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Experimental literature is a genre that is, according to Warren Motte in his essa
"Experimental Writing, Experimental Reading" "difficult to define with any sort of precision." He says the "writing is often invoked in an "offhand manner" and the focus is on "form rather than content." It can be in written form of prose narrative or poetry, but the text may be set on the page in differing configurations than that of normal prose paragraphs or in the classical stanza form of verse. It may also be entwined with images of a real or abstract nature, with the use of art or photography. Furthermore, while experimental literature was traditionally handwritten on paper or
vellum
Vellum is prepared animal skin or membrane, typically used as writing material. Parchment is another term for this material, from which vellum is sometimes distinguished, when it is made from calfskin, as opposed to that made from other anima ...
, the digital age has seen an exponential leaning to the use of digital computer technologies.
Early history
The first text generally cited in this category is
Laurence Sterne
Laurence Sterne (24 November 1713 – 18 March 1768), was an Anglo-Irish novelist and Anglican cleric who wrote the novels ''The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman'' and ''A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy'', published ...
's
''The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman'' (1759). This text occurs so early in the standard history of the novel that one can't refer to its "breaking" conventions that had yet to solidify. But in its mockery of narrative, and its willingness to use such graphic elements as an all-black page to mourn the death of a character, Sterne's novel is considered a fundamental text for many post-World War II authors. However, Sterne's work was not without detractors even in its time; for instance,
Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson (18 September 1709 – 13 December 1784), often called Dr Johnson, was an English writer who made lasting contributions as a poet, playwright, essayist, moralist, critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer. The ''Oxford ...
is quoted in
Boswell as saying "The merely odd does not last. ''Tristram Shandy'' did not last."
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot (; ; 5 October 171331 July 1784) was a French philosopher, art critic, and writer, best known for serving as co-founder, chief editor, and contributor to the ''Encyclopédie'' along with Jean le Rond d'Alembert. He was a promine ...
's ''
Jacques the Fatalist and His Master
''Jacques the Fatalist and his Master'' (french: Jacques le fataliste et son maître) is a novel by Denis Diderot, written during the period 1765–1780. The first French edition was published posthumously in 1796, but it was known earlier in Ger ...
'', drew many elements from ''Tristam Shandy'', a fact not concealed in the text, making it an early example of metafiction.
20th-century history
In the 1910s, artistic experimentation became a prominent force,
and various European and American writers began experimenting with the given forms. Tendencies that formed during this period later became parts of the
modernist
Modernism is both a philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new forms of art, philosophy, an ...
movement. The ''
Cantos
''The Cantos'' by Ezra Pound is a long, incomplete poem in 120 sections, each of which is a ''canto''. Most of it was written between 1915 and 1962, although much of the early work was abandoned and the early cantos, as finally published, date ...
'' of
Ezra Pound, the post-World War I work of
T. S. Eliot, prose and plays by
Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein (February 3, 1874 – July 27, 1946) was an American novelist, poet, playwright, and art collector. Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the Allegheny West neighborhood and raised in Oakland, California, Stein moved to Paris ...
, were some of the most influential works of the time, though
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influential and important writers of ...
's ''
Ulysses
Ulysses is one form of the Roman name for Odysseus, a hero in ancient Greek literature.
Ulysses may also refer to:
People
* Ulysses (given name), including a list of people with this name
Places in the United States
* Ulysses, Kansas
* Ulysse ...
'' is generally considered the most essential work of the period. The novel not only influenced more experimental writers, such as
Virginia Woolf
Adeline Virginia Woolf (; ; 25 January 1882 28 March 1941) was an English writer, considered one of the most important modernist 20th-century authors and a pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device.
Woolf was born i ...
, but also less experimental writers, such as
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American novelist, short-story writer, and journalist. His economical and understated style—which he termed the iceberg theory—had a strong influence on 20th-century fic ...
.
The historical avant-garde movements also contributed to the development of experimental literature in the early and middle 20th century. In the
Dadaist
Dada () or Dadaism was an art movement of the European avant-garde in the early 20th century, with early centres in Zürich, Switzerland, at the Cabaret Voltaire (in 1916). New York Dada began c. 1915, and after 1920 Dada flourished in Paris ...
movement, poet
Tristan Tzara
Tristan Tzara (; ; born Samuel or Samy Rosenstock, also known as S. Samyro; – 25 December 1963) was a Romanian and French avant-garde poet, essayist and performance artist. Also active as a journalist, playwright, literary and art critic, comp ...
employed newspaper clippings and experimental typography in his manifestoes. The
futurist
Futurists (also known as futurologists, prospectivists, foresight practitioners and horizon scanners) are people whose specialty or interest is futurology or the attempt to systematically explore predictions and possibilities abo ...
author
F.T. Marinetti espoused a theory of "words in freedom" across the page, exploding the boundaries of both conventional narrative and the layout of the book itself as shown in his
sound poem
Sound poetry is an artistic form bridging literacy and musical composition, in which the phonetic aspects of human speech are foregrounded instead of more conventional semantic and syntactic values; "verse without words". By definition, sound p ...
"novel" ''
Zang Tumb Tumb
''Zang Tumb Tumb'' (usually referred to as ''Zang Tumb Tuuum'') is a sound poetry, sound poem and Concrete poetry, concrete poem written by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, an Italian futurism (art), futurist. It appeared in excerpts in journals between ...
''. The writers, poets, and artists associated with the
surrealist
Surrealism is a cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists depicted unnerving, illogical scenes and developed techniques to allow the unconscious mind to express itself. Its aim was, according to ...
movement employed a range of unusual techniques to evoke mystical and dream-like states in their poems, novels, and prose works. Examples include the collaboratively written texts ''
Les Champs Magnétiques'' (by
André Breton
André Robert Breton (; 19 February 1896 – 28 September 1966) was a French writer and poet, the co-founder, leader, and principal theorist of surrealism. His writings include the first ''Surrealist Manifesto'' (''Manifeste du surréalisme'') o ...
and
Philippe Soupault
Philippe Soupault (2 August 1897 – 12 March 1990) was a French writer and poet, novelist, critic, and political activist. He was active in Dadaism and later was instrumental in founding the Surrealist movement with André Breton. Soupault in ...
) and ''Sorrow for Sorrow'', a "dream novel" produced under hypnosis by
Robert Desnos
Robert Desnos (; 4 July 1900 – 8 June 1945) was a French poet who played a key role in the Surrealist movement of his day.
Biography
Robert Desnos was born in Paris on 4 July 1900, the son of a licensed dealer in game and poultry at the '' H ...
.
By the end of the 1930s, the political situation in Europe had made Modernism appear to be an inadequate, aestheticized, even irresponsible response to the danger of worldwide
fascism
Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, ultra-nationalist political ideology and movement,: "extreme militaristic nationalism, contempt for electoral democracy and political and cultural liberalism, a belief in natural social hierarchy an ...
, and literary experimentalism faded from public view, kept alive through the 1940s only by isolated visionaries like
Kenneth Patchen
Kenneth Patchen (December 13, 1911January 8, 1972) was an American poet and novelist. He experimented with different forms of writing and incorporated painting, drawing, and jazz music into his works, which have been compared with those of Will ...
. In the 1950s, the
Beat
Beat, beats or beating may refer to:
Common uses
* Patrol, or beat, a group of personnel assigned to monitor a specific area
** Beat (police), the territory that a police officer patrols
** Gay beat, an area frequented by gay men
* Battery (c ...
writers can be seen as a reaction against the hidebound quality of both the poetry and prose of its time, and such hovering, near-mystical works as
Jack Kerouac's novel ''
Visions of Gerard
''Visions of Gerard'' is a novel by American Beat writer Jack Kerouac. Written in the first two weeks of 1956, while staying with his sister Caroline in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, Kerouac's novel would not be published until 1963. It is the fir ...
'' represented a new formal approach to the standard narrative of that era. American novelists such as
John Hawkes started publishing novels in the late 1940s that played with the conventions of narrative.
The spirit of the European avant-gardes would be carried through the post-war generation as well. The poet
Isidore Isou
Isidore Isou (; 29 January 1925 – 28 July 2007), born Isidor Goldstein, was a Romanian-born French poet, dramaturge, novelist, film director, economist, and visual artist who lived in the 20th century. He was the founder of Lettrism, an art ...
formed the
Lettrist
Lettrism is a French avant-garde movement, established in Paris in the mid-1940s by Romanian immigrant Isidore Isou. In a body of work totaling hundreds of volumes, Isou and the Lettrists have applied their theories to all areas of art and culture ...
group, and produced manifestoes, poems, and films that explored the boundaries of the written and spoken word. The
OULIPO
Oulipo (, short for french: Ouvroir de littérature potentielle; roughly translated: ''"workshop of potential literature"'', stylized ''OuLiPo'') is a loose gathering of (mainly) French-speaking writers and mathematicians who seek to create works ...
(in French, ''Ouvroir de littérature potentielle'', or "Workshop of Potential Literature") brought together writers, artists, and mathematicians to explore innovative, combinatoric means of producing texts. Founded by the author
Raymond Queneau
Raymond Queneau (; 21 February 1903 – 25 October 1976) was a French novelist, poet, critic, editor and co-founder and president of Oulipo ('' Ouvroir de littérature potentielle''), notable for his wit and cynical humour.
Biography
Queneau w ...
and mathematician
François Le Lionnais
François Le Lionnais (3 October 1901 – 13 March 1984) was a French chemical engineer and writer. He was a co-founder of the literary movement Oulipo.
Biography
Le Lionnais was born in Paris on 3 October 1901. Trained as a chemical en ...
, the group included
Italo Calvino
Italo Calvino (, also , ;. RAI (circa 1970), retrieved 25 October 2012. 15 October 1923 – 19 September 1985) was an Italian writer and journalist. His best known works include the '' Our Ancestors'' trilogy (1952–1959), the ''Cosmicomi ...
and
Georges Perec
Georges Perec (; 7 March 1936 – 3 March 1982) was a French novelist, filmmaker, documentalist, and essayist. He was a member of the Oulipo group. His father died as a soldier early in the Second World War and his mother was killed in the Hol ...
. Queneau's ''
Cent Mille Millards de Poèmes'' uses the physical book itself to proliferate different sonnet combinations, while Perec's novel ''
Life: A User's Manual'' is based on the Knight's Tour on a chessboard.
The 1960s brought a brief return of the glory days of modernism, and a first grounding of
Post-modernism
Postmodernism is an intellectual stance or mode of discourseNuyen, A.T., 1992. The Role of Rhetorical Devices in Postmodernist Discourse. Philosophy & Rhetoric, pp.183–194. characterized by skepticism toward the " grand narratives" of modern ...
. Publicity owing to an obscenity trial against
William S. Burroughs
William Seward Burroughs II (; February 5, 1914 – August 2, 1997) was an American writer and visual artist, widely considered a primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodern author who influenced popular cultur ...
' ''
Naked Lunch
''Naked Lunch'' (sometimes ''The Naked Lunch'') is a 1959 novel by American writer William S. Burroughs. The book is structured as a series of loosely connected vignettes, intended by Burroughs to be read in any order. The reader follows the na ...
'' brought a wide awareness of and admiration for an extreme and uncensored freedom. Burroughs also pioneered a style known as
cut-up
The cut-up technique (or ''découpé'' in French) is an aleatory literary technique in which a written text is cut up and rearranged to create a new text. The concept can be traced to the Dadaists of the 1920s, but it was developed and popularized ...
, where newspapers or typed manuscripts were cut up and rearranged to achieve lines in the text. In the late 1960s, experimental movements became so prominent that even authors considered more conventional such as
Bernard Malamud
Bernard Malamud (April 26, 1914 – March 18, 1986) was an American novelist and short story writer. Along with Saul Bellow, Joseph Heller, and Philip Roth, he was one of the best known American Jewish authors of the 20th century. His baseba ...
and
Norman Mailer
Nachem Malech Mailer (January 31, 1923 – November 10, 2007), known by his pen name Norman Kingsley Mailer, was an American novelist, journalist, essayist, playwright, activist, filmmaker and actor. In a career spanning over six decades, Mailer ...
exhibited experimental tendencies.
Metafiction was an important tendency in this period, exemplified most elaborately in the works of
John Barth
John Simmons Barth (; born May 27, 1930) is an American writer who is best known for his postmodern and metafictional fiction. His most highly regarded and influential works were published in the 1960s, and include ''The Sot-Weed Factor'', a sa ...
,
Jonathan Bayliss, and
Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo (; ; 24 August 1899 – 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, as well as a key figure in Spanish-language and international literature. His best-known bo ...
. In 1967 Barth wrote the essay ''
The Literature of Exhaustion ''The Literature of Exhaustion'' is a 1967 essay by the American novelist John Barth sometimes considered to be the manifesto of postmodernism.
The essay was highly influential and controversial.
Summary
The essay depicted literary realism as ...
'',
John Barth
John Simmons Barth (; born May 27, 1930) is an American writer who is best known for his postmodern and metafictional fiction. His most highly regarded and influential works were published in the 1960s, and include ''The Sot-Weed Factor'', a sa ...
(1984) intro to ''The Literature of Exhaustion ''The Literature of Exhaustion'' is a 1967 essay by the American novelist John Barth sometimes considered to be the manifesto of postmodernism.
The essay was highly influential and controversial.
Summary
The essay depicted literary realism as ...
'', in ''The Friday Book
''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the m ...
''. which is sometimes considered a manifesto of postmodernism. A major touchstone of this era was
Thomas Pynchon
Thomas Ruggles Pynchon Jr. ( , ; born May 8, 1937) is an American novelist noted for his dense and complex novels. His fiction and non-fiction writings encompass a vast array of subject matter, genres and themes, including history, music, scie ...
's ''
Gravity's Rainbow
''Gravity's Rainbow'' is a 1973 novel by American writer Thomas Pynchon. The narrative is set primarily in Europe at the end of World War II and centers on the design, production and dispatch of V-2 rockets by the German military. In particular, ...
'', which eventually became a bestseller. Important authors in the short story form included
Donald Barthelme
Donald Barthelme (April 7, 1931 – July 23, 1989) was an American short story writer and novelist known for his playful, postmodernist style of short fiction. Barthelme also worked as a newspaper reporter for the ''Houston Post'', was managing ...
, and, in both short and long forms,
Robert Coover
Robert Lowell Coover (born February 4, 1932) is an American novelist, short story writer, and T.B. Stowell Professor Emeritus in Literary Arts at Brown University. He is generally considered a writer of fabulation and metafiction.
Background
...
and
Ronald Sukenick
Ronald Sukenick (July 14, 1932 – July 22, 2004) was an American writer and literary theorist.
Life
Sukenick was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, where his father was a dentist. He graduated from Midwood High School and Cornell University ...
. While in 1968
William H. Gass's novel
Willie Masters Lonesome Wife' added challenging dimensions to reading as some of the pages are in
mirror writing
Mirror writing is formed by writing in the direction that is the reverse of the natural way for a given language, such that the result is the mirror image of normal writing: it appears normal when it is reflected in a mirror. It is sometimes u ...
where the text can only be read if a mirror is held in an angle against the page.
Some later well-known experimental writers of the 1970s and 1980s were
Italo Calvino
Italo Calvino (, also , ;. RAI (circa 1970), retrieved 25 October 2012. 15 October 1923 – 19 September 1985) was an Italian writer and journalist. His best known works include the '' Our Ancestors'' trilogy (1952–1959), the ''Cosmicomi ...
,
Michael Ondaatje
Philip Michael Ondaatje (; born 12 September 1943) is a Sri Lankan-born Canadian poet, fiction writer, essayist, novelist, editor, and filmmaker. He is the recipient of multiple literary awards such as the Governor General's Award, the Giller P ...
, and
Julio Cortázar. Calvino's most famous books are ''
If on a winter's night a traveler
''If on a winter's night a traveler'' ( it, Se una notte d'inverno un viaggiatore) is a 1979 novel by the Italian writer Italo Calvino. The postmodernist narrative, in the form of a frame story, is about the reader trying to read a book called ...
'', where some chapters depict the reader preparing to read a book titled ''If on a winter's night a traveler'' while others form the narrative and ''
Invisible Cities
''Invisible Cities'' ( it, Le città invisibili) is a novel by Italian writer Italo Calvino. It was published in Italy in 1972 by Giulio Einaudi Editore.
Description
The book explores imagination and the imaginable through the descriptions of ...
'', where
Marco Polo explains his travels to
Kubla Khan
''Kubla Khan'' () is a poem written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, completed in 1797 and published in 1816. It is sometimes given the subtitles "A Vision in a Dream" and "A Fragment." According to Coleridge's preface to ''Kubla Khan'', the poem ...
although they are merely accounts of the very city in which they are chatting. Ondaatje's ''
The Collected Works of Billy the Kid
''The Collected Works of Billy the Kid: Left-Handed Poems'' is a verse novel by Michael Ondaatje, published in 1970. It chronicles and interprets important events in the life of William Bonney, aka Billy the Kid, and his conflict with Sheriff P ...
'' uses a scrapbook style to tell its story while Cortázar's ''
Hopscotch
Hopscotch is a popular playground game in which players toss a small object, called a lagger, into numbered triangles or a pattern of rectangles outlined on the ground and then hop or jump through the spaces and retrieve the object. It is a ch ...
'' can be read with the chapters in any order.
Argentine
Julio Cortázar and the naturalized Brazilian writer
Clarice Lispector
Clarice Lispector (born Chaya Pinkhasivna Lispector ( uk, Хая Пінкасівна Ліспектор); December 10, 1920December 9, 1977) was a Ukrainian-born Brazilian novelist and short story writer. Her innovative, idiosyncratic works exp ...
, both
Latin American writers who have created masterpieces in experimental literature of 20th and 21st century, mixing dreamscapes, journalism, and fiction; regional classics written in Spanish include the Mexican novel "
''Pedro Paramo''" by
Juan Rulfo
Juan Nepomuceno Carlos Pérez Rulfo Vizcaíno, best known as Juan Rulfo ( ; 16 May 1917 – 7 January 1986), was a Mexican writer, screenwriter, and photographer. He is best known for two literary works, the 1955 novel ''Pedro Páramo'', and th ...
, the Colombian family epic "''
One Hundred Years of Solitude''" by
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
In Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam), Gabriel (); Greek: grc, Γαβριήλ, translit=Gabriḗl, label=none; Latin: ''Gabriel''; Coptic: cop, Ⲅⲁⲃⲣⲓⲏⲗ, translit=Gabriêl, label=none; Amharic: am, ገብር ...
, the Peruvian political history "''
The War of the End of the World
''The War of the End of the World'' ( es, La guerra del fin del mundo) is a 1981 novel written by Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa. It is a fictionalized account of the War of Canudos conflict in late 19th-century Brazil.
Plot summary
In the ...
''" by
Mario Vargas Llosa
Jorge Mario Pedro Vargas Llosa, 1st Marquess of Vargas Llosa (born 28 March 1936), more commonly known as Mario Vargas Llosa (, ), is a Peruvian novelist, journalist, essayist and former politician, who also holds Spanish citizenship. Vargas Ll ...
, the Puerto Rican
Spanglish
Spanglish (a portmanteau of the words "Spanish" and "English") is any language variety (such as a contact dialect, hybrid language, pidgin, or creole language) that results from conversationally combining Spanish and English. The term is mos ...
dramatic dialogue "''
Yo-Yo Boing!
''Yo-Yo Boing!'' (1998) is a postmodern novel in English, Spanish, and Spanglish by Puerto Rican author Giannina Braschi. The cross-genre work is a structural hybrid of poetry, political philosophy, musical, manifesto, treatise, memoir, an ...
''" by
Giannina Braschi
Giannina Braschi (born February 5, 1953) is a Puerto Rican poet, novelist, dramatist, and scholar. Her notable works include ''Empire of Dreams'' (1988), ''Yo-Yo Boing!'' (1998) ''and United States of Banana'' (2011).
Braschi writes cross-genr ...
, and the Cuban revolutionary novel "
Paradiso" by
José Lezama Lima
José María Andrés Fernando Lezama Lima (December 19, 1910 – August 9, 1976) was a Cuban writer, poet and essayist. He is considered one of the most influential figures in Cuban and Latin American literature. His novel ''Paradiso'' is one of ...
.
Americas Society's Latin American Literature Roster
2005.
Contemporary American authors David Foster Wallace
David Foster Wallace (February 21, 1962 – September 12, 2008) was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and university professor of English and creative writing. Wallace is widely known for his 1996 novel '' Infinite Jest'', whi ...
, Giannina Braschi
Giannina Braschi (born February 5, 1953) is a Puerto Rican poet, novelist, dramatist, and scholar. Her notable works include ''Empire of Dreams'' (1988), ''Yo-Yo Boing!'' (1998) ''and United States of Banana'' (2011).
Braschi writes cross-genr ...
, and Rick Moody
Hiram Frederick Moody III (born October 18, 1961) is an American novelist and short story writer best known for the 1994 novel ''The Ice Storm'', a chronicle of the dissolution of two suburban Connecticut families over Thanksgiving weekend in 19 ...
, combine some of the experimental form-play of the 1960s writers with a more emotionally deflating, irony, and a greater tendency towards accessibility and humor. Wallace's ''Infinite Jest
''Infinite Jest'' is a 1996 novel by American writer David Foster Wallace. Categorized as an encyclopedic novel, ''Infinite Jest'' is featured in ''TIME'' magazine's list of the 100 best English-language novels published between 1923 and 2005.
...
'' is a post-postmodern maximalist work describing life at a tennis academy and a rehab facility; digressions often become plotlines, and the book features over 100 pages of footnotes. Other writers like Nicholson Baker
Nicholson Baker (born January 7, 1957) is an American novelist and essayist. His fiction generally de-emphasizes narrative in favor of careful description and characterization. His early novels such as ''The Mezzanine'' and ''Room Temperature'' we ...
were noted for their minimalism in novels such as ''The Mezzanine
''The Mezzanine'' (1988) is the first novel by American writer Nicholson Baker. It narrates what goes through a man's mind during a modern lunch break.
Concept
On the surface, the novel deals with a man's lunchtime trip up an escalator in the m ...
'', about a man who rides an escalator for 140 pages. American author Mark Danielewski combined elements of a horror novel with formal academic writing and typographic experimentation in his novel ''House of Leaves
''House of Leaves'' is the debut novel by American author Mark Z. Danielewski, published in March 2000 by Pantheon Books. A bestseller, it has been translated into a number of languages, and is followed by a companion piece, '' The Whalestoe Le ...
''.
Greek author Dimitris Lyacos
Dimitris Lyacos ( el, Δημήτρης Λυάκος; born 19 October 1966) is a contemporary Greek poet and playwright. He is the author of the ''Poena Damni'' trilogy. Lyacos's work is characterised by its genre-defying form and the avant-garde ...
in Z213: Exit combines, in a kind of a modern-day palimpsest, the diary entries of two narrators in a heavily fragmented text, interspersed with excerpts from the biblical Exodus, to recount a journey along which the distinct realities of inner self and outside world gradually merge.
21st-century history
In the early 21st century, many examples of experimental literature reflect the emergence of computers and other digital technologies, some of them actually using the medium on which they are reflecting, such as Patricia Lockwood
Patricia Lockwood (born 27 April 1982) is an United States poetry, American poet, novelist, and essayist. Her 2021 debut novel, ''No One Is Talking About This,'' won the Dylan Thomas Prize. Her 2017 memoir ''Priestdaddy'' won the Thurber Prize f ...
's 2021 internet
The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...
novel ''No One Is Talking About This
''No One Is Talking About This'' is the debut novel by American poet Patricia Lockwood, published in 2021. It was a finalist for the 2021 Booker Prize, was one of the ''New York Times 10 best books of 2021, and won the 2022 Dylan Thomas Prize.
T ...
'', which was mostly composed on an iPhone. Such writing has been variously referred to electronic literature
Electronic literature or digital literature is a genre of literature encompassing works created exclusively on and for digital devices, such as computers, tablets, and mobile phones. A work of electronic literature can be defined as "a constr ...
, hypertext, and codework. Others have focused on exploring the plurality of narrative point of views, like the Uruguayan American writer Jorge Majfud
Jorge Majfud (born September 10, 1969) is a Uruguayan American writer.
Life
He was born in Tacuarembó, Uruguay. He received a professional degree in Architecture in 1996 from the University of the Republic in Montevideo and studied at Escu ...
in ''La reina de América
''La reina de América'' ("The Queen of America") is a novel by Uruguayan author Jorge Majfud. It was published by Baile del Sol in 2002.WorldCat, e WorldCat/ref>
Plot summary
This novel is about a family of Spanish immigrants in the ninetee ...
'' and ''La ciudad de la luna''.
See also
* Absurdism
** Absurdist fiction
Absurdist fiction is a genre of novels, plays, poems, films, or other media that focuses on the experiences of characters in situations where they cannot find any inherent purpose in life, most often represented by ultimately meaningless acti ...
** Theatre of the Absurd
The Theatre of the Absurd (french: théâtre de l'absurde ) is a post–World War II designation for particular plays of absurdist fiction written by a number of primarily European playwrights in the late 1950s. It is also a term for the style o ...
* Antinovel
An antinovel is any experimental novel, experimental work of fiction that avoids the familiar conventions of the novel, and instead establishes its own conventions.
Origin of the term
The term ("anti-roman" in French) was brought into modern lit ...
* Asemic writing Asemic may refer to:
* Asemia
Asemia is the term for the medical condition of being unable to understand or express any signs or symbols.
It is a more severe condition than aphasia, which is the inability to understand linguistic signs. Asemia i ...
* Beat generation
* Bizarro fiction
Bizarro fiction is a contemporary literary genre which often uses elements of absurdism, satire, and the grotesque, along with pop-surrealism and genre fiction staples, in order to create subversive, weird, and entertaining works. The term was ad ...
* Code poetry Code poetry is literature that intermixes notions of classical poetry and computer code. Unlike digital poetry
Digital poetry is a form of electronic literature, displaying a wide range of approaches to poetry, with a prominent and crucial use o ...
* Concrete poetry
Concrete poetry is an arrangement of linguistic elements in which the typographical effect is more important in conveying meaning than verbal significance. It is sometimes referred to as visual poetry, a term that has now developed a distinct me ...
* Dada
Dada () or Dadaism was an art movement of the European avant-garde in the early 20th century, with early centres in Zürich, Switzerland, at the Cabaret Voltaire (in 1916). New York Dada began c. 1915, and after 1920 Dada flourished in Pari ...
* Digital poetry
Digital poetry is a form of electronic literature, displaying a wide range of approaches to poetry, with a prominent and crucial use of computers. Digital poetry can be available in form of CD-ROM, DVD, as installations in art galleries, in c ...
* Ergodic literature
Ergodic literature is a term coined by Espen J. Aarseth in his book ''Cybertext—Perspectives on Ergodic Literature'' to describe literature in which nontrivial effort is required for the reader to traverse the text. The term is derived fr ...
* Flarf poetry
Flarf poetry was an ''avant-garde'' poetry movement of the early 21st century. The term ''Flarf'' was coined by the poet Gary Sullivan, who also wrote and published the earliest Flarf poems. Its first practitioners, working in loose collaboration o ...
* Haptic poetry
Haptic poetry, like visual poetry and sound poetry, is a liminal art form combining characteristics of typography and sculpture to create objects not only to be seen, but to be touched and manipulated. Indeed, in haptic poetry, the sense of to ...
* L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E
* Lettrism
Lettrism is a French avant-garde movement, established in Paris in the mid-1940s by Romanian immigrant Isidore Isou. In a body of work totaling hundreds of volumes, Isou and the Lettrists have applied their theories to all areas of art and culture ...
* Literary modernism
Literary modernism, or modernist literature, originated in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and is characterized by a self-conscious break with traditional ways of writing, in both poetry and prose fiction writing. Modernism experimented ...
* Magic realism
* Modernist literature
Literary modernism, or modernist literature, originated in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and is characterized by a self-conscious break with traditional ways of writing, in both poetry and prose fiction writing. Modernism experimented ...
* Net-poetry
Net-poetry is a development of net.art, involving poetry. This kind of experimental art was born in several different cities and countries around 1995.
Short history
Net-poetry was born in the context of net-art and digital art avant-garde in var ...
* Nouveau roman
* Nonlinear (arts)
* Nuyorican
Nuyorican is a portmanteau of the terms "New York" and "Puerto Rican" and refers to the members or culture of the Puerto Ricans located in or around New York City, or of their descendants (especially those raised or currently living in the N ...
* 'Pataphysics
Pataphysics (french: 'pataphysique) is a "philosophy" of science invented by French writer Alfred Jarry (1873–1907) intended to be a parody of science. Difficult to be simply defined or pinned down, it has been described as the "science of ima ...
* Postmodern literature
Postmodern literature is a form of literature that is characterized by the use of metafiction, unreliable narrator, unreliable narration, self-reflexivity, intertextuality, and which often thematizes both historical and political issues. This sty ...
* Slipstream (genre)
* Surrealism
* Visual poetry
Literary theorists have identified visual poetry as a development of concrete poetry but with the characteristics of intermedia in which non-representational language and visual elements predominate.
Differentiation from concrete poetry
As the l ...
References
Bibliography
* Bäckström, Per. ''Vårt brokigas ochellericke! Om experimentell poesi'' (Our Gaudy Andornot!. On Experimental Poetry), Lund: Ellerström, 2010.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Experimental Literature
20th-century literature