Conceptual/Physically Innovative Literature

[mcoh911]

~~So, I've been looking to find literature that is insistently physical. More specifically, I'm looking for recent architecturally/physically driven lit; not looking for a reference to Finnegan's Wake. Some stuff I've come across is Oulipo Poetry, the Raw Shark Texts, House of Leaves, Visit From the Goon Squad, S., Cloud Atlas, TOC, Tree of Codes, Skin, anything by DFW, Black Box, and that's about it. I'm trying to find lit specifically made in the past 15 years or so. All your input is greatly appreciated. Thanks! :)

[illiterati]

hi mcoh--

I highly recommend Anne Carson's Nox. It's a reproduction of... an artist's book, I guess, she made eulogizing her brother--physically lush, intensely detailed, accordion-style fold out.

Also, some work by the Language poets, though it's not their primary schtick, is physically / architecturally innovative. Do a Google Image search for Steve McCaffery's Carnival for a prime example.

I would also scroll through Wolf Larsen's post "Capitalism vs. Great Literature" in the "General Writing"--stlukesguild's posts a reply there that gestures to a bunch of physically innovative book projects.

As to Conceptual lit, you might want to check out Craig Dworkin's anthology Against Expression--not because it contains a great deal of physically innovative literature, but because it's a definitive anthology for Conceptual Writing, which has a pretty specific denotation you might need to parse.

Might I also suggest a project I've recently started called 'Garden of Earthly Documents'--seeds for the idea started with a piece that made it into DIAGRAM last year (http://thediagram.com/13_5/pfaff.html). Broken into sub-sections like 'File Tree of Life' and 'File Tree of Knowledge,' the project is basically a digital reconstruction of a total document archive--laptop, desktop, files stretching back twenty years. I've played around for a long time with different ways to poetically represent totality or a total human life.

I should have a draft up later today or tomorrow--will post.

*edit 7/15: on second thought, i don't want to post this publicly yet. PM me if you want the link.

[mcoh911]

Great, this is some interesting stuff!

[Cpt Howdy]

Alain Robbe-Grillet fits your criteria pretty well. He's known primarily for his films, but he has written some fantastic, innovative novels as well. I recommend The Voyeur, the landscape is perhaps more pastoral than what you're looking for, but his writing has an intense physicality that sounds like it might suit you.

[mcoh911]

Bump!!!!

[mal4mac]

Ballard is often architecturally driven - try Concrete Island (1974) for starters, or Super-Cannes (2000) if you insist on "within 15 years".

[AuntShecky]

3-D you mean? "Conceptual/Physically innovative" writing -- in which the actual appearance on the page is part of the structure--is nothing new. Back in the late sixties, a multi-media lit mag out of Colorado (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspen_(magazine)) came in a box, and even then it was pretty expensive.

The notion goes further back in time --waaaay back: Tristram Shandy, for instance, or concrete "pattern" poetry, which appeared as early as the seventeenth centry with George Herbert's "Easter Wings." There was that famous poem by Appollonaire which actually looked like raindrops falling down a window pane.

Adding a tactile element to the work, like a "pop-up" strikes me as a reaction to the loss of tactility-- the feel of the weight of a conventional book in your hands-- with ebooks. It's similar to the "warmth" of old school LP vinyl as opposed to the relatively cool effect of MP3 players.

It's all very Marshall McLuhanesque, another throwback to the Sixties!

PS I'm not sure about Robbe-Grillet. (Or Nathalie Serrault for that matter.) Anytime I've got insomnia, all I have to do is pick up a copy of Jalousie.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspen_(magazine)