literature that was complex and difficult, one that was concerned with innovation and experimentation, a literature brought about by a need to understand, and to reflect, the shifting times. However, the impact of modernist fiction has left its legacy and there are currently a number of contemporary writers who are using modernist techniques within their fiction.

  In The Hours, American writer Michael Cunningham takes Woolf’s life and works as a source of inspiration. Each section of the book imitates Mrs Dalloway by being restricted to the events of a single day and embraces the technique of stream of consciousness and switching between consciousnesses.

  The Australian novelist and academic Gail Jones’s novel Five Bells has its roots in the modernist tradition, in the work of James Joyce, but more explicitly in the work of Virginia Woolf. Five Bells, like The Hours, is reminiscent of Mrs Dalloway; the narrative traces intersecting lives across a city during the course of a single day. As in Woolf’s fiction, however, the moments of coincidence in the physical world are not as important as the subtle connections that lie beneath the surface. Pei Xing and Catherine are linked by recurrent images of snow. For Pei Xing, there is the memory of snowfall in her childhood, as well as the recollection of snow in Doctor Zhivago. Catherine’s thoughts of snow remind her of James Joyce’s ‘The Dead’ and also of her partner’s passion for Russian novels, in particular Doctor Zhivago.

  British author Jon Mcgregor’s If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things is a novel which moves away from pinning all excitement on plot or dramatic tension; it charts the effects of a single
incident and is written in a prose which is as precise, concise and evocative as poetry.

  Another British writer who employs modernist techniques is Amy Sackville; her novel Still Point also takes place on a single summer day. She is not so much concerned with plot in this novel as exploring a twenty-first-century marriage juxtaposed against an account of a polar exhibition. It is the use of language that is so striking about this text and her more recent text Orkney. The language is as sumptuous and rich as poetry, with luminous descriptions of the landscapes. It is no surprise to discover that Amy Sackville specialized in modernism at Exeter College, Oxford.

  Umbrella by British writer Will Self is a novel based on Oliver Sack’s Awakening, a non-fiction account of treating patients with encephalitis lethargica (EL) in the late 1960s. Umbrella shares modernism’s preoccupation with time and memory and employs many modern techniques. That is, it is a non-linear text which moves backwards and forwards in time; it has three time frames and four points of view. Self employs stream of consciousness, reminiscent of Woolf and Joyce; there are few paragraph breaks and no chapters. Indeed, the title and epigraph have been lifted from James Joyce’s Ulysses: ‘A brother is as easily forgotten as an umbrella.’ Within this text, Self plays with language; it is like listening to a wireless as voices fade in and out and mix, allowing Self to make connections between the mind, war and technology. Audrey Death has been in a state of semi-consciousness for half a century in Friern Barnet Mental Hospital after contracting EL; then, in 1971 the psychiatrist Dr Zack Busner arrives. He attempts to bring her back to life with a new drug. The novel revolves around Audrey Death’s experiences of Edwardian London, her work in a munitions factory during the First World War, her socialist lover and her involvement with the suffragettes, interwoven with her two brothers fighting in the Second World War.

  And so, it can be seen that the legacy of modernism lives on in the works of contemporary writers. It is now important to investigate in the following chapters of this book what modernist writers were doing in their texts and how they were doing it, so that all readers and writers of experimental fiction can use these techniques within their own creative writing practice.

  Form and Fiction

  In order to enable readers and writers of experimental fiction to deconstruct modernist texts, to understand what these works are doing and to read them with a writer’s eye, this chapter will investigate the relationship between the trauma of the First World War and a moving-away from traditional linear plot. In addition, it will explore the experimentation with form, illustrating how fiction became more abstract, dislocated and fragmented and how it experimented with writing techniques to reflect its themes.

  What was the form of fiction prior to modernity?

  Prior to the First Wold War, Victorian fiction tended to be linear in its form: beginning, middle and ending to reflect a realistic secure world vision. Fiction explored moral, emotional or other problems, which disturbed the lives of its characters. However, they almost always resolved these problems so that order was restored and to a great extent the characters’ equilibrium recovered, for example, Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, in which the protagonist, Pip, longed to be a gentleman. He received a large sum of money from an anonymous benefactor and consequently moved to London, leaving behind his family, Joe and Biddy, whom he was ashamed of because they were poor. His wealth had changed him, not for the better; however, at the end of the book, he matured as a result of his experiences and became reunited with his family.

  What was the form of modern fiction?

  The First World War (1914–18) was a global war; it led to the death of millions of people across the world as the result of technological developments. Therefore, the world vision shifted to illustrate a world collapsing in fragments as a result of the chaos and dislocation brought about by the war. Fiction mirrored this shift in vision. Consequently, rigid constraints of form were discarded, fiction too became fragmented and there was an abandonment of the traditional linear plot. Fragmentation was also used to portray the sense of dislocation soldiers experienced as a result of their time spent in the trenches seeing their comrades being shot, lying wounded or dying and to capture the shell shock and sense of alienation soldiers’ families experienced. After the war, almost everyone would have suffered loss and bereavement.

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  Experiment with this: Learning to Experiment with Fragmentation

  Write the opening of a short story

  It is the First World War. You are writing from the point of view of a soldier in the trenches. You have been shot. Allow the mind to freeze to capture the shock, then your mind kick-starts and wanders. Write without censoring to capture your fragmented thoughts and impressions, sensations and feelings. Record what you feel, see, hear, touch, taste and smell. Allow the writing to be fragmented and erratic to capture this traumatic experience.

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  What was the structure of some modernist fiction?

  Following the First World War, a previous way of life was demolished forever. In addition to the sense of alienation and dislocation that imbued much of the world, there were, however, advancements in medicine, technology and science and developments in psychology, philosophy, education and the roles and status of women, which led to new ways of thinking about the world and human beings. Consequently writers experimented within their fiction in order to present the structure, connections and new experiences of life in a different way.

  Some modernist fiction portrayed the war as an event that cut through time and history as societies and people’s lives were divided as before, during and after the war. To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf illustrates this division: there is a holiday, followed by a destruction of lives and then a sense of looking back. In Jacob’s Room, Woolf also displays a fiction presented in fragments. The book follows the life of Jacob: his childhood in Scarborough, his education in Oxford, his life in London, a trip to Greece and it ends after his death.

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  Experiment with this: Learning to Experiment with the Structure of Fiction

  Write a short story in which a young man’s life is divided into the following slices: a happy childhood, an exciting first love affair, his traumatic experiences in the First World War, his homecoming and, finally, his struggle to adapt to life after the war.

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  What writing techniques did modern writers use to reflect the themes of modern fiction?

  During the modernist period, fiction became a space in which complex forms of collective and individual trauma could be played out. Many writers engaged with and responded to the war; for example, D. H. Lawrence, author of the provocative Lady Chatterley’s Lover, wrote of the bruise of the war. Likewise, the world before and after the First World War became a major theme of Virginia Woolf’s work, that is, the idea of how to make sense of the changes brought about by the war specifically from the point of view of a woman who had not actually seen battle but had felt its impact is central to Mrs Dalloway. To the Lighthouse is suffused with the melancholy and mourning of war and Jacob’s Room’s atmosphere is oppressive with the foreboding of Jacob’s coming death, his ultimate death during the war and the questions raised by it. Loss of life and technological innovation for destructive purposes – machine guns, tanks aircraft, shells, chemical weapons –resulted in devastating consequences and brought into question the very concept of civilization. In turn, this question provided a theme for modern fiction and resulted in writers producing work that experimented with a variety of writing techniques, such as multiple voices, multiple points of view and multiple narratives to depict the themes of trauma, confusion, angst and the questions the war incited.

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  Experiment with this: Learning to Write with Multiple Voices and Multiple Points of View to Reflect the Theme of Trauma

  Write a scene from a novel

  Imagine a soldier in the First World War who is homesick and is thinking about life at home. Write an interior
monologue of his thoughts, feelings and impressions. He is hearing ‘other’ voices too, ‘other’ perspectives, those of his mother, father and sweetheart; include these in the monologue to create a multi-layered text which switches backwards and forwards in time.

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  Worldview and Fiction

  This chapter shows contemporary writers of experimental fiction how modernist writing practice provides a more authentic depiction of thought processes and how the world is experienced, and perceived, now as opposed to the nineteenth-century realist fiction worldview, so that they too can experiment with a variety of writing techniques to explore how we see the world rather than what we actually see.

  What were the priorities for modernist fiction?

  Modernist writers were very much concerned with exploring the workings of the human consciousness. The phrase ‘stream of consciousness’ was first coined by an American psychologist William James in 1890 in his work Principles of Psychology and it was William’s brother, Henry James, who introduced this term into fiction.

  Stream of consciousness is a literary style that mingles memories, feelings, impressions and thoughts in an illogical order with a disregard for the conventional use of syntax, grammar and punctuation. Many modernist writers experimented with this style within their fiction, for example, Dorothy Richardson in her work Pilgrimage and William Faulkner in The Sound and Fury (1929). James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922) is also an example of a novel whose events are the workings of the human consciousness.

  Taking her lead from Dorothy Richardson, Virginia Woolf continually experimented in her fiction, searching for a new form for the novel, one that would capture and follow the ‘flight of the mind’, the mind’s interior and the flow of consciousness unfolding in time. This new form prioritized shifts in perspective, as well as being concerned with thoughts and feelings. For example, one minute a character’s thoughts would be consumed with studying decoration on upholstery, and in the next minute, examining human nature.