Keskinen, Mikko
Published in
Frontiers of Narrative Studies
David Markson’s Reader’s block (1996) consists of 193 pages of quotations, anecdotes, names, and fragments. The book bears the paratext “A novel,” and the work has indeed been read as a narrative whole, in which “an aging author [...] contemplates the writing of a novel.” By being out of ordinary and therefore worth of telling, the anecdotes or cur...
Domsch, Sebastian
Published in
Frontiers of Narrative Studies
Narrative experimentation has seen many forms, but among the most radical strategies might be the complete absence of text. Printed text is largely determined through its physical presence on the page, it defines itself by where it is, and the performance of the present text determines the flow of narrative time. Silences and absences are usually c...
Iversen, Stefan Kukkonen, Karin Martens, Gunther
Published in
Frontiers of Narrative Studies
Munos, Delphine
Published in
Frontiers of Narrative Studies
This essay looks at two recent Asian American texts written in the first-person plural – namely Julie Otsuka’s The Buddha in the attic (2011) and Chang-rae Lee’s On such a full sea (2014). Its main goal is to show that the ambiguities and tensions here generated by we narration prove particularly apt when it comes to calling into question essential...
Janssens, Nele
Published in
Frontiers of Narrative Studies
Homunculi (1967) is the first short story collection by the Flemish-Belgian experimental writer Claude C. Krijgelmans. The stories challenge narrative conventions. The title story of the collection mainly experiments with formal conventions: it foregrounds rhythmic repetition and musicality, and deviates from grammatical rules. These features are c...
Juvan, Marko
Published in
Frontiers of Narrative Studies
Newman, Daniel Aureliano
Published in
Frontiers of Narrative Studies
For a century, the disorienting effects of second-person narration have seemed peculiarly well suited to representing the experiential confusions and political contradictions of inhabiting a female body in times of national crisis. This essay examines such effects in Edna O’Brien’s A pagan place and Jennifer Egan’s “Black box,” very different narra...
Dukić, Davor
Published in
Frontiers of Narrative Studies
Daković, Nevena
Published in
Frontiers of Narrative Studies
Wagner, Eva S.
Published in
Frontiers of Narrative Studies
Chevillard’s novel L’Auteur et moi (2012) touches on a problem which is paradigmatic for contemporary French prose (and perhaps “postmodern” literature in general), namely the problem of literary authenticity. Are the “unnatural” dimensions of this novel – especially its persistent irony, its playful rejection of generic norms and its attacks on th...