Experimental Fiction

by Armstrong, Julie;

  Einstein’s Theory of Relativity illustrated that time was an illusion; it denied the existence of an absolute time: present, past and future all co-exist in space-time. Likewise the past is out there still. Time is not everywhere the same; however, it depends on how fast we are moving on an ever-turning globe, in an ever-changing universe. Such scientific discoveries changed the way people lived and thought about the nature of time; this also impacted upon the world of fiction.

  Freud was also concerned with the nature of time; in his view, present and past are connected, though not necessarily chronologically. It was his belief that the past continues to exist in buried memories in the unconscious and that past events continue to shape one’s personality. Indeed, childhood experiences can be closer to the present than more recent events, and, as such, are highly influential. As we have discovered, the way to recover the past, Freud claimed, was through dreams.

  What writing techniques evolved to correspond with developments in science?

  Many new writing techniques evolved to correspond with developments in science, such as disruption of conventional chronology, interior monologue, discontinuity and stream of consciousness. New forms were employed as writers experimented and explored these new theories that established that there is no absolute time. There are, however, different concepts of time: time happening in the mind and time happening on the clock. The modernist writers tended to favour the idea of time happening in the mind, which is unlimited and stretches over years, centuries even. They sought to abandon the arrangement of events in a linear time sequence favoured by traditional realist writers. In Orlando, for example, forty years is spread over three centuries, whereas in Mrs Dalloway the whole significance of fifty years is contained within twenty-four hours.

  Time in the mind also involves the impact of memory; this is explored in Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past in which Marcel’s narrative is governed by the randomness of his memories, and as a result, this structures the novel. These memories are often involuntary, inspired by a smell or a taste which suffuses the mind with such a vivid sensation that he is taken back to an earlier version of himself. In particular, when he tastes a madeleine cake dipped in tea, he is taken back to his childhood; as already stated, the past is out there still.

  Likewise in Ulysses, a book very much concerned with complicating ideas of form, Bloom’s mind, when in Dublin for a day, flits back to his earlier life; Joyce uses stream of consciousness to recall past events which he juxtaposes with present events in time. For example, in Chapter 6, when Bloom is at Paddy Dignam’s funeral, he moves back in memory to the burial of his son, the suicide of his father and to his life with Molly.

  Ulysses is an example of a literary work which subverts the linear narrative; even sentences are fragmentary ‘Cup of tea soon. Good. Mouth dry’ (p. 65). Dorothy Richardson’s Pilgrimage uses gaps in the layout to indicate the fractured nature of time.

  * * *

  Experiment with this: Learning to Experiment with Time in Fiction

  Imagine a character who, in their dreams, has returned to the town where they lived as a child. Write a short story in which the character explores the town on foot; however, in their mind, they are moving forwards and backwards in time, exploring their memories of the place. Experiment with fragmented sentences and gaps in the layout too.

  * * *

  So it can be seen that science, philosophy and psychology suggested a world where absolutely nothing was absolute and once again this was reflected in the fiction of the modernist writers. As Proust’s character Marcel states: ‘the current philosophy of the day … it was agreed that … nothing was considered real and incontestable except the individual tastes of each person’ (p. 304).

  Further Reading

  Cunningham, Michael (1999) The Hours, London: Fourth Estate.

  Dickens, Charles (2010) Great Expectations, London: Harper Press.

  Faulkner, William (1995) The Sound and the Fury, London: Vintage Classic.

  Holtby, Winifred (2007) Virginia Woolf: A Critical Memoir, London: Continuum.

  Jackson, Kevin (2012) Constellations ff Genius: 1922: Modernism Year One, London: Hutchinson.

  Jones, Gail (2011) Five Bells, London: Harvill Secker.

  ——— (2007) Dubliners, London: Penguin Classics.

  Joyce, James (2010) Ulysses, London: Wordsworth Editions.

  Lawrence, D. H. (1997) Sons and Lovers, London: Wordsworth Editions.

  ——— (2005) Lady Chatterley’s Lover, London: Wordsworth Editions.

  ——— (2008) Women in Love, London: Vintage Classic.

  Lehrer, Jonah (2011) Proust Was a Neuroscientist, Edinburgh: Canongate.

  McGregor, Jon (2011) If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things, London: Bloomsbury.

  Morgan, Clare (2011) A Book For All and None, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.

  Poust, Marcel (2006) Remembrance of Things Past, London: Wordsworth Editions.

  Pykett, Lyn (1995) Engendering Fictions, London: Hodder Headline.

  Richardson, Dorothy (2000) Pilgrimage, Madison: University Of Wisconsin Press.

  Sackville, Amy (2010) The Still Point, London: Portobello.

  ——— (2013) Orkney, London: Granta.

  Self, Will (2013) Umbrella, London: Bloomsbury Paperbacks.

  Stevenson, Randall (1998) Modernist Fiction, Essex: Pearson Education.

  Tew, Phillips and Murray, Alex (2009) The Modernist Handbook, London: Continuum.

  Wilson, Leigh (2007) Modernism, London: Continuum.

  Woolf, Virginia (1976) Mrs Dalloway, London: Triad Grafton Books.

  ——— (1994) To the Lighthouse, London: Wordsworth Editions.

  ——— (2008) Jacob’s Room, London: Tark Classic Fiction.

  Section Two

  When Were/Who Were the Beats?

  When were the Beats?

  The name ‘Beat’ was originally invented by Jack Kerouac in 1948. The movement stretched to the mid-1960s; however, it had its zenith in the 1950s.

  After the worldwide depression of the 1930s and 1940s and the devastation that had occurred throughout the world – for example, Dresden, Hiroshima and Pearl Harbour – millions of people from the 1950s and 1960s generations hoped for prosperity and stability. However, ensuing peace treaties gave way to ‘Cold War’ as the two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, contended with each other for ideological world power. The launch of Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite, into space in 1957 by the Soviet Union was considered to be a major milestone of the Cold War; the United States reaction was to launch an Explorer, three months later, thus kick-starting the space race.

  The post-war years, the time in which the Beats emerged, bore witness to a number of changes – economic, political, cultural and social – which shaped their lifestyle choices and writing practices. Indeed, these changes, for example, communist crusades and the rise of McCarthyism, a practice of making unfair allegations or using unfair investigative techniques resulting in ‘witch hunts’ and ‘black lists’ for alleged communist activities, in turn led to widespread fear and paranoia throughout the United States. McCarthyism was named after Joseph McCarthy, a senator who made accusations that more than two hundred communists had infiltrated the United States government (this was later proved to be untrue). This was a widespread phenomenon, affecting all levels of society, in particular government employees, union activists, educators, entertainers and writers.

  During this era, there was also the civil rights struggle, the rise of feminism, the threat of annihilation from nuclear weapons and the development of popular culture. All these led to a complex new chapter in world history, which provided a climate ripe for experimentation in all art forms.

  With the trauma of the Second World War in the past, this was a time of economic growth and a large-scale expansion of the middle classes, which perpetuated the concept of the ‘American Suburban Dream’. The 1950s was a period of conformity, an era which was considered to be both
socially conservative and highly materialistic in nature. Consumerism became a key component of society, with buying trends being influenced by many American cultural and economic aspects such as advertising and the widespread availability of bank loans.

  There was a resurgence of evangelical Christianity, for example, The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. It was a time of taboos, and attitudes to sex and censorship were prudish. However, a new consciousness was rising in terms of race and equality. The civil rights movement with key figures such as Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks and Malcolm began fighting for profound change, insisting on the rights for all Americans to an equal education, regardless of race, creed or religion.

  Socially and culturally, many developments were apparent during the 1950s, for example, three quarters of the population purchased their first television; quiz shows such as What’s My Line and Westerns became popular, thus propelling movie stars such as John Wayne and Roy Rogers to fame. Indeed, movies were celebrated throughout this period, with the likes of Marilyn Monroe and James Dean becoming glamorous movie star sensations. In addition, a number of television shows were produced, which portrayed a romanticized view of middle-class life, for example, Father Knows Best. Comic book audiences grew. Characters such as Flash Gordon, Peanuts and Dennis the Menace were amongst the favourites. Science fiction and superman comics were in abundance, too. Music flourished, especially jazz, popular and country music, and then, in the mid-1950s, Rock-n-Roll emerged, Elvis Presley being the superstar of the period. In terms of high art, the focus for artistic practice switched from Paris to New York with the advent of artistic Abstract Expressionism.

  And so, for the middle-class Americans living through the 1950s, life was more secure, prosperous and culturally rich than the previous years. However, it was a lifestyle vehemently rejected by the Beats, in favour of a very different one.

  Who were the Beats?

  The Beat Generation, then, was a term used to describe a group of American writers who came to prominence in the 1950s, writers who provided a counter-culture to Cold War politics and a social commentary on the hip youth culture of the 1950s, both of which they captured in their experimental writing practice.

  Although the philosophy of the Beats was considered to be anti-academic, the seeds for the Beat movement were sown in an academic environment, as they originally met at Columbia University in the early 1940s. This was where the charismatic Lucien Carr and Allen Ginsberg, following nights of drinking and reading works such as Seasons in Hell by the nineteenth-century poet Arthur Rimbaud (whom Carr considered to be a doppelganger), discussed the need for a new vision for art. This vision was not formulated with intellectual rigour. However, it was agreed that art must view the world in a new light, one not restricted by convention or repression, but one that strived for unmediated self-expression and produced literature that was experimental and took risks.

  Lucien Carr introduced Allen Ginsberg to William S. Burroughs, a Harvard graduate, whose childhood friend was David Kammerer, an English teacher and a physical education instructor at Washington University. Kammerer originally met Lucien Carr when he was his Boy Scout leader in St Louis and soon became infatuated with him. Edie Parker, another member of the group, introduced Carr to her then boyfriend Jack Kerouac.

  Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs were known as the three musketeers of the Beat Generation, although a number of other writers were also considered to be part of the Beats; these included the already mentioned, Lucien Carr, David Kammerer, Neal Cassady, Gregory Corso and John Clellon Holme.

  In the mid-1950s, the main figures associated with the Beats, with the exception of William Burroughs, gathered in San Francisco, because of its reputation as being a centre of creativity. Here they became friends with the ‘San Francisco Renaissance’, a term used to describe groups of avant-garde American writers emerging at the end of the Second World War. These writers, who included Kenneth Rexroth, Lawrence Ferlinghtti, Lew Welch, Gary Snyder and Kirby Doyle, embraced performing and visual arts, philosophy and Asian culture. They were joined by Tuli Kuperberg and Philip Lamantia, who were members of the Black Mountain College, looking for a new creative community, and later by Bob Kaufman, who was considered the first person to be called a beatnik.

  What were the Beats rebelling against?

  The adjective beat came to the group of writers through underworld association with Herbert Huncke, a drug addict and thief who met Burroughs in 1946 and introduced the members of the Beats to the junky lifestyle and the language associated with this lifestyle, including the word beat. Beat originally implied beaten down and tired. However, Jack Kerouac expanded the meaning of the term by adding the paradoxical association upbeat and the musical association on the beat.

  By associating with people considered to be living on the margins of society, the Beats were rebelling against Cold War politics and the conservative values of the time. Even though they were well educated and generally from middle-class backgrounds, the Beats renounced capitalism, seeing it as being destructive to the human spirit and antithetical to social equality. In addition, they were rebelling against the strong sexual taboos of mass culture and set out to push back boundaries and indulge in experimentation with sexual practices, drug taking and spiritual transcendence. Consequently, as will be seen in subsequent chapters, some of their work, which explored their views and lifestyles, for example, Naked Lunch by William Burroughs, was deemed highly controversial. Naked Lunch, a travelogue of depravity with an underlying theme of addiction, drawn from Burroughs’ own sexual and drug-taking experiences in New York City, Mexico and Tangier and the dream-like interzone, structured in ‘routines’, was intended to be read in any order.

  The novel was published by European publishers, Olympia Press in Paris in 1959, but the United States obscenity laws prevented it from being published until 1962; the work was then banned and was eventually repealed in 1966. This was deemed a win for free speech.

  What inspired the Beats?

  Whilst engaging in experimental writing practice, the Beats took inspiration from a variety of sources. Several of them claimed that the Romantic poets were a major influence on their work, whereas others claimed to be inspired by modernism and surrealism, especially Andre Breton’s automatic writing and cut-ups. Also, the American Transcendental Movement of the nineteenth century was said to be a powerful source of inspiration for the Beats: the writer of poetry and prose Henry David Thoreau being revered as a symbol of protest.

  Romanticism

  Gregory Corso, in particular, was influenced by Percy Shelley. Indeed, he was so inspired by the works of Shelley that he was buried at the foot of his grave in Rome. Allen Ginsberg was also influenced by Shelley; his famous work Howl was compared with Shelley’s poem Queen Mab. Both political and philosophical epic poems referred to other-worldly creatures – angels and fairies – and shared a hallucinatory quality encapsulated in the language. In addition, the two works set out to liberate humanity from conformity and oppression. John Keats was also a source of inspiration for Ginsberg; he mentioned Shelley’s Adonais at the beginning of Kaddish and cited it as a major influence on his work. However, he was mostly inspired by William Blake, who he saw as a prophet. After graduating from Columbia in 1948 and moving to New York City, Ginsberg felt isolated; he spoke of a vision he had during this time, one in which he heard his own voice reciting Blake’s poetry. Ginsberg spoke of this incident as a revelation, one which represented a turning point in his spiritual development.

  Modernism

  The Beats were also inspired by some of the modernist poets like Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams and prose writers like James Joyce. Williams encouraged the Beats to speak with an American voice, rather than imitating European poetic voices and forms; he was a mentor to Ginsberg, both men originating from Paterson, New Jersey.

  Surrealism

  Andre Breton’s automatic writing style and cut-ups inspired the Beats. Carl Solomon introduced
the work of Breton to Ginsberg, and this had a profound influence on Kaddish. The poetry of Greg Corso was influenced by surrealist poetry; like the surrealists, he experimented by using dream-like images and random juxtaposition of dissociated images in his work.

  What additional influences encouraged the Beats to experiment with the content of their writing?

  In addition to the romantic, surrealist and modernist artistic practices, the Beats had other influences, such as the natural world, city life and travel, that affected their writing. Also, they related and interacted with a mix of cultures, but fundamentally a great deal of their work was influenced by Eastern religions and altered states of consciousness; this was not so apparent in terms of the form of their writing, but it was more in terms of the content.

  Another influence on the Beats was music, especially jazz, and like their musician heroes, for example, Charlie Parker, they too adopted bohemian lifestyles, ones of social rebellion, influenced by drug and sexual experimentation, in terms of both heterosexual and homosexual practices; this sexual experimentation inspired the use of graphic sexual language and hugely affected the content of their work which pushed back the boundaries of acceptability and ultimately censorship. And so, along with their rebellious, nomadic lifestyles and their controversial writing practice, the Beats were deemed as outcasts. However, much of their work has stood the test of time: Howl, Naked Lunch, On the Road; this is because of the quality of the writing and the content of the works which has universal intrigue and appeal and is still highly relevant to readers and writers of experimental fiction in the twenty-first century.