American Literature Exam Questions
12. Discuss the characteristic features of the experimental prose in 1960-2000 on chosen examples.
Experimental literature refers to written works - often novels or magazines - that place great emphasis on innovations regarding technique and style.
Naked Lunch is a novel by William S. Burroughs, a complete American edition(1962).
• The book is structured as a series of loosely-connected vignettes. Burroughs himself stated that the chapters are intended to be read in any order. The reader follows the narration of junkie William Lee.
• The manner in which the novel is written the reader to see only part of the picture—as much as he wants to see. It often happens that something mentioned in the book reappears much later producing thus a series of intratextual relationships and echoes. This idea, relating to different perspectives within a larger picture, is itself a theme which runs throughout this book.
• The novel's mix of taboo fantasies, peculiar creatures and eccentric personalities all serve to unmask mechanisms and processes of control, and have led to much controversy.
• By decentralizing the plot Burroughs produces a series of interrelated literal caricatures, satires, and parodies throughout the novel.
A Pynchon-influenced generation of writers in the 1990s, such as David Foster Wallace, who would combine some of the experimental form-play of the 60's writers with a more emotionally-deflating irony, and a greater tendency towards accessibility and humor. Infinite Jest is a 1996 lengthy and complex work takes place in a semi-parodic future version of North America. The novel touches on the topics of tennis, substance addiction and recovery programs, depression, child abuse, family relationships, advertising and popular entertainment, film theory, and Quebec separatism.
• There are frequent references to endnotes throughout the novel. In an interview with Charlie Rose, Wallace characterized their use as a method of disrupting the linearity of
Experimental literature refers to written works - often novels or magazines - that place great emphasis on innovations regarding technique and style.
Naked Lunch is a novel by William S. Burroughs, a complete American edition(1962).
• The book is structured as a series of loosely-connected vignettes. Burroughs himself stated that the chapters are intended to be read in any order. The reader follows the narration of junkie William Lee.
• The manner in which the novel is written the reader to see only part of the picture—as much as he wants to see. It often happens that something mentioned in the book reappears much later producing thus a series of intratextual relationships and echoes. This idea, relating to different perspectives within a larger picture, is itself a theme which runs throughout this book.
• The novel's mix of taboo fantasies, peculiar creatures and eccentric personalities all serve to unmask mechanisms and processes of control, and have led to much controversy.
• By decentralizing the plot Burroughs produces a series of interrelated literal caricatures, satires, and parodies throughout the novel.
A Pynchon-influenced generation of writers in the 1990s, such as David Foster Wallace, who would combine some of the experimental form-play of the 60's writers with a more emotionally-deflating irony, and a greater tendency towards accessibility and humor. Infinite Jest is a 1996 lengthy and complex work takes place in a semi-parodic future version of North America. The novel touches on the topics of tennis, substance addiction and recovery programs, depression, child abuse, family relationships, advertising and popular entertainment, film theory, and Quebec separatism.
• There are frequent references to endnotes throughout the novel. In an interview with Charlie Rose, Wallace characterized their use as a method of disrupting the linearity of