Directions of the Contemporary Novel: A Review of Two Works by John Barth and John Hawkes
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Authors
Dorer, David
Issue Date
1976
Type
Thesis
Language
en_US
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Abstract
This essay is a response to part of the current reality
enveloping the art of fiction. Initially conceived out of a
desire to contemporize my literary sensibilities, the commitment
to a critical analysis of experimental fiction should be qualified
by claiming new or contemporary fiction for its topic.
Experimental fiction of course, indicates a departure from
convention and to better understand this departure it became
necessary that I devote myself to some introductory comments
about these conventions. This I do in the first section of
the essay with some general observations about the relationship
of literature to the world. There is substantial reference
to Roland Barthes in this section which is a deliberately narrow
sketch of the history of the novel. Barthes' capacity
to remain cogent while general allows me to incorporate the
linguistic foundation of experimental fiction without succumbing
to the invitation to digress. The introductory portion of
the essay is intended simply to give a brief rehearsal of the
traditional relationships of the novel to the world which allow
me to discuss the fundamental tenets of the first writer examined
in the essay, John Barth. In part, this essay was stimulated out of the hope that
the new fiction would not yet be the grist of the professional
critical mill. I wanted to free myself from the anxiety that
accompanies the desire to say the 'right thing.' Ironically,
I found this desire to lay behind the aesthetic assumptions
that motivate this fiction. The belief that language is incapable
of relating precisely what we see, what is out 'there' in the
world is one widely held among contemporary writers and readily
admitted both in their comments about their work and the works
themselves. To pursue a relationship between meaning and order
in the novels and the world of experience then would be a
gross imposition. It is the suspicion of meaning and order
held by the new novelist that make him experimental. Critical
analysis then, must turn to an investigation of how this suspicion
is conveyed.
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x, 92 p.
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