The course seeks to examine the modern novel by focusing on fiction structured around a concept ("conceptual fiction") and fiction which deviates from the traditional modes of storytelling in a coherent enough way ("experimental fiction"). Together, we will examine novels and short stories in which an idea, an image, or metaphor directly informs the structure, plot, characterization, or all of the above of the work. We will also look at works of formal invention and/or subtle experimentation as far as they are constructed around a discernible and coherent pattern. There have been countless such works in the modern/contemporary period and some of the notable practitioners include Virginia Woolf, Moshin Hamid, George Saunders, Cormac McCarthy, Carlos Fuentes, Toni Morrison, and John McGregor, amongst others have work in this "movement." We will also look at critical essays around these books including from David Lodge, James Baldwin, and Victor Schlovsky, amongst others.
We will study texts from some of these writers (Woolf, Hamid, Saunders, McCarthy) closely and try to determine what it means to create fiction around a "concept." Implicit in this inquiry would be the broader question of form, formal invention, and the vagaries of experimentation. What makes a novel unique? What new grounds does this novel or story break? Does the experimental mode help or hinder meaning? What makes a novel unique? How does structure distinguish a novel rather than plot or characterization, or, for that matter, ideas? What are the ways by which a novel can subvert the traditional form of the novel? What are the strictures of genre and how do they constrain or help expand the art of storytelling? |