A fragmentary novel is a novel made of fragments, vignettes, segments, documents or chapters that can be read in isolation and/or as part of the greater whole of the book. These novels typically lack a traditional plot or set of characters and often are the product of a cultural crisis.[1][2][3][4][5][6] The oldest fragmentary novels are part of the (proto)-picaresque novel tradition.[7][8] Some of these fragmented novels are also categorized as short story collections or epistolary novels. Some fragmentary novels are (posthumously) published unfinished novels or are partially lost novels.[9][10][11]
Examples in chronological order edit
- Petronius – Satyricon (Late 1st century AD) (incomplete)
- Apuleius – The Golden Ass (Late second century AD)
- François Rabelais – The Life of Gargantua and of Pantagruel (1532-1564)
- Laurence Sterne – Tristram Shandy (1759)
- Friedrich Schiller – The Ghost-Seer (1789)
- Novalis – Heinrich von Ofterdingen (1802)
- Karl Marx – Skorpion und Felix, Humoristischer Roman (Scorpion and Felix) (1837)
- Henri Murger – Scenes of Bohemian Life (1849)
- William Makepeace Thackeray – A Shabby Genteel Story (1857) (unfinished)
- Jane Austen – The Watsons (1871) (unfinished in 1805)
- Gustave Flaubert – Bouvard et Pécuchet (1881)
- Sherwood Anderson – Winesburg, Ohio (1919)
- Ernest Hemingway – In Our Time (1925)
- John Dos Passos – Manhattan Transfer (1925)
- Franz Kafka – Amerika (1927) (unfinished)
- Giorgio de Chirico – Hebdomeros (Hebdomeros, the Metaphysician) (1929)
- Evelyn Waugh – Vile Bodies (1930)
- Flann O'Brien – At Swim-Two-Birds (1939)
- Thomas Wolfe – The Hills Beyond (1941)
- William Faulkner – Go Down, Moses (1942)
- Robert Musil – The Man Without Qualities (1943)
- Raymond Queneau – Exercises in Style (1947)
- Ray Bradbury – The Martian Chronicles (1950)
- A.E. van Vogt – The Voyage of the Space Beagle (1950)
- William S. Burroughs – Naked Lunch (1959)
- Vladimir Nabokov – Pale Fire (1962)
- Julio Cortázar – Hopscotch (1963)
- Mikhail Bulgakov – The Master and Margarita (1967) (unfinished in 1940)
- Jerzy Kosiński – Steps (1968)
- Tomás Rivera – …y no se lo tragó la tierra (…And the Earth Did Not Devour Him) (1971)
- Italo Calvino – Invisible Cities (1972)
- Renata Adler – Speedboat (1976)
- Georges Perec – Life a User's Manual (1978)
- Sandra Cisneros – The House on Mango Street (1983)
- Milorad Pavić – Dictionary of the Khazars (1984)
- Truman Capote – Answered Prayers (1986)
- David Markson – Wittgenstein's Mistress (1988)
- W. G. Sebald – Vertigo (1990)
- A. S. Byatt – Possession (1990)
- Tim O'Brien – The Things They Carried (1990)
- Michael Ondaatje – The English Patient (1992)
- Mark Z. Danielewski – House of Leaves (2000)
- Ian McEwan – Atonement (2001)
- David Mitchell – Cloud Atlas (2004)
- Roberto Bolaño – 2666 (2004)
- David Foster Wallace – The Pale King (2011) (unfinished in 2008)
- Zadie Smith – NW (2012)
- Michael Chabon – Moonglow (2016)
- Jenny Offill – Weather (2020)
References edit
- ^ Wood, Carl (1973). "IN OUR TIME: Hemingway's Fragmentary Novel". Neuphilologische Mitteilungen. 74 (4): 716–726. JSTOR 43342874.
- ^ Power, Chris (2016-11-03). "Refreshing breaks: how fragmented stories can be fulfilling reading". the Guardian. Retrieved 2018-04-14.
- ^ Gioia, Ted. "The Rise of the Fragmented Novel". fractiousfiction.com. Retrieved 2018-04-14.
- ^ "Narrative Patterning : Alternate History and Fragmented Narrative – Cognitive Edge". Cognitive Edge. Retrieved 2018-04-14.
- ^ Booker, M. Keith (2000). Ulysses, Capitalism and Colonialism: Reading Joyce After the Cold War. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 9780313312434.
- ^ "The Shattered Novel: Rules of Fragmented Fiction by Samantha Edmonds – Grist". Grist. 2017-10-29. Retrieved 2018-04-14.
- ^ "What's a Picaresque? The Top 5 Novels". PublishersWeekly.com. Retrieved 2018-04-14.
- ^ Mancing, Howard (1979). "The Picaresque Novel: A Protean Form". College Literature. 6 (3): 182–204. JSTOR 25111277.
- ^ Lane, Anthony (2017-03-06). "Reading Jane Austen's Final, Unfinished Novel". The New Yorker. ISSN 0028-792X. Retrieved 2018-04-14.
- ^ Laurence, Talairach-Vielmas (2014-06-02). "Saverio Tomaiuolo, Victorian Unfinished Novels: The Imperfect Page". Miranda (in French) (9). ISSN 2108-6559.
- ^ Victorian Unfinished Novels – The Imperfect Page | S. Tomaiuolo | Palgrave Macmillan.
External links edit
- Fractious Fiction by Ted Gioia - DEAD LINK