Experimentalism :: Creative Writing Essays

Writing I find exciting a good deal gets called experimental. In America this is another word for marginal. Its patronizing. Other countries distribute authenticity in literary culture differently. For example, when in the U.K., Kathy Acker wrote for the Times Literary Supplement. mickle you imagine Acker writing for the New York Times Book Review? sightly the experience of reviewing her work in the NYT Book Review caused several reviewers to ad libitum combust. On the other side of the Atlantic, debates on literary aesthetics atomic number 18 part of public not just academic life. Not so here, which means the conventions of representation that underlie mainstream legend in this country basint 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 fabrication tends to assume separate and coherent individuals, each with a single form and character which is built, rather than destroyed, by conflict.I believe it is possible to work one identity in your thumb and another in your neck. I think identities can travel between persons who have an unusual usual sympathy. Lets not even mention multiple personality.But what I want to talk about today is the manipulation and construction of social distance. Mainstream fiction assumes a position not too close, not too remote a centering. A situation is implied, an entire social horizon, which is speckled with white individuals who obligate distance from one another and from social problems.Containment. Segregation. A narrative grammatical construction which covertly mirrors the growth of white suburbs since WWII, where there is no discomfort virtually racism because only white people are present. Breaking this want chain of social convention at any link can easily result in personal and literary deformity, which is another endpoint for experimentation.My sister was older, and kept her drug s 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 capital of Minnesota got out of Cook County Jail he carried an odor of rape and had round nerve spots in his eyes. Fear moving like a breeze in a prison yard, I could feel that in my stomach when he was around otherwise I didnt care. I judgment about Monica. Her sharp teeth and brown cheeks. The way her greed slid crossways my hips could be scary but her palms were narrow as slots, that made it o.k. to have sex with her.