I suppose the label "experimental" is used in the context of its time. Something new and different from the norm. It takes genius to write experimental fiction successfully. A quote of Jack Kerouac: “Genius gives birth, talent delivers." And from Arthur Schopenhauer: "Talent is like the marksman who hits a target which others cannot reach; genius is like the marksman who hits a target … which others cannot even see." Schopenhauer on What Makes a Genius and the Crucial Difference Between Talent and Genius
Schopenhauer obviously spent too much time with his head in a book and not enough time on the shooting range. My son is an expert marksman who regularly hits targets he cannot see. It's a matter of practice and mathmatics, not genius. Ergo, well-nurtured talent might eventually attain the level of genius.
Many of them also fall under what Robert McKee calls minimalist narrative and anti-narrative, where the traditional structures of story are either severely reduced or deliberately broken. Like with much of modernist painting and sculpture, it's something that produced interesting effects in the beginning, when highly trained artists were really experimenting, but then quickly fell off into being nothing but a reactionary anti-movement (with a few notable exceptions). The main reason being that when an artist who understands the medium does it they can do some really interesting things and pull some powerful meaning out of it, but when you throw all education out the window and the following generations of people who never learned anything about the medium step in they can't do anything but plink around as poseurs and pretend to be doing something profound or important. Movements like this tend to attract revolutionary types who aren't interested in meaning aside from trying to undermine it. They also attract a lot of students who see an easy way in to what's become a lucrative business model and doesn't require years of hard study and work to learn their trade. And a huge market for people with no taste but a lot of money who listen to what the pundits say is good art.
I imagine that, at some point, somewhere, an ancient Greek may have once said "I don't like that Euripides fellow, he's too radical and experimental for me."
Socrates definitely was—too radical and empirical. He was ahead of his time, so Aristophanes wrote plays making fun of him and he was threatened with exile, but chose to remain though he knew it meant execution.
"female rage"..... I still cant find a definite definition, but ive now come across 5 agents that have "female rage" as part of their genre interests. "Intended to be irrational, dramatic, and emotional" (Edit to add: books about women getting revenge. Apparently ive read one of these)
When men commit murder/revenge: "it was a crime of passion" Women: they were irrational and emotional.
Hypothetical Autobiography: What would have happened if my life actually went that way. I kinda hoped I invented it myself, but with things like the Weird Al biopic out there, I'm guessing it's not that novel. No pun intended. Unless it made you laugh. That's not new. How long has Marvel been doing their thing now?
Hey, do any of you write the genres you’ve never heard of? I write (as you may have seen in other threads) something like transgressive literature, but in the opposite direction—blatantly traditional instead of blatantly radical. Susan Jarvis Bryant, Brian Yapko, and I (Joshua C. Frank) have poetry along these lines published on the Society of Classical Poets website. I’ve written poems against birth control, smartphones, and disobedience to parents (to name a few). The only other writings of this genre I’ve seen are Again, Hazardous Imaginings edited by Andrew Fox and In Times Such as These by Joe Vasicek, an anthology and a collection of science fiction short stories. This genre is so obscure, I don’t know if it even has a name at this point.
During my submitting adventures I've come across some genres new to me, but that have already been mentioned here, like grimdark, cozies, cat-protagonist stuff, and bafflingly, Amish romance. Some not mentioned here that I have seen are "new adult" and "cli-fi." I don't know what new adult is, but I could google it I guess. Cli-fi came up when an agent said they wanted stories related to the environment, but no cli-fi. Which I figure must be science fiction about climate-related disasters.
To be fair, “clit-fic” would work much better, but it was literally the first thing in my head when I read “cli-fi”.
I dunno. It conveyed the same thought to more than one person. Perhaps a new poetry genre about climate change could be clime rhyme.
When i started working at my library, i learned about Amish Romance. Its all the rage here. In fact, the year i started working there, we had a nitable Amish Romance writer come in and the auditorium was packed! So i decided to read a few to see what the hype was all about. It was ok. I think i read like 2 or 3 in a series. If anything, i learned more about the Amish than i did before. But there was no kissing and no touching. No "will they/wont they"..... But a lot of "hero saves damsel." Climate fiction is also on the up. W. Michael Gear (Geer?) has been coming out with something each year. Wasnt something i was curious enough to explore, though. But i do watch it on tv... San Andreas, The Day After Tomorrow, Geostorm, 2012, that American Horror Story season after "Cult"
