 | |
| Author | Lance Olsen |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Postmodern novel |
| Publisher | FC2 |
Publication date | February 28, 2014 |
| Pages | 384 |
| ISBN | 1573661791 |
Theories of Forgetting is a postmodern novel by Lance Olsen, published by Fiction Collective Two in 2014.
Theories of Forgetting is a novel made up of three intersecting narratives. The first involves the story of a middle-aged video artist, Alana, working on a short experimental video about Robert Smithson's land art Spiral Jetty . The second involves the story of Alana’s husband, Hugh, and his slow disappearance throughout Europe and across Jordan on a trip there both to remember and to forget in the aftermath of Alana’s unexpected death. His vanishing is linked to the Sleeping Beauties, a rising global religious cult that worships barbiturates. The third narrative involves the story of their daughter, Aila, an art critic and conceptual artist living in Berlin, and the marginalia she writes in her father's manuscript she discovers after his disappearance.
Each of these narratives has its own unique form and texture. Alana’s takes the shape of a diary containing photographs, drawings, newspaper clippings, and meditations on Smithson’s oeuvre, with which she becomes increasingly obsessed. Hugh’s is a more conventional third-person narrative, its voice numbed, disoriented, in the wake of his wife's unexpected death. Aila's notes exist only in the margins of Hugh's text.
Each page of the novel is divided in half. One narrative runs across the “top” from “front” to “back,” while the other runs “upside down” across the “bottom” of the page from “back” to “front.” In a sense, then, the novel’s physical structure suggests a spiral. Theories of Forgetting doesn't possess a front cover. Rather, it possesses two back ones. Opening it, the reader must choose what constitutes the privileged narrative, the one with which to begin, and that choice will exert pressure on the meaning she or he will make, since there are contradictory elements in the competing plots.
Theories of Forgetting, then, is interested in the materiality of page as well as in such thematic questions as death and the problem of memory and history.
The Collagist commented that with Theories of Forgetting "Olsen delivers what could be called a 'destructuralized' novel that successfully resists the temptation of a conventional narrative strategy, yet for a novel that so self-consciously flashes its experimental bona fides, Theories remains eminently readable. Innovation and accessibility need not be in opposition to each other." [1] The Quarterly conversation called Olsen's novel "a masterful work." [2]
A protagonist is the main character of a story. The protagonist makes key decisions that affect the plot, primarily influencing the story and propelling it forward, and is often the character who faces the most significant obstacles. If a story contains a subplot, or is a narrative made up of several stories, then each subplot may have its own protagonist.
The French Lieutenant's Woman is a 1969 postmodern historical fiction novel by John Fowles. The plot explores the fraught relationship of gentleman and amateur naturalist Charles Smithson and Sarah Woodruff, the former governess and independent woman with whom he falls in love. The novel builds on Fowles' authority in Victorian literature, both following and critiquing many of the conventions of period novels.
Spiral Jetty is an earthwork sculpture constructed in April 1970 that is considered to be the most important work of American sculptor Robert Smithson. Smithson documented the construction of the sculpture in a 32-minute color film also titled Spiral Jetty. Built on the northeastern shore of the Great Salt Lake near Rozel Point in Utah entirely of mud, salt crystals, and basalt rocks, Spiral Jetty forms a 1,500-foot-long (460 m), 15-foot-wide (4.6 m) counterclockwise coil jutting from the shore of the lake.
Story structure or narrative structure is the recognizable or comprehensible way in which a narrative's different elements are unified, including in a particularly chosen order and often specifically referring to the ordering of the plot: the narrative series of events. In a play or work of theatre especially, this can be called dramatic structure, which is presented in audiovisual form. The following overviews how story structure works in a cross-cultural and general sense.
Lorrie Moore is an American writer, critic, and essayist. She is best known for her short stories, some of which have won major awards. Since 1984, she has also taught creative writing.
In literature, psychological fiction is a narrative genre that emphasizes interior characterization and motivation to explore the spiritual, emotional, and mental lives of its characters. The mode of narration examines the reasons for the behaviours of the character, which propel the plot and explain the story. Psychological realism is achieved with deep explorations and explanations of the mental states of the character's inner person, usually through narrative modes such as stream of consciousness and flashbacks.
Shelley Jackson is an American writer and artist known for her cross-genre experimental works. These include her hyperfiction Patchwork Girl (1995) and her first novel, Half Life (2006).
Sir Theodore Wilson Harris was a Guyanese writer. He initially wrote poetry, but subsequently became a novelist and essayist. His writing style is often said to be abstract and densely metaphorical, and his subject matter wide-ranging. Harris is considered one of the most original and innovative voices in postwar literature in English.
Wendy McGrath is a Canadian poet and novelist.
Lance Olsen is an American writer known for his experimental, lyrical, fragmentary, cross-genre narratives that question the limits of historical knowledge.
Suspense is a state of anxiety or excitement caused by mysteriousness, uncertainty, doubt, or undecidedness. In a narrative work, suspense is the audience's excited anticipation about the plot or conflict, particularly as it affects a character for whom the audience feels sympathy. However, suspense is not exclusive to narratives.
Experimental literature is a genre of literature that is generally "difficult to define with any sort of precision." It experiments with the conventions of literature, including boundaries of genres and styles; for example, it can be written in the form of prose narratives or poetry, but the text may be set on the page in differing configurations than that of normal prose paragraphs or in the classical stanza form of verse. It may also incorporate art or photography. Furthermore, while experimental literature was traditionally handwritten, the digital age has seen an exponential use of writing experimental works with word processors.
Lover is a lesbian feminist novel by Bertha Harris, published in 1976 by Daughters, Inc., a Vermont small press dedicated to women's fiction. It is considered Harris's most ambitious work, and has been compared to Djuna Barnes's Nightwood and the stories of Jane Bowles. Harris has said that it was written "straight from the libido, while I was madly in love, and liberated by the lesbian cultural movement of the mid-1970s."
Warriors of Kudlak is the third serial of the first series of the British science fiction television series The Sarah Jane Adventures. It first aired in two weekly parts on the CBBC channel on 15 and 22 October 2007.
Anathem is a science fiction novel by American writer Neal Stephenson, published in 2008. Major themes include the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics and the philosophical debate between Platonic realism and nominalism.
Calendar of Regrets is a postmodern novel by American writer Lance Olsen, published by Fiction Collective Two in 2010.
Head in Flames is a postmodern novel by Lance Olsen, published by Chiasmus Press in 2009.
Hannah Pittard is an American novelist and author of short stories.
There's No Place Like Time: A Retrospective is a limited-edition postmodern novel by Lance Olsen, published by &Now Books in 2016.
Agatha and the Truth of Murder is a 2018 British alternative history drama film about crime writer Agatha Christie becoming embroiled in a real-life murder case during her 11-day disappearance in 1926. Written by Tom Dalton, it depicts Christie investigating the murder of Florence Nightingale's goddaughter, Florence Nightingale Shore, which is based on real people and events, and how her involvement in this case influenced her subsequent writing.
 | This article about a 2010s fantasy novel is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. See guidelines for writing about novels. Further suggestions might be found on the article's talk page. |
 | This article about a postmodern novel is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. See guidelines for writing about novels. Further suggestions might be found on the article's talk page. |