Transgressive fiction

Last updated

Transgressive fiction is a genre of literature which focuses on characters who feel confined by the norms and expectations of society and who break free of those confines in unusual or illicit ways. [1]

Contents

Literary context

Because they are rebelling against the basic norms of society, protagonists of transgressive fiction may seem mentally ill, anti-social, or nihilistic. The genre deals extensively with taboo subject matters such as drugs, sexual activity, violence, incest, pedophilia, and crime. The genre of "transgressive fiction" was defined by Los Angeles Times literary critic Michael Silverblatt. [1]

Michel Foucault's essay "A Preface to Transgression" (1963) provides an important methodological origin for the concept of transgression in literature. The essay uses Story of the Eye by Georges Bataille as an example of transgressive fiction. [2]

Rene Chun, a journalist for The New York Times , described transgressive fiction:

A literary genre that graphically explores such topics as incest and other aberrant sexual practices, mutilation, the sprouting of sexual organs in various places on the human body, urban violence and violence against women, drug use, and highly dysfunctional family relationships, and that is based on the premise that knowledge is to be found at the edge of experience and that the body is the site for gaining knowledge. [3]

The genre has been the subject of controversy, and many forerunners of transgressive fiction, including William S. Burroughs and Hubert Selby Jr., have been the subjects of obscenity trials. [4]

Transgressive fiction shares similarities with splatterpunk, noir, and erotic fiction in its willingness to portray forbidden behaviors and shock readers. But it differs in that protagonists often pursue means to better themselves and their surroundings—albeit unusual and extreme ones. Much transgressive fiction deals with searches for self-identity, inner peace, or personal freedom. Unbound by usual restrictions of taste and literary convention, its proponents claim that transgressive fiction is capable of incisive social commentary. [5]

History

The basic ideas of transgressive fiction are by no means new. Many works that are now considered classics dealt with controversial themes and harshly criticized societal norms. Early examples include the scandalous writing of the Marquis de Sade and the Comte de Lautréamont's Les Chants de Maldoror (1869). [6] French author Émile Zola's works about social conditions and "bad behavior" are examples, [7] as are Russian Fyodor Dostoyevsky's novels Crime and Punishment (1866) [8] and Notes from Underground (1864) [9] and Norwegian Knut Hamsun's psychologically-driven Hunger (1890). [10] Sexual extravagance can be seen in two of the earliest European novels, the Satyricon and The Golden Ass , and also (with disclaimers) Moll Flanders and some of the excesses of early Gothic fiction. [11]

A simpler, more literal example of transgressive fiction is Kate Chopin's The Awakening , in which a married woman, feeling confined by the gender constructs of her society and pressures imposed upon her by her family and friends to be keen in her duties as a mother and wife, leaves her family and pursues extramarital relationships. [12] Commenting on gender roles of the late 19th century, The Awakening faced major criticism for its depiction of a woman being unfaithful to her family, despite the fact that Chopin had written several similar short stories prior to Awakening's publication. It is now considered to be a landmark of early feminist literature. [12]

The early development of the genre was anticipated in the work of early 20th century writers such as Octave Mirbeau, Georges Bataille, and Arthur Schnitzler, who explored psychosexual development. [13] [14] [15]

On 6 December 1933, US federal judge John M. Woolsey overturned the federal ban on James Joyce's Ulysses . [16] The book was banned in the US due to what the government claimed was obscenity, specifically parts of Molly Bloom's "soliloquy" at the end of the book. [17] Random House Inc. challenged the claim of obscenity in federal court and was granted permission to print the book in the US. Judge Woolsey's explanation for his removal of the ban is often quoted: "It is only with the normal person that the law is concerned." [18]

In the late 1950s, American publisher Grove Press, under publisher Barney Rosset, began releasing decades-old novels that had been unpublished in most of the English-speaking world for many years due to controversial subject matter. Two of these works, Lady Chatterley's Lover (D. H. Lawrence's tale of an upper class woman's affair with a working class man) and Tropic of Cancer (Henry Miller's sexual odyssey), were the subject of landmark obscenity trials (Lady Chatterley's Lover was also tried in the UK and Austria). [19] Both books were ruled not obscene and forced the US courts to weigh the merit of literature that would have once been instantly deemed pornographic (see Miller test). [20] Similarly, the author Vladimir Nabokov published Lolita in 1955 to a great deal of controversy due to the hebephilia that occurs between the book's main characters, Humbert Humbert and Lolita. The transgressive nature of this subject has made Lolita a book often found on the list of books banned by governments [21] and the list of most commonly challenged books in the United States. [22]

Grove Press also published the explicit works of Beat writers, which led to two more obscenity trials. [23] The first concerned Howl , Allen Ginsberg's 1955 poem which celebrated American counterculture and decried hypocrisy and emptiness in mainstream society. [24] The second concerned William S. Burroughs' hallucinatory, satirical novel Naked Lunch (1959). [25] Both works contained what were considered lewd descriptions of body parts and sexual acts. Grove also published Hubert Selby Jr.'s anecdotal novel Last Exit to Brooklyn (1964), known for its gritty portrayals of criminals, and sex workers and its crude, slang-inspired prose. [26] Last Exit to Brooklyn was tried as obscene in the UK. [27] Grove Press won all these trials, and the victories paved the way both for transgressive fiction to be published legally, as well as bringing attention to these works. [28]

In the 1970s and '80s, an entire underground of transgressive fiction flourished. Its biggest stars included J. G. Ballard, a British writer known for his strange and frightening dystopian novels; [29] Kathy Acker, an American known for her sex-positive feminist fiction; [30] and Charles Bukowski, an American known for his tales of womanizing, drinking, and gambling. [31] The notorious 1971 film version of Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange , contained scenes of rape and "ultraviolence" by a futuristic youth gang complete with its own argot, and was a major influence on popular culture; it was subsequently withdrawn in the UK, and heavily censored in the US. [32]

In the 1990s, the rise of alternative rock and its distinctly downbeat subculture opened the door for transgressive writers to become more influential and commercially successful than ever before. [33] This is exemplified by the influence of Canadian Douglas Coupland's 1990 novel Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture , which explored the economically-bleak and apocalypse-fixated worldview of Coupland's age group. The novel popularized the term generation X to describe this age demographic. [34] Other influential authors of this decade include Bret Easton Ellis, known for novels about depraved yuppies; [35] Irvine Welsh, known for his portrayals of Scotland's drug-addicted working class youth; [36] and Chuck Palahniuk, known for his characters' bizarre attempts to escape bland consumer culture. [37] Both of Elizabeth Young's volumes of literary criticism from this period deal extensively and exclusively with this range of authors and the contexts in which their works can be viewed. [38]

The early 21st century saw the rise of writers like Rupert Thomson, R. D. Ronald and Kelly Braffet with their protagonists further pushing the criminal, sexual, violent, narcotic, self-harm, anti-social and mental illness related subject matter taboos from the shadows of the transgressive umbrella into the forefront of mainstream fiction. [39] Ronald's novels The Elephant Tree and The Zombie Room are based in the fictional city of Garden Heights, providing a fresh, contemporary melting pot to showcase the amalgamation of UK and US cultural and societal dissatisfaction and frustration, that had previously been portrayed very differently. [40]

In the UK, the genre owes a considerable influence to "working class literature", [41] which often portrays characters trying to escape poverty by inventive means, while in the US, the genre focuses more on middle class characters trying to escape the emotional and spiritual limitations of their lifestyle. [42]

Notable works

Henry Miller

William S. Burroughs

Georges Bataille

Vladimir Nabokov

Hubert Selby Jr.

J. G. Ballard

Ryu Murakami

Katherine Dunn

Kathy Acker

Bret Easton Ellis

Dennis Cooper

Irvine Welsh

Matthew Stokoe

Chuck Palahniuk

Alissa Nutting

Blake Butler

Elle Nash

Chris Kelso

Nikanor Teratologen

Jason Tanamor

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thomas Pynchon</span> American novelist (born 1937)

Thomas Ruggles Pynchon Jr. is an American novelist noted for his dense and complex novels. His fiction and non-fiction writings encompass a vast array of subject matter, genres and themes, including history, music, science, and mathematics. For Gravity's Rainbow, Pynchon won the 1973 U.S. National Book Award for Fiction.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Henry Miller</span> American novelist (1891–1980)

Henry Valentine Miller was an American novelist, short story writer and essayist. He broke with existing literary forms and developed a new type of semi-autobiographical novel that blended character study, social criticism, philosophical reflection, stream of consciousness, explicit language, sex, surrealist free association, and mysticism. His most characteristic works of this kind are Tropic of Cancer, Black Spring, Tropic of Capricorn, and the trilogy The Rosy Crucifixion, which are based on his experiences in New York and Paris. He also wrote travel memoirs and literary criticism, and painted watercolors.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chuck Palahniuk</span> American novelist (born 1962)

Charles Michael "Chuck" Palahniuk is an American novelist who describes his work as transgressional fiction. He has published 19 novels, three nonfiction books, two graphic novels, and two adult coloring books, as well as several short stories. His first published novel was Fight Club, which was adapted into a film of the same title.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hubert Selby Jr.</span> American writer

Hubert "Cubby" Selby Jr. was an American writer. Two of his novels, Last Exit to Brooklyn (1964) and Requiem for a Dream (1978), explore worlds in the New York area and were adapted as films, both of which he appeared in.

<i>American Psycho</i> 1991 novel by Bret Easton Ellis

American Psycho is a novel by American writer Bret Easton Ellis, published in 1991. The story is told in the first-person by Patrick Bateman, a wealthy, narcissistic, vain Manhattan investment banker who supposedly lives a double life as a serial killer. Alison Kelly of The Observer notes that while "some countries [deem it] so potentially disturbing that it can only be sold shrink-wrapped", "critics rave about it" and "academics revel in its transgressive and postmodern qualities".

<i>Lady Chatterleys Lover</i> 1928 novel by D. H. Lawrence

Lady Chatterley's Lover is the last novel by English author D. H. Lawrence, which was first published privately in 1928, in Italy, and in 1929, in France. An unexpurgated edition was not published openly in the United Kingdom until 1960, when it was the subject of a watershed obscenity trial against the publisher Penguin Books, which won the case and quickly sold three million copies. The book was also banned for obscenity in the United States, Canada, Australia, India and Japan. The book soon became notorious for its story of the physical relationship between a working-class man and an upper-class woman, its explicit descriptions of sex and its use of then-unprintable profane words.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Erotic literature</span> Literary genre

Erotic literature comprises fictional and factual stories and accounts of eros intended to arouse similar feelings in readers. This contrasts erotica, which focuses more specifically on sexual feelings. Other common elements are satire and social criticism. Much erotic literature features erotic art, illustrating the text.

<i>Lolicon</i> Genre of sexualized young girl characters

In Japanese popular culture, lolicon is a genre of fictional media in which young girl characters appear in romantic or sexual contexts. The term, a portmanteau of the English words "Lolita" and "complex", also refers to desire and affection for such characters, and fans of such characters and works. Associated with unrealistic and stylized imagery within manga, anime, and video games, lolicon in otaku culture is understood as distinct from desires for realistic depictions of girls, or real girls as such, and is associated with the concept of moe, or feelings of affection and love for fictional characters as such.

Transgressive art is art that aims to outrage or violate basic morals and sensibilities. The term transgressive was first used in this sense by American filmmaker Nick Zedd and his Cinema of Transgression in 1985. Zedd used it to describe his legacy with underground film-makers like Paul Morrissey, John Waters, and Kenneth Anger, and the relationship they shared with Zedd and his New York City peers in the early 1980s.

Postmodern literature is a form of literature that is characterized by the use of metafiction, unreliable narration, self-reflexivity, intertextuality, and which often thematizes both historical and political issues. This style of experimental literature emerged strongly in the United States in the 1960s through the writings of authors such as Kurt Vonnegut, Thomas Pynchon, William Gaddis, Philip K. Dick, Kathy Acker, and John Barth. Postmodernists often challenge authorities, which has been seen as a symptom of the fact that this style of literature first emerged in the context of political tendencies in the 1960s. This inspiration is, among other things, seen through how postmodern literature is highly self-reflexive about the political issues it speaks to.

<i>Tropic of Cancer</i> (novel) 1934 novel by Henry Miller

Tropic of Cancer is an autobiographical novel by Henry Miller that is best known as "notorious for its candid sexuality", with the resulting social controversy considered responsible for the "free speech that we now take for granted in literature." It was first published in 1934 by the Obelisk Press in Paris, France, but this edition was banned in the United States. Its publication in 1961 in the United States by Grove Press led to obscenity trials that tested American laws on pornography in the early 1960s. In 1964, the U.S. Supreme Court declared the book non-obscene. It is regarded as an important work of 20th-century literature.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Barney Rosset</span> American publisher (1922–2012)

Barnet Lee "Barney" Rosset, Jr. was a pioneering American book and magazine publisher. An avant-garde taste maker, he founded Grove Press in 1951 and Evergreen Review in 1957, both of which gave him platforms for curating world-class and, in several cases, Nobel prize-winning work by authors including Samuel Beckett (1969), Pablo Neruda (1971), Octavio Paz (1990), Kenzaburō Ōe (1994) and Harold Pinter (2005).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jennifer Egan</span> Novelist, short story writer

Jennifer Egan is an American novelist and short-story writer. Her novel A Visit from the Goon Squad won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction. As of February 28, 2018, she is the president of PEN America.

<i>Lolita</i> 1955 novel by Vladimir Nabokov

Lolita is a 1955 novel written by Russian-American novelist Vladimir Nabokov which addresses hebephilia. The protagonist is a French literature professor who moves to New England and writes under the pseudonym Humbert Humbert. He describes his obsession with a 12-year-old "nymphet", Dolores Haze, whom he kidnaps and sexually abuses after becoming her stepfather. Privately, he calls her "Lolita", the Spanish nickname for Dolores. The novel was originally written in English, but fear of censorship in the U.S. and Britain led to it being first published in Paris, France, in 1955 by Olympia Press.

<i>Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture</i> Novel by Douglas Coupland

Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture is the first novel by Douglas Coupland, published by St. Martin's Press in 1991. The novel, which popularized the term Generation X, is a framed narrative in which a group of youths exchange heartfelt stories about themselves and fantastical stories of their creation.

Book censorship is the removal, suppression, or restricted circulation of literary, artistic, or educational material – of images, ideas, and information – on the grounds that these are morally or otherwise objectionable according to the standards applied by the censor. Censorship is "the regulation of speech and other forms of expression by an entrenched authority". The overall intent of censorship, in any form, is to act as "a kind of safeguard for society, typically to protect norms and values [...] censorship suppresses what is considered objectionable from a political, moral, or religious standpoint."

<i>Tropic of Orange</i> 1997 novel by Karen Tei Yamashita

Tropic of Orange is a novel set in Los Angeles and Mexico with a diverse, multi-ethnic cast of characters by Karen Tei Yamashita. Published in 1997, the novel is generally considered a work of magic realism but can also be considered science fiction, postcolonial literature, speculative fiction, postmodern literature, world literature, or literature of transnationalism.

Danmei is a Chinese genre of literature and other fictional media that features romantic relationships between male characters. Danmei is typically created by and targeted towards a heterosexual female audience. While danmei works and their adaptations have achieved widespread popularity in China and globally, their legal status remains murky due to Chinese censorship policies. The female same-gender counterpart to danmei is known as bǎihé, which is an orthographic reborrowing of the Japanese word yuri, but it is not as well known or popular as danmei.

References

  1. 1 2 Word Watch — December 1996 from The Atlantic Monthly
  2. ↑ Foucault, Michel (1963). "A Preface to Transgression." "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 19 August 2014. Retrieved 10 May 2015.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  3. ↑ The New York Times — April 23, 1995, pp. 49, 52
  4. ↑ Judson, George (10 August 1997). "Naked Lunches and Reality Sandwiches: How the Beats Beat the First Amendment". The New York Times . Retrieved 30 April 2020.
  5. ↑ Silverblatt, Michael (1 August 1993). "SHOCK APPEAL / Who Are These Writers, and Why Do They Want to Hurt Us? : The New Fiction of Transgression". Los Angeles Times . Retrieved 21 April 2020.
  6. ↑ Wolff, Ian (January 2015). "Cruel Songs". Weekly Alibi . Retrieved 3 June 2022.
  7. ↑ Nelson, Brian (29 September 2013). "Émile Zola and the integrity of representation". OUPblog . Retrieved 3 June 2022.
  8. ↑ Thomson, Ian (15 November 2021). "The Sinner and the Saint review – the story behind Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment". The Guardian . Retrieved 28 May 2022.
  9. ↑ Caro, Tony (18 July 2018). "The Transgressive Spiteful Side of "Notes from the Underground"". Dostoyevsky Reimagined. Retrieved 21 April 2020.
  10. ↑ Gioia, Ted (29 February 2016). "Knut Hamsun's Hunger". fractious fiction. Retrieved 28 May 2022.
  11. ↑ "Gothic Literature". Encyclopedia.com . Retrieved 11 May 2022.
  12. 1 2 Vaye Watkins, Claire (5 February 2020). "The Classic Novel That Saw Pleasure as a Path to Freedom". The New York Times . Retrieved 23 December 2023.
  13. ↑ Orthofer, M.A. (19 March 2015). "Torture Garden by Octave Mirbeau". Complete Review . Retrieved 3 June 2022.
  14. ↑ Brooks, Peter (12 February 1978). "Shocker in '28". The New York Times . Retrieved 3 June 2022.
  15. ↑ Gay, Peter (11 July 1999). "Sex and Longing in Old Vienna". The New York Times . Retrieved 3 June 2022.
  16. ↑ "On this day…6 December". James Joyce Centre . 6 December 2013. Retrieved 28 May 2022.
  17. ↑ Corrigan, Maureen (26 June 2014). "'Most Dangerous Book': A Rich Treasury Charting James Joyce's 'Ulysses'". NPR . Retrieved 3 June 2022.
  18. ↑ McGrath, Charles; Galchen, Rivka (9 June 2015). "How Would 'Ulysses' Be Received Today?". The New York Times . Retrieved 22 April 2020.
  19. ↑ Menand, Louis (4 December 2016). "Banned Books and Blockbusters". The New Yorker . Retrieved 3 June 2022.
  20. ↑ Machlin, Sherri (25 September 2013). "Banned Books Week: Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller". New York Public Library . Retrieved 23 April 2020.
  21. ↑ "Banned & Challenged Classics". American Library Association . 26 March 2013. Retrieved 28 May 2022.
  22. ↑ "Banned Book: Lolita". Politics and Prose . Retrieved 28 May 2022.
  23. ↑ Glass, Loren (30 September 2011). "Counter-Culture Colophon Part II: Grove Press in the 1960s". Los Angeles Review of Books . Retrieved 28 May 2022.
  24. ↑ Goodin, Brittany (26 June 2014). "Ginsberg's "Howl" and the Birth of a New Generation of Literature". The Artifice . Retrieved 28 May 2022.
  25. ↑ Miles, Barry (5 September 1993). "Inside the Outsider". Chicago Tribune . Retrieved 21 April 2020.
  26. ↑ Hamilton, Denise (11 March 1988). "From the Shadows, a Legend Reappears : Mainstream Recognition Catches Up With 'Last Exit to Brooklyn' Author Selby Once Again". Los Angeles Times . Retrieved 3 June 2022.
  27. ↑ Leone, Ryan (26 October 2014). "Hubert Selby Jr's American Dream". Beatdom. Retrieved 21 April 2020.
  28. ↑ Chun, Rene (23 April 1995). "Naked Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner". The New York Times . Retrieved 25 April 2020.
  29. ↑ L. Ulin, David (16 September 2014). "Visionary with a sharp edge". Los Angeles Times . Retrieved 30 April 2020.
  30. ↑ Thornton, Jonathan (13 December 2021). "Pirates, Punks, and Quests: The Transgressive, Transformative Slipstream Novels of Kathy Acker". Tor.com . Retrieved 11 May 2022.
  31. ↑ Kirsch, Adam (6 March 2005). "The Transgressive Thrills of Charles Bukowski". The New Yorker . Retrieved 30 April 2020.
  32. ↑ Gioia, Ted (29 September 2014). "When Science Fiction Grew Up". conceptual fiction. Retrieved 21 April 2020.
  33. ↑ Grimshaw, Mike (25 September 2002). "Cultural Pessimism and Rock Criticism Bret Easton Ellis' Writing (as) Hell". CTheory . Retrieved 28 May 2022.
  34. ↑ Abcarian, Robin (12 June 1991). "Boomer Backlash : * Generations: What's it really like to be twentysomething? Douglas Coupland's new novel is a biting portrait of life after yuppiedom". Los Angeles Times . Retrieved 30 April 2020.
  35. ↑ Garner, Dwight (24 March 2016). "In Hindsight, an 'American Psycho' Looks a Lot Like Us". The New York Times . Retrieved 26 April 2020.
  36. ↑ Macfarlane, Robert (20 August 2006). "Pain Spotting". The New York Times . Retrieved 26 April 2020.
  37. ↑ Curtis, Bryan (22 June 2005). "Chuck Palahniuk's leap of faith". Slate . Retrieved 25 April 2020.
  38. ↑ Williams, John (23 March 2001). "Elizabeth Young". The Guardian . Retrieved 28 May 2022.
  39. ↑ Newton, Maud (22 May 2006). "Interview with Rupert Thomson". Maud Newton. Retrieved 22 April 2020.
  40. ↑ Levin, Greg (18 April 2018). "Interview with R.D. Ronald, Transgressive Novelist for All and None". Greg Levin. Retrieved 28 May 2022.
  41. ↑ Romero, Dennis (26 June 1996). "Adding a Little Grit to Modern Novels". Los Angeles Times . Retrieved 28 May 2022.
  42. ↑ Spencer, Scott (13 September 1987). "Love Me, Love My Porsche". The New York Times . Retrieved 28 May 2022.

Bibliography

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.