It is not that her writing breaks the rules of literary convention. Her craft and the way she experiments in This Is Not Your City are subtle, quiet even, but truly elegant. I doubt you would hear many people refer to Caitlin Horrocks as an experimental writer but her debut collection makes a strong case that she is, indeed, an experimental writer and a remarkable one. We have a tendency to treat overt experimentation as the only kind of experimentation.
When I read their work, I know in my gut I am experiencing something that has not been done before, that could only be considered an experiment. What does it mean when writers challenge literary conventions, make innovative and daring stylistic choices, or use language in a way I did not think possible? When I think of excellent experimental writing, writing that challenges and thrills me as much as it confounds me, I consider writers who really stretch the bounds of literature as we traditionally understand it-Michael Martone, David Schneiderman, Blake Butler, Lidia Yuknavitch, Eileen Myles, Dodie Bellamy, Elaine Castillo and others-writers who are bold and fearless in the ways they manipulate language and form, writers who are openly and exceptionally experimental. I am interested in finding ways to answer the question what is experimental writing. Though I moved on to the next exhibit with no answers, I did know I was seeing something wildly experimental and I was moved. I wanted answers where, likely, there are none. I wanted to understand why the installation was art and what kind of statement it was making and how I was supposed to feel and what I was supposed to learn from the experience. I stood there because I wanted to understand.
I stood in that room for a good ten minutes listening to a strange series of sounds piping in and fading out intermittently. From the speakers, there is sound, not very pleasant. Hanging from the ceiling is brightly colored electrical wire holding tiny black speakers.
One of the museum’s recent acquisitions is Terrain by Julianne Swarts, an entire room with floor to ceiling glass windows overlooking a small outdoor amphitheater. I love how contemporary art, more than anything, leaves me speechless, perhaps even slightly stunned, but also, surprisingly, moved. I love the confusion I feel as well as the nagging sensation I could, for example, stretch a piece of yarn from one corner of the room the center of the floor and call it art, as one artist did in a bewildering installation involving string and negative space. As baffling as I find contemporary art, I love everything about it. I was at the Indianapolis Museum of Art recently and made a point of visiting the Contemporary Art wing. This Is Not Your City is an overwhelming book-overwhelming because of the level of craft in every single story, because of the range of experimentation the writer demonstrates across these eleven stories, and because of the way each ending leaves you a little breathless for any number of reasons. The allure of the science fair is not only that you get to experiment with varying degrees of success you also have the opportunity to see how other people blend science and creativity to accomplish something innovative, to test the boundaries of the unknown.Īs I read Caitlin Horrocks’s This Is Not Your City, I could not help but think about a science fair and this idea of being able to experience a wide range of experiments at the same time, in the same place, and how overwhelming that can be. My experiments were never that inspiring but I certainly thought they were-volcanoes erupting with the magical properties of food coloring, baking soda, and vinegar, a suspension bridge made out of balsa wood and kite string that could hold a heavy brick, a microscope set up with a dark red smear of my blood on a carefully prepared slide-simple experiments that made me feel like I had accomplished something innovative, even in the face of the far bolder experiments around me. When I was a kid, I loved participating in my school’s science fair each year even though I did not necessarily have any aptitude for the scientific.