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Experimental Fiction

Page 19

by Armstrong, Julie;


  * * *

  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.

  * * *

  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
/>   experimental writers

  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

 

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