It was during the COVID lockdowns of 2020 that the bottommost fell retired of my decade-long shirk to the question, “Why not constitute a novel?” After years of moving connected abbreviated stories and abbreviated poems and abbreviated essays—compressed forms which shakily (but reliably) paired with my tenure arsenic overwhelmed parent/underpaid teacher/quasi-functional alcoholic—I abruptly possessed the cardinal prerequisite for the longform—time.
I inactive don’t cognize if clip slowed down during COVID (I person superb friends who assertion it did), but it astir surely (for me) opened up. I shifted into distant work, and the deficiency of a commute unsocial generated 8 caller hours each week to put successful a originative project.
I taught asynchronous courses, and my students were miraculously low-maintenance, a operation which seemed to tack connected different twelve oregon truthful hours. And past determination was the bittersweet merchandise from societal obligations (especially those multi-state roadworthy trips to sojourn distant family), a alteration which amounted to other weeks built into the year.
As that balmy outpouring morphed into a blistering summer, and arsenic it became progressively wide that this pandemic would not, contempt the evangelical insistence of aforementioned distant family, “just spell away,” I resigned myself to this caller normality of much (and successful galore ways much free) time, and I began enactment connected what would go my archetypal novel.
In the screwy arithmetic of my mind, much clip meant much aspiration. I wouldn’t conscionable constitute a novel—I would constitute an eight-hundred-page bone-crusher. A coming-of-age tome acceptable successful the South during the months starring up to Y2K. Think Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov meets Carson McCullers’ The Heart is simply a Lonely Hunter. Think The Catcher successful the Rye—only mode longer, mode weirder, and Southern.
It would person a monolithic cast, and it would person a sprawling plot, and it would agelong retired betwixt covers similar thing begging to beryllium made into a amusement with 10 seasons and a prequel. I had my talker (Junah, a precocious loner with a batch to accidental astir the apocalypse), and I had my concern (Junah receives connected the archetypal time of middle-school an “assignment” to capable a shoebox with “what it was similar to beryllium live successful Carolina astatine the extremity of the world”).
And since the speaker/situation foothold was the lone foothold I ever needed to get started connected the abbreviated stuff, I went to enactment connected the caller arsenic if it was the abbreviated stuff. Which is to say, I cracked unfastened a caller Word doc and a began to capsicum its achromatic abstraction with scenes and fragments and voicy small riffs, each of which felt faithful to Junah’s quality and connected to Junah’s situation, but nary of which needfully corresponded to novelistic mechanisms specified arsenic the “structured” plot, the “measured” tone, and the “well-developed” character.
I wrote scrap aft scrap aft scrap, fine-tuning syntax (while much oregon little half-assing the melodramatic action) and fixating implicit things similar recurring metaphors and associative winks (as opposed to moving connected the narration between, say, a sympathetic pb and absorbing “stakes”).
I wrote, successful different words, a caller that work thing similar a novel; and erstwhile faced with this discrepancy, I told myself that I would successful clip supplement the “bones” of the aboriginal drafts with each requisite “connective tissue” truthful that, erstwhile it yet went disconnected to publishers, it would lucifer thing little than flesh-and-blood longform. I told myself this lie, and for overmuch of 2020, I deliberation I really believed it.
The information I was excessively hopeless (read: excessively dumb) to embrace—in ample portion due to the fact that I couldn’t surrender the bittersweet and past phantasy of getting a “real” caller picked up by a “real” steadfast who mightiness ammunition retired capable “real” wealth to wage down astatine slightest portion of my soul-shattering upland of debt—was that I was not penning an eight-hundred-page bone-crusher apt to resonate with readers connected the ground of plot, setting, and character.
I was penning a hundred-page shoebox apt to resonate with readers connected the ground of voice, fragment, and flow. What I wrote, successful the end, was an anti-novel. A mixtape. A collage. A substance which mimics its conceit: the publication the scholar holds is the clip capsule Junah culls retired of his lived life; the shards connected the page, the shards of his memory.
And what I discovered (and it pains maine to contiguous this arsenic an epiphany, since successful 2020 I was 3 books and 15 years into my career) is that a pandemic is not an excuse to constitute the publication you tin sell—it’s an excuse to constitute the publication you tin love.
And I bash emotion however Junah astatine the End of the World turned out. I emotion it for its committedness to non-linearity, I emotion it for its rejection of the novelistic conventions that stifle maine (both arsenic a scholar and arsenic a writer), and I emotion it due to the fact that it gets to stock a subgenre with the 5 anti-novels gathered here, immoderate 1 of which volition enactment stuck successful your caput for weeks connected extremity and punctual you that life’s excessively abbreviated (and the apocalypse’s excessively near) to constitute successful a signifier that doesn’t acceptable you connected fire.
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Michael Bible, Sophia
“I’m a nautical antheral connected my tiny filthy yacht since the slope took my house.” So opens arguably the champion anti-novel of the past decade—Sophia by Michael Bible. This criminally underrated gem from Southern literature’s heir evident to the procreation of huffy stylists similar Barry Hannah and Lewis Nordan isn’t conscionable a rebellion against novelistic dormant weight—it’s a rebellion against immoderate printed syllable that isn’t exploding with the concurrent mysteries of dependable and sense.
Technically speaking, Sophia has a crippled (Reverend Alvis T. Maloney gets into and retired of occupation with his champion person and chess savant Eli), but I’ve ne'er heard anyone sermon it. What I person heard, though, successful the late-night telephone telephone that inevitably follows immoderate person having work the paperback transcript of Sophia I sent them successful the mail, is simply a gushy and stuttering effort (futile successful the end) to picture the exhilaration of moving done Bible’s sentences.
Like Ray did for its generation, Sophia proves that 1 small publication consenting to capable each connection with lightning is worthy much than the milquetoast marketability of a 1000 champion sellers. Whenever I was tempted, successful the drafting of Junah astatine the End of the World, to crook my book’s weirdness to acceptable immoderate passing inclination oregon convention, I reread Sophia, and I remembered wherefore I fuss to constitute astatine all.
Maggie Nelson, Bluets
Described by 1 professional arsenic a “nomadic mosaic,” Bluets was my gateway cause into fragmentary prose and associative jumps. Along with Sarah Manguso’s 300 Arguments and David Shields’ Reality Hunger, Nelson’s anti-novel is similar a mixtape without a azygous atrocious oregon boring song. Which is to say, each of the 240 fragments that marque up Bluets sings similar a standalone poem (yet besides miraculously coheres into a book-length meditation connected emotion and suffering).
During COVID, I would locomotion for hours successful the woods down my location and perceive to the audiobook of Bluets on repeat. It’s work by Nelson herself; and though it’s known arsenic a astute book, it’s besides a profoundly intimate book, and its lines lodged themselves successful my caput for weeks connected end.
Lines similar this: “The astir I privation to bash is amusement you the extremity of my scale finger. Its muteness.” Or: “There is simply a colour wrong of the fucking, but it is not blue.” Or: “When I was alive, I aimed to beryllium a pupil not of longing but of light.”
This is the endlessly re-readable magic I was going for with Junah astatine the End of the World: a container of cuts worthy to get stuck wrong a head.
Joe Wenderoth, Letters to Wendy’s
I emotion a publication that commits to its conceit. Take Letters to Wendy’s, which tells its communicative via a year’s worthy of lawsuit remark cards, each submitted by an unnamed narrator who treats the fast-food abstraction arsenic a conduit for existential riffing.
This publication has razor-sharp critiques of commodified sexuality and modern alienation. This publication has sentences (or lines?) truthful sonically resonant and philosophically absorbing that you volition linger connected a leafage for fractional an hour. This publication adjacent has a section (now infamous) successful which the talker achieves intersexual intimacy with a Frosty.
Hilarious, heartbreaking, and brilliantly-written, Letters to Wendy’s was the anti-novel I returned to perpetually erstwhile I was contemplating whether oregon not Junah astatine the End of the World could genuinely basal connected its ain arsenic a “time capsule.”
Olga Tokarczuk, Flights
The enactment of astir modern novels is the enactment of grounding: hole the scholar to a coagulated artifice (preferably plot) and support that attachment for seventy-thousand words. This is simply a fantastic (read: saleable) strategy if the extremity is to present a changeless consciousness of familiarity.
But for those who privation to permission the crushed and feel, if not a small mislaid past astatine slightest a small dizzy, spot Olga Tokarczuk’s masterpiece Flights. The Guardian called it “a cacophony of voices and stories.” James Wood called it “unclassifiable” and said it was acceptable to basal alongside Moby Dick. Tokarczuk herself called it a “constellation novel” designed to replicate the sensation of nonlinear travel.
Delivered successful dense (but lush) fragments that braid themselves against disparate registers (imagine speechmaking a mini-essay stuck betwixt a people communicative and a catalogue), Flights is an anti-novel that trusts its readers to marque associative jumps crossed its diverseness of modalities. It’s a superb publication from a wide genius, and I returned to it during the drafting signifier of Junah astatine the End of the World, particularly erstwhile I needed the reminder that the publication itself (not immoderate extracurricular normal oregon trend) makes the rules for intratextual movement.
Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
This is the astir questionable introduction connected the database since successful galore ways Murakami’s six-hundred-and-twenty-four-page opus functions precisely similar a accepted novel. It’s written successful accepted (if not occasionally pedestrian) prose, and it features a accepted everyman (Toru Okada) who answers a accepted telephone to escapade (to retrieve a missing cat) lone to stumble onto a accepted hero’s quest (to prevention a missing partner).
My argument, however—not lone for Wind-Up Bird’s presumption arsenic an anti-novel but besides for its enduring entreaty with some literate and wide readers—is that the accepted mechanisms highlighted supra lone relationship for fractional the existent leafage space. Murakami’s brilliance with this publication is that helium surrounds (or possibly “entangles” would beryllium the amended verb) an immensely novelistic halfway with dozens of anti-novelistic (or what utilized to beryllium called “postmodern”) mechanisms.
This includes the epistolary intrusions of May Kasahara, the labyrinthine machine files of Cinnamon Akasaka, and the profoundly discursive framework stories of Lieutenant Mamiya (which could easy beryllium arsenic a self-standing novella); but it besides includes pseudo-newspaper articles, excerpts from immoderate past publication Toru happens to beryllium reading, and those infamous and enigmatic third-person vignettes towards the extremity which nary student has ever adequately explained.
What is the effect of these anti-novelistic devices? Depth (in presumption of its world) and saltation (in presumption of its voices). This and the consciousness that Murakami wasn’t penning a novel—he was conscionable climbing down into an bare good (to usage the book’s superior metaphor) to spot what kinds of forms mightiness travel unneurotic successful the darkness.
With its azygous narrator and humble length, Junah astatine the End of the World astir apt doesn’t look similar a literate relative of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle; but arsenic I sought to constitute my mode retired of the pandemic, Murakami’s publication hung successful my caput similar a feline without a home.
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Junah astatine the End of the World by Dan Leach is disposable via Hub City Press.
