The Atrocity Exhibition

Experimental literature refers to written works - often novels or magazines - that place great emphasis on innovations regarding technique and style.... The first text generally cited in this category is Laurence Sterne's The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman . This text breaks many standards that would later be deliberately subverted for the advancement of fiction. In its approach to narrative, and its willingness to use such graphic elements as an all-black page to mourn the death of a character, Sterne's novel is a considered a fundamental text for many post-World War II authors. However, Sterne's works were not without detractors even then, as Samuel Johnson is quoted in Boswell as saying "The merely odd does not last. Tristram Shandy did not last." Denis Diderot's Jacques the Fatalist and His Master, drew many elements from Tristam Shandy, a fact not concealed in the text, making it an early example of metafiction. In the 1910s, artistic experimentation became a prominent force, and various European and American writers began experimenting with the given forms. Tendencies that formed during this period later became parts of the modernist movement.
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