Experimental literature is a type of writing that is hard to describe exactly. It challenges the usual rules of writing, such as how stories or poems are structured. For example, it may use prose or poetry but arrange the text in unusual ways on the page, different from typical paragraphs or traditional verse stanzas. It can also include images, art, or photographs. In the past, these works were often written by hand, but today, they are commonly created using word processors.
Early history
The first book often mentioned in this group is Laurence Sterne's The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1759). This book appears very early in the history of novels, so it is hard to say it broke rules that had not yet been established. However, the book makes fun of storytelling and uses visual elements, like a completely black page to show the death of a character. Because of this, Sterne's novel is seen as important by many writers after World War II. Even during Sterne's time, some people did not like his work. For example, Samuel Johnson is reported to have said, "Only unusual things do not last long. Tristram Shandy did not last long." Denis Diderot's Jacques the Fatalist and His Master used many ideas from Tristram Shandy, a fact clearly shown in the text, making it one of the first examples of metafiction.
20th-century history
In the 1910s, artists began trying new ways to create art, and many European and American writers started changing how they wrote. Ideas from this time later became part of the modernist movement. Works like Ezra Pound’s The Cantos, T. S. Eliot’s writing after World War I, Gertrude Stein’s prose and plays, and James Joyce’s Ulysses were among the most important works of that time. Ulysses is often seen as the most important book from that period. This novel influenced both writers who tried very new styles, like Virginia Woolf, and writers who used more traditional styles, like Ernest Hemingway.
In the early and middle 20th century, groups called historical avant-garde movements helped develop experimental writing. In the Dadaist movement, poet Tristan Tzara used newspaper clippings and unusual text layouts in his writings. Futurist writer F.T. Marinetti believed in a style called "words in freedom," which broke away from traditional storytelling and book formats, as seen in his work Zang Tumb Tumb. Writers and artists in the surrealist movement used strange methods to create poems, novels, and stories that felt like dreams. Examples include Les Champs Magnétiques by André Breton and Philippe Soupault, and Sorrow for Sorrow, a story written under hypnosis by Robert Desnos.
By the late 1930s, the political problems in Europe made modernist writing seem less useful for dealing with the threat of fascism. Experimental writing became less popular in public, but some writers, like Kenneth Patchen, kept it alive during the 1940s. In the 1950s, writers called the Beat Generation reacted against the traditional styles of their time. Jack Kerouac’s Visions of Gerard used a new way to tell stories. American writers like John Hawkes began writing books in the late 1940s that changed how stories were told.
The ideas from European avant-garde groups continued to influence writers after World War II. Poet Isidore Isou started the Lettrist group, which made manifestoes, poems, and films that explored how words could be used. The OULIPO group, created by Raymond Queneau and François Le Lionnais, brought together writers, artists, and mathematicians to create new ways of writing. Queneau’s Cent Mille Milliards de Poèmes used the physical book to create many different poem combinations, and Georges Perec’s Life: A User’s Manual was based on a chess game pattern.
In the 1950s, British writers called the Angry Young Men rejected experimental writing. However, the 1960s saw a return to modernist styles and the start of postmodernism. A famous trial about William S. Burroughs’ Naked Lunch made people notice his extreme, uncensored writing style. Burroughs also used a method called "cut-up," where he rearranged newspaper clippings or typed pages to create new text. By the late 1960s, even writers who usually wrote in traditional ways, like Bernard Malamud and Norman Mailer, began using experimental methods. Metafiction, where stories talk about themselves, became important in this time, as seen in works by John Barth, Jonathan Bayliss, and Jorge Luis Borges. In 1967, John Barth wrote an essay called The Literature of Exhaustion, which some see as a postmodernism manifesto. Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow became a bestseller and was a major work of that era. Writers like Donald Barthelme, Robert Coover, and Ronald Sukenick were known for their short stories. In 1968, William H. Gass wrote Willie Masters’ Lonesome Wife, a book with some pages written in mirror script that can only be read with a mirror.
In the 1970s and 1980s, well-known experimental writers included Italo Calvino, Michael Ondaatje, and Julio Cortázar. Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler tells a story where the reader is preparing to read a book with the same title, and Invisible Cities describes imaginary cities. Ondaatje’s The Collected Works of Billy the Kid uses a scrapbook style, and Cortázar’s Hopscotch can be read in any chapter order.
In Latin America, writers like Julio Cortázar and Clarice Lispector created experimental works that mixed dreams, news, and fiction. Important books include Pedro Páramo by Juan Rulfo, One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez, The War of the End of the World by Mario Vargas Llosa, Yo-Yo Boing! by Giannina Braschi, and Paradiso by José Lezama Lima. Ecuadorian writer Pablo Palacio’s Débora, published in 1927, used techniques like stream of consciousness and metafiction.
Today, American writers like David Foster Wallace, Giannina Braschi, and Rick Moody mix experimental styles from the 1960s with humor and irony. Wallace’s Infinite Jest is a long book with many footnotes. Nicholson Baker’s The Mezzanine is a short novel about someone riding an escalator. Mark Danielewski’s House of Leaves combines horror, academic writing, and unusual formatting. Other modern works, like Con Alas by Pablo Andrés Rial, use unusual book designs, such as fold-out wings.
21st-century history
In the early 2000s, many examples of experimental literature show the development of computers and digital technologies. This type of writing is often called "electronic literature."
Some experimental writing uses the same medium as the story. For example, Patricia Lockwood's 2021 internet novel No One Is Talking About This was mostly written on an iPhone. Terena Elizabeth Bell's 2022 short story #CoronaLife (from Tell Me What You See) is written from the main character's phone perspective. It includes emojis, emoticons, moving GIFs, hyperlinks, and memes. It also shows emails, text messages, Twitter posts, missed call alerts, and other content commonly seen on smartphones.
This kind of writing has been called electronic literature, hypertext, or codework. Some writers focus on showing multiple storylines, like American writer Penelope Trunk (writing as Adrienne Eisen) in Six Sex Scenes. Others focus on showing multiple perspectives, like Uruguayan American writer Jorge Majfud in La reina de América and La ciudad de la luna.
Greek author Dimitris Lyacos avoids organizing his text into categories. Instead, he creates stories that mix different genres. He compares this process to John Keats' idea of "negative capability." In Z213: Exit, he combines diary entries from two narrators in a fragmented text. The story includes parts from the biblical Exodus and describes a journey where the inner self and the outside world slowly become one.