GOOD READING ON THE INTERNET

HTMLGiant is running a series by contributor Christopher Higgs called "What is Experimental Literature?" The posts are essentially mini-interviews with a different writer each time, gathering various thoughts on, you guessed it, "experimental fiction." This week's post featured NewLights author Brian Evenson, and it is a really interesting read. My favorite jewel-like gem is:

[...] That strikes me as the heart of innovative writing: necessity and seriousness (even if it’s a comedic seriousness) inextricably bound to a real attention to language and form, whatever the specifics of that attention might be. All the other things that we might find in innovative writing–typographical experimentation, sexual transgressiveness, narrative disruption, verbal bedazzlement, etc., etc.,–all of which are readily identifiable and can be very good things in the right hands, they all come secondary to that. But since those things are much easier to talk about, we tend to think of them as characterizing innovative writing. But such characterizations are faulty, maybe even lazy, and I think end up missing the point. [...]

You can read the rest here.

Also, Brian has a related essay in this month's issue of The Collagist, which is also really good, and deals with an idea (the process/aesthetics of stripping away) that I am very, very interested in.