Belated Tag

What does it mean to jot down experimentally — to provide “experimental fiction”? We often consider those that take daring risks with form, subject material, style, or structure. There's Georges Perec’s 1969 novel A Void, as an example, written without using the letter e, or B.S. Johnson’s The Unfortunates, which is available in a box that allow readers to shuffle the story around in alternative ways, or Padgett Powell’s The Interrogative Mood, a novel written entirely in questions. Such texts are unmistakably, outlandishly experimental — we understand immediately that latest demands will likely be made on us as we read, and that together we're exploring uncharted territory.But there are also spiritually experimental novels, which push up against the boundaries of...