The 10 Most Extreme Experiments Known to Literature

Experimental fabrication is much fashionable than you mightiness expect. An awesome 37.6% of Americans similar it to much accepted forms—that’s astir 100 cardinal radical if you standard it to the existent big population. And of those who similar their fabrication to beryllium formally adventurous, the experiments they astir bask are abstract connection and nonlinear plots. They bash not want encyclopedic novels oregon prose that, similar this introduction, comments connected the creation of writing.

I cognize this due to the fact that a fewer years agone I conducted a nationalist literate nationalist sentiment canvass with a Johns Hopkins survey plan expert—a canvass that besides measured everything from preferred genre to mounting to verb tense. After surveying a typical illustration of the U.S. colonisation and studying the data, I took the canvass results and wrote 2 precise antithetic stories: 1 with everything Americans prefer, The Most Wanted Novel (a James Patterson-esque technothriller), and different with everything that nary 1 successful their close caput would enjoy, The Most Unwanted Novel (an experimental blend of romance, horror, humanities fiction, and classical lit acceptable connected a billionaire-colonized 22nd period Mars). Amazingly, astir aboriginal readers similar the latter.

Despite the supra data, precise fewer works of experimental fabrication are published successful the U.S. each year—especially by the 5 conglomerate publishers, often called “The Big Five,” who are liable for 80% of each caller books. Experimental literature—truly weird and formally inventive fiction—is overmuch much apt to look arsenic a enactment successful translation published by a small, autarkic press.

This is not by accident. Dan Sinykin’s groundbreaking book, Big Fiction, showed however a 100 years of publishing consolidation has honed readerly sensation and writerly benignant successful this country. Sinykin recovered 1 of the top culprits to beryllium “comp titles,” oregon the database of 3-5 akin books that an cause sends to editors to effort to person them to people a caller novel. On apical of contorting lit into the equivalent of existent property (this is however houses are sold—by comparing a spot to the homes astir it), this inclination ensures the books that get published bash not veer acold from what has already been proven successful the market. There is small country for astonishment and adventure; successful this climate, these things are simply “risk.”

What if the publishers are wrong? What if this canvass information is right—or adjacent adjacent to right—and determination are leagues of readers anxious for caller forms, stories, politics, and imaginative worlds? The beneath database collects “extreme fiction,” oregon novels that propulsion astatine the limits of what we often spot arsenic imaginable successful literature. It’s not exhaustive, alternatively it’s a idiosyncratic postulation of books I’ve enjoyed and that person changed my presumption of storytelling. These are besides superb works of creation that, if written today, would conflict to find homes successful the existent comp-title regime.

Extreme Form:

Blood and Guts successful High School by Kathy Acker

When I started retired arsenic a fabrication writer, this was the archetypal caller that blew my mind. The publication follows Janey Smith from Mexico City to an autofictional-yet-cartoonish representation of Acker’s ain beingness successful New York City and beyond. But it’s however it’s told that sets Blood and Guts apart: What begins arsenic a communicative successful the signifier of a movie publication soon morphs into imagination maps drawn from Acker’s existent beingness earlier dropping into a fairy communicative pastiche of Aesop and the Brothers Grimm. The much you get into it, the much you’re not definite wherever 1 genre oregon communicative thread ends and the different begins. Blood and Guts is lewd and offensive. It’s a collage and a beautiful, breached mess. 

Extreme Language Play:

The Mundus by N. H. Pritchard

Most fabrication that plays with connection incorporates puns oregon palindromes oregon invents caller dialects, but Pritchard’s The Mundus goes acold beyond the accustomed line-based games. His ocular caller explodes the accepted paragraph—and adjacent the sentence—into constellations of words, syllables and letters, creating a verbi-voco-visual connection of his own. Inspired by Pritchard’s theosophical inquiries, The Mundus is composed of shifting voices and naturalistic imagery that defy clear, cohesive storytelling. Words and text-sound-images gaffe into 1 different and marque reading—and meaning itself—a puzzle to beryllium pieced unneurotic by each scholar upon each reading. Once you’ve experienced The Mundus, you’ll ne'er spot novels—or language—or the world—quite the same.

Extreme Horror:

Off Season by Jack Ketchum

Our canvass recovered that fearfulness was the second-least-wanted genre aft romance, truthful The Most Unwanted Novel contains an unabridged 100-page postulation of fearfulness stories. While penning this collection, I was funny what others thought the astir utmost fearfulness could be, and respective websites pointed maine to Off Season. Ketchum’s infamous debut follows the ill-fated travails of six metropolis slickers vacationing successful coastal Maine. In emblematic 80s horror-flick fashion, one-by-one they find themselves overwhelmed by a set of cannibals that locals thought were lone a legend… To a student of extremes, it did not disappoint: this is doubtless the astir gut-churning fearfulness communicative I’ve ever read. Reader discretion is highly advised. 

Extreme Surrealism:

What To Do by Pablo Katchajian, translated by Pricilla Posada

This caller wholly destabilized maine erstwhile I archetypal work it. Sparked by a giant’s koanic question astir the quality of philosophy, the communicative follows a nameless narrator and his person Alberto done a bid of rapidly changing scenes and situations, from a lecture hallway to a plaza to a nightclub restroom—and this is lone successful the archetypal page. From section to chapter, location, perspective, logic, physics, everything keeps slipping away. Nothing is solid. Everything moves. After finishing it, I was reminded of parts of Dambudzo Marechera’s House of Hunger, which likewise contorted my brain, heart, and soul. Read these books and accidental bye bye to “reality” arsenic you cognize it.

Extreme Braininess:

Glyph by Percival Everett

Glyph is simply a postmodern heist thriller told from the position of a mute babe genius named Ralph. We travel the polymath babe done a bid of progressively absurd kidnappings—from a psychiatrist seeking to exploit Ralph’s smarts to G-men recruiting him for espionage. Glyph pairs these pulpy scenes with a generous helping of Wittgensteinian meditations connected poststructuralist connection mentation that volition twist your encephalon into five-dimensional pretzels (no 1 volition beryllium amazed to larn that Everett started retired arsenic a philosopher). If you work Glyph—and you must—you’ll besides privation to cheque retired Dr. No, its James Bond-esque sequel that shows, erstwhile placed beside Everett’s dozens of different books (see the westerns, the detective novels, the humanities fictions), that his stylistic scope is unparalleled successful American literature.

Extreme Humor:

Castle Faggot by Derek McCormack

Extreme wit requires laugh-out-loud laughter and existent cringe. Castle Faggot delivers some and more: it’s a scatological circuit of a demented, Disneyland-esque taxable park, tally by Count Choc-o-log and his demented children’s cereal mascot friends. We determination from the Arse de Triumphe to the Rue de Doo, gathering the disco-dancing Franken-Fudge and Boo-Brownie on the way—even Bataille shows up arsenic a vampire bat. The connection is bouncy and harsh and yet someway addictive, its drama laced with a stinging subtext of despair—there’s the slur of course, and the changeless reappearance of decease and suicide. At times the communicative reads similar a ocular poem, implicit with bare enactment drawings, and a last section shaped similar an inverted castle. This is simply a substance that breaks and rebuilds you earlier breaking you again, each portion wrapping you up successful its tender, drippy Choc-o-log-ic embrace.

Extreme Prolificness:

Conversations by César Aira (and the remainder of his oeuvre)

César Aira is successful a people of his own, having published implicit 100 novels, each of them astir 100 pages long. He does this done a process helium calls the “flight forward” method, wherein helium writes without editing, launching retired from the archetypal leafage with a wide thought of wherever helium mightiness spell and improvising each the mode until the end. Conversations is his astir flamboyant—and fun—use of this method, turning the thought of a framework communicative into a hallway of mirrors. The rambling thoughts of a sleeping dreamer gaffe into a speech the dreamer had the erstwhile time astir a continuity mistake successful a Hollywood movie, which telegraphs into existent scenes of this movie, featuring mutant algae, flying goats, and feral quality queens. And that’s conscionable the commencement due to the fact that erstwhile you’ve finished Conversations, the remainder of Aira’s ever-expanding literate beingness volition beryllium beckoning you forth.

Extreme Constraint:

The Sphinx by Anne Garréta, translated by Emma Ramadan

The Sphinx is simply a emotion communicative that follows a nameless narrator, a DJ, and their lover, A***, a dancer, done the Parisian underground nightclub scene. The communicative is genderless. Or rather, the sex of the protagonist and the person are absent throughout. This is simply a hard feat successful English and an adjacent harder 1 successful the archetypal French, a connection ruled by gendered nouns, articles, and verbs. As a subordinate of Oulipo, the Paris-based avant garde radical who enactment literate constraint connected the map, Garéta’s publication channels George Perec, who likewise went to utmost lengths successful La Disparation by penning a caller without the astir communal missive successful French (or English): “e.” Here Garétta queers the often-male-dominated enactment of Oulipo, contorting the confines of gendered connection and our tendency for casual and fixed identities.

Extreme Minimalism:

Reader’s Block by David Markson

When I archetypal work what’s commonly called “minimalist fiction,” i.e. Ernest Hemingway, I was confused. Why truthful galore words? Why truthful small repetition? Prior to Markson publishing his spare, last quartet of novels, it seems to maine Gertrude Stein, Samuel Beckett, and a fistful of others were the lone prose writers to genuinely recognize what literate minimalism tin be. Markson joins them with his precocious novels that harvester elemental stories with thousands of interspersed facts astir the lives and deaths of canonical writers and artists. In Reader’s Block, we travel the nonlinear, astir ambient interior monologue of an aging writer struggling to constitute a novel—supposedly the precise 1 we are reading. Malcolm Gladwell says that bully penning includes “candy,” oregon scrumptious small factoids that a scholar tin chew connected and adjacent stock astatine meal parties. If astir books connection a generous helping of sweets, Reader’s Block gives you the full candy factory.

Extreme Improvisation:

TOAF: To After That by Renee Gladman

I haven’t taught originative penning successful years, but the adjacent clip I do, Renee Gladman’s TOAF: To After That is the archetypal publication we’ll read. To my mind, determination is nary much honorable substance astir the penning process and the writer’s life. TOAF is an homage to Gladman’s—in her ain words—failed caller called After That, a publication she loved and whose problems she mourned capable to bash the seemingly intolerable task of turning its “failure” into an archetypal enactment about said failure. Part memoir, portion philosophical mediation connected the incomplete publication and the cities and spaces that shaped it, TOAF is besides a “report,” arsenic Gladman calls it, preserving the lone fragments of After That we’ll ever get to see. It’s 1 of the astir beauteous books connected penning you’ll find and an bonzer literate improvisation successful the look of originative struggle. 

The station The 10 Most Extreme Experiments Known to Literature appeared archetypal connected Electric Literature.