Pieces Of Literature

Ted Gioia considers the rise of the fragmented, or “polyphonic,” novel:

[A] new type of fragmentation has come to the forefront in 21st century novels such as Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad (2010), David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas (2004), Roberto Bolaño’s 2666 (2004), Ian McEwan’s Atonement (2001), Geraldine Brooks’s The People of the Book (2008), Hari Kunzru’s Gods Without Men (2102), T.C. Boyle’s When the Killing’s Done (2011), David Foster Wallace’s The Pale King (2011), Zadie Smith’s NW (2102), Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife (2003), and other recent works. Instead of relying on fragmentation as a means of disjunction and dissolution, as many experimental novelists had done in the past—Julio Cortázar, William Burroughs, J.G. Ballard, Gilbert Sorrentino, etc.—the new fragmented novel is holistic and coalescent. It resists disunity, even as it appears to embody it. …

The beauty of the new fragmented novel is that writers can have it both ways. These books pay deference to complexity, that deity of the lit critic, but they are also marked by an intense devotion to plot, pacing and other elements of traditional craft. Highbrow and lowbrow elements are pleasingly blurred. Experimentation proves that it is compatible with accessibility.

(Hat tip: Page-Turner)