Defining experimentation

Dan Green follows The Mumpsimus and discusses ‘experiment’ in fiction.

Perhaps the opposite of experimentation is to write and write without regard for formal niceties; the kind of pell-mell advance or roller-coaster descent we experience reading Tristram Shandy or The Unnameable or any number of Bernhard’s novels. Ironic, seeing as these are all Experimentalists.

Perhaps, however, those who write differently, those who write slowly, revising and deliberating each sentence and spending hours seeking the right word are the real experimentors. They experiment with each sentence. So, for Traditional novelists, perhaps now read Experimental. And for Experimental, now read Natural.

But, I hear the Traditionalists cry, things aren’t that simple! Who ever said they were? Well, the Traditionalists did.