Experimentalism :: Creative Writing Essays

Writing I find exciting often gets called experimental. In America this is another reciprocation for marginal. Its patronizing. Other countries distribute legitimacy in literary culture differently. For example, when in the U.K., Kathy Acker wrote for the times Literary Supplement. Can you imagine Acker writing for the New York Times intelligence Review? Just the experience of reviewing her work in the NYT Book Review caused several reviewers to spontaneously combust. On the other side of the Atlantic, debates on literary aesthetics are part of public not dear academic life. Not so here, which means the conventions of representation that underlie mainstream fictionalisation in this country cant be effectually critiqued. (I dont consider academic debates to be part of public life.)So what conventions of representation am I talking about? Consider identity. Mainstream fiction tends to assume separate and coherent individuals, severally with a single body and character which is built, rather than destroyed, by conflict.I believe it is possible to have one identity in your feel and another in your neck. I think identities can travel in the midst of persons who have an unusual mutual sympathy. Lets not even mention duple in-personity.But what I want to talk about today is the economic consumption and construction of mixer distance. Mainstream fiction assumes a position not likewise close, not too far away. A situation is implied, an entire cordial horizon, which is speckled with clear individuals who maintain distance from one another and from social problems.Containment. Segregation. A narrative structure which covertly mirrors the growth of white suburbs since WWII, where on that point is no discomfort around racism because only white plenty are present. Breaking this long chain of social convention at any link can easily result in personal and literary deformity, which is another term for experimentation.My sister was older, and kept her drugs and screwing in the basement the same way she kept her jewelry there. Her lovers were thin white men whose trouble was drug-related. When Paul got out of Cook County Jail he carried an odor of rape and had large nerve spots in his eyes. veneration moving like a breeze in a prison house yard, I could feel that in my stomach when he was around otherwise I didnt care. I thought about Monica. Her sharp teeth and chocolate-brown cheeks. The way her greed slid across my hips could be scary but her palms were pin up as slots, that made it okay to have sex with her.