Welcome to « criticalfiction.net » , a website intended to encourage and promote the critical fiction as a means of literary discourse and formal innovation, and to provide a forum for discussion of texts, techniques, and related issues. The critical fiction may be simply defined as a literary form that adopts the techniques and language found in one or more source texts to form a critical response and a satisfying fiction. It is an approach to reading, a way of looking, not an essay in discursive exegesis (i.e., expository writing). The form offers an approach to material otherwise resistant to ordinary criticism, and an opportunity to make something new and unexpected happen.
Critical fiction is the literary equivalent of what happens when a visual artist creates a work in direct response or hommage to another artist’s work.
Order a copy of the new book by Wendy Walker, MY MAN AND OTHER CRITICAL FICTIONS
Please take a look at the Reading List for other examples, or read this account of the Critical Fiction Symposium held on 25 October 2011, with Wendy Walker, John Crowley, Ron Janssen, Jennifer Nelson, and Henry Wessells (with a link to the audio recording) ; “ Appraisal at Edgewood ” is an example of a critical fiction available here at the website.
The CF Forum page will include topics for discussion and comment and will be updated frequently.
— Henry Wessells
« criticalfiction.net » is published by Temporary Culture, P.O. Box 43072, Upper Montclair, NJ 07043.