Experimental fiction

From the current edition of Harper's:

EXPERIMENTAL FICTION

Experimental fiction is the art of telling a story in which certain aspects of reality have been exaggerated or distorted in such a way as to put the reader off the story and make him go watch a television show. Another aspect of the experimental story is the innovative use of language. Here is an example of noninnovative use of language: "As Bill arrived at the store to buy milk, it started to rain." What a snore! Anyone can write that! That is not innovative. That does not open our eyes to the hypocrisy of our society. Try this: "Went buy to arrived as he rain started it Bill Bill Bill the milk, Bill the milk!" Or, in the tradition of Kafka, the writer might tum Bill into a giant bug who can't buy milk because he can't reach the counter, and when Bill gets home, his wife has also turned into a bug who, with her tentacles, signals, "Hey, Bill, where's the milk?" That's when Bill realizes all meaning is subjective and sprays his wife with a can of insecticide that he happened to buy at the store, because that store keeps the insecticide on the floor.

Incidentally, the way they execute bugs? Murdering bugs like Bill, who used to be human? A big foot comes crashing down.

Whereas a boring realist writer might write, "Lillian sat at the black table," an experimental writer says, "Lillian sat at the flat plane of ebony, the night-shaded planar surface, the nonwhite spatial expanse on which one can put things, such as ashtrays, if one smokes." See how that is more innovative, because not just anyone could have written it, just the nerdy kids in school or your friends' smart-ass son who rolls his eyes when you say what bands you like?

And to be superexperimental, one could have Lillian, at the black table, turn into a chimp. To show that bourgeois life is a sham. But when she is a chimp, she is still Lillian. That is the deep part. Her husband, Brian, likes her better as a chimp and always makes her banana milkshakes. Until one day a milkshake develops vocal cords and begs Brian to spare him because he is terrified of chimps. In retaliation, Lillian has an affair with an orangutan, who is either from the zoo or from another experimental story. See how edgy that is? You will never look at your wife, a milkshake, or a chimp in the same way again. Whenever you see these things, you will be like: I am a capitalist oppressor. The ending of an experimental story is very important. It should make no sense, thus disrupting the reader's dominant paradigm. You, the reader, should just sit there, stunned, asking yourself, "Wait, am I missing the last page?"

But guess what? You're not.