Essay as Art: Experimental Literature

What is Experimental literature?

[Experimental fiction] "is fiction that sets up it's own rules for itself [...] while subverting the conventions according to which readers have understood what constitutes a proper work of literature."

Understanding Experimental Writing (History)

Many Europeans and Americans began experimenting with different forms of literature and stared creating unusual inclinations, this movement would be later known as Modernism.

It described both a set cultural trend but also a cultural movement which would later spread across the western society.

20th -Century Influences

Many writers during the early part of the 20th century played a key role in experiment writing such as: D'Annunzio T. S. Eliot Gertrude Stein James Joyce. Hemingway Dos Passos Ralph Ellison. Kenneth Patchen Jack Kerouac

Experimental Literature: Today

Today Experimental Literature is published in many form of literature to further promote the style of writing such as: Books Magazines Atlas Reviews Short stories Movies Art

Traditional Writing vs. Experimental Writing (in a story)

Most stories have to be real enough to be believable, but peculiar to grasp the reader attention.

Structure and style is clearly defined to a certain point.

A style of writing that is boarding and popular.

A simple formula to follow that is accessible.

Writers have perfected the art of narrative, dialogue and storytelling.

There isn't a very clear line demarcating where one ends and the other begins but yet a blended element that allows the story to flow

Don’t allow the mechanics of the storytelling to interfere with the writers purpose

Examples of experimental Writing

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More Examples…..

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A Suggested Reading List(Writers) Salman Rushdie Gore Vidal Kurt Vonnegut Oscar Wilde Kathy Acker John Barth Samuel Beckett Gabriel Garcia-

Marquez Franz Kafka Alain Robbe-Grillet

William S. Burroughs

James Joyce Virginia Woolf Thomas Pynchon

Experimental Literature ( Books)

 The Tunnel: Selected Poems of Russell Edson

 Invisible Cities  

A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters 

Imaginary Magnitude   This Is Not a Novel Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters

Reference

http://www.esoteric-sensationalism.com/theory.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mrs_Dalloway

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experimental_literature

http://www.amazon.com/Experimental-Literature/lm/R1C0XDLFURIYJP