Transgressional fiction

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Transgressional fiction or transgressive fiction is a genre of literature that focuses on characters who feel confined by the norms and expectations of society and who use unusual and/or illicit ways to break free of those confines. Because they are rebelling against the basic norms of society, protagonists of transgressional fiction may seem mentally ill, anti-social and/or nihilistic. The genre deals extensively with taboo subject matters such as drugs, sex, violence, incest, pedophilia, and crime.

Some say the genre of "transgressive fiction" was defined by Los Angeles Times literary critic Michael Silverblatt. Anne H. Soukhanov, a journalist for the Atlantic Monthly, described transgressive fiction thus:

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. "Word Watch." The Atlantic Monthly (December 1996): 128.

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

Transgressional 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 transgressional fiction deals with searches for self-identity, inner peace and/or personal freedom. Unbound by usual restrictions of taste and literary convention, its proponents claim that transgressional fiction is capable of pungent social commentary.

[edit] History

The basic ideas of transgressional fiction are by no means new. Many works that are now considered classics dealt with controversial themes and harshly criticized societal norms. French author Émile Zola's works about social conditions and “bad behavior” are examples, as are Russian Fyodor Dostoyevsky's existentialist novels Crime and Punishment (1866) and Notes from Underground (1864) and Norwegian Knut Hamsun's psychologically-driven Hunger (1890).

Early twentieth century writers such as Octave Mirbeau, Georges Bataille and Arthur Schnitzler, who pungently explored Freudian sexuality, are also important forbearers.

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). Both books were ruled not obscene and forced the US literary establishment to weigh the merit of literature that would have once been instantly deemed pornographic (see Miller test).

Grove also published the raunchy works of Beat writers, which led to two more obscenity trials. The first concerned Howl, Alan Ginsberg’s 1955 poem which celebrated American counterculture decried hypocrisy and emptiness in mainstream society. The second concerned William S. Burroughs’ hallucinatory, satirical novel Naked Lunch (1959). Grove also published Hubert Selby Jr.’s anecdotal novel Last Exit to Brooklyn (1964), known for its gritty portrayals of criminals, prostitutes and transvestites and its crude, slang-inspired prose. Last Exit to Brooklyn was tried as obscene in the UK. These trials, all of which Grove Press won, paved the way for transgressional fiction to be published legally but also brought attention to these works, spreading their literary influence.

In the 1970s and 80s, an entire underground of transgressional fiction flourished. Its biggest stars included J.G. Ballard, a Briton known for his strange and frightening dystopian novels; Kathy Acker, an American known for her sexually blunt and still feministic fiction and Charles Bukowski, an American known for his tales of womanizing, drinking and loafing.

In the 1990s, the rise of alternative rock and its distinctly downbeat subculture opened the door for transgressional writers to become more influential and commercially successful than ever before. 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. Other influential authors of this decade include Bret Easton Ellis, known for novels about depraved yuppies; Irvine Welsh known for his portrayals of Scotland’s drug-addicted working class youth and Chuck Palahniuk, known for his characters' bizarre attempts to escape bland consumer culture. 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.

Interestingly, in the UK, the genre owes a considerable influence to “working class literature” 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.