Experimentalism :: Creative Writing Essays

Writing I find exciting often gets called experimental. In America this is a nonher word 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 Book Review? Just the experience of reviewing her hold up 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 just academic life. Not so here, which means the linguistic rules of representation that underlie mainstream fiction 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, each with a single body and character which is built, rather than destroy ed, by conflict.I believe it is possible to have one identity in your thumb and another in your neck. I think identities can travel between persons who have an unusual mutual sympathy. Lets not even mention multiple personality.But what I privation to talk about today is the manipulation and construction of social distance. Mainstream fiction assumes a position not too close, not too far away. A situation is implied, an entire social horizon, which is speckled with white individuals who maintain distance from one another and from social problems.Containment. Segregation. A narrative structure which covertly mirrors the egression of white suburbs since WWII, where there is no discomfort around racism because only white people 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 he r jewelry there. Her lovers were thin white men whose trouble was drug-related. When Paul got out of Cook County Jail he carried an fragrance of rape and had large nerve spots in his eyes. Fear moving like a breeze in a prison yard, I could get that in my stomach when he was around otherwise I didnt care. I thought about Monica. Her sharp teeth and brown cheeks. The way her greed slid across my hips could be scary but her palms were narrow as slots, that made it okay to have sex with her.