What makes a novel an experimental novel? In general, experimental means something new, something unprecedented, a deviation from the established. When
thinking about the readings for this course, I feel like one can distinguish between
two kinds of “deviations” that constitute the experimental.
I would like to focus on the three, in my eyes, most obviously
experimental novels, namely The Waves,
Crash and Molloy. While they are undoubtedly all experimental, there seems to
be a difference in their “experimentality”. The
Waves, this “play-poem”, deviates from the conventional mainly in regards
to its unusual narrative form, demonstrated in the six soliloquies. Crash
on the other hand, transgresses rather moral boundaries and our ideas about the
plot of a novel in general. Molloy seems to be
experimental in both mentioned ways. Its narrative style with the constant
contradictions is as extraordinary and unconventional as its “lack of plot” as
Daniel put it.
I think the difference between the experimental novels. They're all different, yet they're connected in the fact that they're all labeled as "experimental." But is this the only thing they have in common? Maybe that's a part of the genre - undefinability (I just made that word up. I can do that because it's experimental). But what else is there to experimental fiction? Clearly they're different from other genre (hence the name), but is a requirement that they have to be different from each other as well?
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ReplyDelete*The difference between the experimental novels MATTERS. That first sentence was experimental. Make of it what you will.
ReplyDeleteI think that for something to be experimental it must break from tradition, but if something else has already broken tradition in the same way, can anything following in its footsteps also be considered experimental? If we think of literature like a science experiment, the same experiment can be performed multiple times and still achieve different results due to the environment that it is performed (or written) in. Our control groups would be novels considered to be traditional or non-experimental. We also need to consider that at some point all literature was experimental. Over time, after these experimental forms became more prevalent, they transitioned into what we consider a norm. So maybe these novels are less experimental than they are the birth of new norms that have yet to come to fruition, or maybe they are daring in a way that will never catch on themselves but give influential inspiration to other experimental forms to come. I think a connecting thread, as in all good literature, is that these books make you think in a new way about what they are telling you. You have to consider the narrator's reliability, the actual plot line, or the human characteristics presented that maybe you would rather not think about. Maybe the experimental part is the reaction that they are able to bring about from the reader.
ReplyDeleteI've struggled with the idea of the "experimental" all semester, and I'm still not quite sure where I stand with it. First, I think there are two types of experimental literature: experimental writing and experimental content. For example, I would argue that the first section of Molloy is experimental due to its aggravating lack of paragraph breaks. The Golden Notebook is experimental for its container choice-- layers and layers of separated narrative. And then we have Crash and Never Let Me Go, both more conventionally written novels that discuss experimental activities. I found the last two easier to read than many of the novels we read for class (The Waves, Molloy, Voyage in the Dark) because the prose or Crash and Never Let Me Go was similar to other contemporary novels that I've read. Does that make them more or less experimental than other novels? Is this class concerned with all types of experimentation, or since it's a study of literature should we have focused on experimental writing and not content? Answers I feel are unanswered.
ReplyDeleteSomething else that I'm growing aware of is the synonymous use of "experimental" and "accident." For example, William in another post posted from n account without his name and then labeled it "experimental." Forest left out a word and also made up a word and called them both "experimental." Were the novels we've read accidents that were never cleaned up? Or do we, as a class, have a faulty understanding of what an experimental work is? In a similar style to other posts referencing an uneasiness with the endings of many of the books we've read, I feel uncomfortable with the ending of this class. I still don't know what makes something experimental instead of an accident or even what constitutes an experimental work. Perhaps these novels are experimental in that we can't figure them out or we always have questions left unanswered. In this way, I would argue that all novels are experimental. And, in a way, perhaps they are.
I find that many works can be opened up as experimental based on readings that utilize a text to undo the conventions (all texts have conventions and codes, for most books a simple convention is the alphabet, even the dictionary, common-understanding syntax, etc.) that those readings identify in other texts. Clearly the author's presentation and formal control is central to making possible these readings, and I think that contra accident, as Jamie helpfully unpacks, many of these texts feature quite outstanding formal control in order to prevent the lapse (which is always the path of least resistance) into a convention. The important issue here may in fact be salience, or the idea that for a work to DO something, to prevent convention from becoming cliche, it has to draw attention to formal aspects of the text by differentiating itself. Formal experiments increase the salience or visibility of that form, but this process of detection depends in important ways on how readers receive the text through conventional (This book doesn't use paragraphs correctly) or experimental (How does a paragraph organize information? What does this prevent from happening, or make possible?) readings.
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