Thursday, March 30, 2006

Experimental Fictions

To the Library theatre earlier to day for the launch of Parenthesis, Comma Press's new anthology of short fiction, this time, aiming to be more experimental - at least in the approach to the short story. I kind of agree with that distinction; that overtly experimental writing can be self indulgence if it doesn't advance the story. In that sense, experiment is about form, style, language, but not any one of them alone. David Eggars' did a great short story about a dog writing letters to CEO's of major corporations: experimental yes, until you turn it round and remember that the epistolary novel was amongst the very first! I've decided to start posting occasional fiction of my own on this website - not new stuff, but work that maybe illustrates the main narrative. "You, the Writer" can be found in the downloads at the side of the page. Apart from being written in the second person, is it experimental? I think so, in its approach to the subject, in that it is entirely self-referential. I won't say any more than that. I look forward to reading Parenthesis; Ra Page's editorial includes graphs!

3 comments:

Maassive said...

I got a rather long and condescending "rejection" letter from Ra Page three days ago for a story I'd withdrawn a year back when he postponed the deadline something like six+ months. I couldn't have a story waiting in purgatory that long; so I submitted it to you guys instead. Perhaps not as slickly bound, but LC a)asked for it, b)published on time and c)posted copies to me in Ghana and my parents in Phoenix. Now, there's nothing worse than receiving a rejection letter for something that you didn't properly apply, so I wrote back rather snarkily. Here's an excerpt from the letter:

"So keep at it!!"

At least that's the part that gets me.

Maassive said...

Oh, and you might find this amusing:

http://www.msrepresentation.com/blog/2006/03/segunimation.html

It takes a few seconds to load

Maassive said...

It seems that blogger doesn't allow for long urls... so here it is, short-like

http://tinyurl.com/jcz3w