Comments on: Excellent disjointed writing

Question: Excellent disjointed writing

Aghast. — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 09:57:15 -0800

Can you think of any examples of "disjointed" writing -- writing with abrupt transitions -- that works? Faulkners Sound and Fury is a good example but shorter pieces are better for my purposes. Can be fiction or non-fiction.

For those who want some context, I am leading an exercise with some writers and it goes something like this:

First, you take the reader on a tour of a place that you know very well.
Then, mix ("splice') into your own writing passages from Jamaica Kincaid's A Small Place where she is taking the reader on a tour of Antigua.
Then, mix into that passages from Mike Davis' "Sinister Paradise" where he is taking the reader on tour of Dubai in 2010.

Confused? So were they but I eventually got the idea across ("It's as much about the selection and arrangement of other people's writing as it is of creating your own text.") and the exercise is going swimmingly. The transitions between passages are abrupt in a good way and I would like to show them some other examples of this.

By: vers

vers — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 10:06:36 -0800

Most anything by Carole Maso, particularly Ava.

By: Riemann

Riemann — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 10:17:29 -0800

Catch 22.

By: xmutex

xmutex — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 10:38:21 -0800

The stories that comprise David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas do just this: they end abruptly, mid-sentence even, and fold in and out of one another. And, also, they are brilliant.

By: infinitewindow

infinitewindow — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 10:38:43 -0800

Michael Moorcock's The Brothel in Rosenstrasse.

By: ernestworthing

ernestworthing — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 10:39:48 -0800

I second Joseph Heller's Catch 22.
It was so difficult to read.

By: shownomercy

shownomercy — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 10:40:21 -0800

Vonnegut rocked this style.
Raison d'etre
Speculative fiction is fullllll of this--nice archive here.
Slipstream in specific.
Secret lives of doctors

By: johnasdf

johnasdf — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 10:53:48 -0800

It seems like you might want to avoid prose fiction and look at modernist and postmodernist poetry, particularly Eliot, Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams of SPRING AND ALL, Ted Berrigan's Sonnets, Lyn Hejinian's My Life, Charles Bernstein, Paul Celan, etc.

By: Scram

Scram — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 11:52:09 -0800

William S. Burroughs' cut-ups are more hand-crafted than he would have had folks think. Naked Lunch the most famous of these novels, Nova Express, I think, the most beautiful.

By: junkbox

junkbox — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 11:52:39 -0800

You need a copy of Campbell McGrath's "The Bob Hope Poem." It includes spliced-in bits from People magazine, National Geographic and numerous other sources. Also, it's completely brilliant.

By: J-Garr

J-Garr — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 13:01:51 -0800

Illuminatus Trilogy and If On A Winter's Night A Traveler both come to mind.

By: wryly

wryly — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 13:41:51 -0800

Faulkner's short story, "A Rose for Miss Emily," might be a good one. The story is told with the order of events completely jumbled.

By: wryly

wryly — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 13:44:24 -0800

So sorry... it's "A Rose for Emily."

By: Aghast.

Aghast. — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 13:54:01 -0800

Great suggestions.

I just ordered me some Cambpell McGrath for a dollar on amazon based on junkbox' suggestion.

If on a Winter's Night... fits too. I'll recommend it to them and tell them the concept so they can see it themselves if they want.

Cloud Atlas sounds exciting with the folding in on itself. I want us to consider attempting that in our writing as well.

The personal essay seems like a genre where this would happen. Anyone know any personal essays that I can use?

By: strangeleftydoublethink

strangeleftydoublethink — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 16:49:12 -0800

The Life and Times of Kater Murr by E.T.A. Hoffmann. It's written by a cat.

By: rob511

rob511 — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 17:59:18 -0800

A very early example of modern (or even postmodern) theater is Woyzeck* by Georg Büchner, who left several drafts at his death in 1837. It was based on a well-known actual event, and has been completed by a number of authors. Perhaps because of its fragmentary nature, it is sometimes considered the first piece of Expressionist theater. It has also been adapted into other media, the most famous of which is Alban Berg's opera "Wozzeck." Both the play and the opera are considered masterpieces.
*I'm certain "Woyzeck" is in the public domain, but the only online version I could find is Project Gutenberg's German-language one.

By: AmbroseChapel

AmbroseChapel — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 23:50:47 -0800

William Gibson has remarked that his writing style in his early novels, which are regarded as disjointed and filmic, "cutting" between scenes abruptly, was caused by the fact that he didn't know how to write transitions.

His hero would check in to the hotel, but Gibson didn't know how to write him finding the lift, going to his floor, finding his room and putting down his bags, so he'd just cut to something else.

By: johnasdf

johnasdf — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 09:32:01 -0800

Holderlin!