That "fiction" such as this has a contemporary audience is troubling. Of course, the audience is probably other "artists" with MFAs from Punxsutawney State who, rather than accept the Anxiety of Influence-- that everything they wish to say has been said--, instead futilely seek to create "new" and "better" forms of fiction.
Far be it from me to dogmatically defend fiction from experimentation, however, when "experimental" fiction has become synonymous with objectively bad writing and doggerel, a voice of reason must step in. Shakespeare, Goethe, Joyce, Proust and, more recently, Coetzee are experimental writers. While transforming the standard conceptions of fiction and literature, they still afford a dutiful respect to their forerunners and the basic rules defining their art. The strongest writers do not need to write with only four letter words or describe themselves as "XXperimental" to gain attention. Add nonsensical feminism to this maelstrom and what results could only be the most pernicious kind of cultural belatedness. To wit, "Women are natural innovators. Their minds are nimble, accustomed to flux. By necessity, they know how to improvise and innovate…” Could 'women' in the above quotation not be replaced with men, people, hell--even cockroaches?
I write this missive because I care about fiction, and its state in America has become increasingly precarious. Britain, Ireland, South Africa and Australia, the other bastions of English fiction, have surpassed us. A Booker has become far more valuable than a Pulitzer. We must become more discriminating in our evaluation of what constitutes great literature, and, unfortunately, this "XXperimental" writing does not pass the litmus test.
Literary Buffalo
Write Thing: Three Writers, Two Xs
by Ted Pelton
Fictionists Alexandra Chasin, Debra Di Blasi, and Nava Renek at Medaille College
Okay, I’ll say it: A lot of fiction today is boring. For the most part mass-produced by subsidiaries of entertainment conglomerates who more and more insist on bottom-line profits, fiction has become our most conservative art form, tending more toward the familiar than the new, staying within accepted genres, and rarely (if ever) surprising us.
In a marketplace where realism or genre fiction are the acceptable formulas, it isn’t surprising that alternative or “experimental” fiction suffers from an identity crisis. What precisely defines experimental, or as here “XXperimental” fiction, besides unpublishability? Who practices it, and to what end? How is it different from commercial writing? Are these differences linked particularly to gender?
Lit City EventsFebruary 5:The Write Thing Presents: 3 XXperimental Women Fiction Writers. 7pm. Fiction reading by Alexandra Chasin, Debra DiBlasi, and Nava Renek. The Library at Huber Hall, Medaille College, 18 Agassiz Circle. An Evening With Geraldine Brooks. 8pm. Pulitzer Prize-winning author speaks about her new bestseller, People of the Book. Performing Arts Center at Rockwell Hall, Buffalo State College, 1300 Elmwood Avenue. Box Office: 878-3005. February 7: Along This Way: Storytelling in the African Tradition. 2pm. African stories, fables, games, drumming, chants, and folk songs from storytellers Karima Amin and Sharon Holley, percussionist eddie Nicholson, and vocalist Joyce Carolyn. Presented by Just Buffalo/Interdisciplinary Performance Series. Frank E. Merriweather Library, 1324 Jefferson Avenue. February 8: Tom Waters: Breathing Room. 2pm. Local nonfiction writer and poet Tom Waters unveils his second volume of verse. Talking Leaves Books, 951 Elmwood Avenue. |
This week, three “XXperimental” women fictionists—Alexandra Chasin, Debra Di Blasi, and Nava Renek—will read from their work in Medaille College’s Write Thing Series. All are part of a new anthology of in+novative fiction by women, Wreckage of Reason, edited by Renek and published by Brooklyn’s Spuyten Duyvil Books.
Or maybe they won’t “read”—both Chasin and Di Blasi are known as well for their experiments with digital video, and Di Blasi has described her 2007 book, The Jiri Chronicles, as “a multimedia invasion into the real world.” A visit to her Web site gives use a sense of what this means: Here one finds recordings, images, texts, and a world where the real and the fictional intermingle, seemingly inextricably.
Di Blasi has also, through her Bleed TV project, interviewed many of the contributors to the anthology on videos that can be found on YouTube. In her video in the series, Chasin describes herself as feeling “more like a language engineer than a writer.” Chasin’s prose experiment, “They Come from Mars,” is among the most radical to be found in the Wreckage anthology, composed of only four letter “words” in a grid-like pattern:
Then they walk pour flow ooze down town Rows upon rows flow folk from Mars rows upon rows like ants Dont obey when City Hall says dont Then wewe spec they want fear they want take over take over Wewe spec fear that what they want they want
Experimentation is women’s accustomed domain, suggests Renek in her introduction to the volume. “Women are natural innovators. Their minds are nimble, accustomed to flux. By necessity, they know how to improvise and innovate…”
XXperimentation chromosomal? Who is it that indeed comes from Mars? The answers to these and other questions may well be available this Thursday.
—ted pelton
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