Experimental

Experimental literature refers to written work—usually fiction or poetry—that emphasizes innovation, most especially in technique.

Lists

Guidance to Death by Daniel V. Meier Jr.

Ravenous Mother - Two Gatherers by J.R. Kendiro

The Skeptic Encyclopedia of Pseudoscience by Michael Shermer

Weird Science, Mad Science and Bad Science in Non-Fiction

103 books — 4 voters

If on a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino

Oulipo,etc.

254 books — 250 voters

WHERE IS OUR BLACK AVANT GARDE?

30 books — 29 voters

The Princess Saves Herself in This One by Amanda Lovelace

The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson by Emily Dickinson

Poetry by Women

471 books — 113 voters

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Best Experimental Books Ever

1,122 books — 1,819 voters

Jason and the Argonauts by Apollonius of Rhodes

Artificial Beings in Fiction Not of Technological Origin

56 books — 1 voter

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New Voices Alert! 51 New & Upcoming Debut Novels

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“ At half past three in the morning I woke up. And immediately elastic I jumped out of bed. I came to write you. I mean: be. Now it’s half past five. I want nothing: I am pure. I don’t wish this solitude on you. But I myself am in the creating fog. Lucid darkness, luminous stupidity. ”
― Clarice Lispector, Água Viva

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“ This distorted lens may lead someone studying human sexuality to ask: “Where are you on a spectrum from straight to gay?” This question would miss a pattern we found in our data suggesting that people's arousal systems are not bundled by the gender of whatever it is that turns them on: 4.5% of men find the naked male form aversive but penises arousing, while 6.7% of women find the female form arousing, but vaginas aversive. Using simplified community identifications like the gay-straight spectru This distorted lens may lead someone studying human sexuality to ask: “Where are you on a spectrum from straight to gay?” This question would miss a pattern we found in our data suggesting that people's arousal systems are not bundled by the gender of whatever it is that turns them on: 4.5% of men find the naked male form aversive but penises arousing, while 6.7% of women find the female form arousing, but vaginas aversive. Using simplified community identifications like the gay-straight spectrum to investigate how and why arousal patterns develop is akin to studying historic human migration patterns by distributing a research survey asking respondents to report their position on a spectrum from “white” to “person of color.” Yes, “person of color,” like the concept of “gay,” is a useful moniker to understand the life experiences of a person, but a person’s place on a “white” to “person of color” spectrum tells us little about their ethnicity, just as a person’s place on a scale of gay to straight tells us little about their underlying arousal patterns. The old way of looking at arousal limits our ability to describe sexuality to a grey scale. We miss that there is no such thing as attraction to just “females,” but rather a vast array of arousal systems that react to stimuli our society typically associates with “females” including things like vaginas, breasts, the female form, a gait associated with a wider hip bone, soft skin, a higher tone of voice, the gender identity of female, a person dressed in “female” clothing, and female gender roles. Arousal from any one of these things correlates with the others, but this correlation is lighter than a gay-straight spectrum would imply. Our data shows it is the norm for a person to derive arousal from only a few of these stimuli sets and not others. Given this reality, human sexuality is not well captured by a single sexual spectrum. Moreover, contextualizing sexuality as a contrast between these communities and a societal “default” can obscure otherwise-glaring data points. Because we contrast “default” female sexuality against “other” groups, such as the gay community and the BDSM community, it is natural to assume that a “typical” woman is most likely to be very turned on by the sight of male genitalia or the naked male form and that she will be generally disinterested in dominance displays (because being gay and/or into BDSM would be considered atypical, a typical woman must be defined as the opposite of these “other,” atypical groups). Our data shows this is simply not the case. The average female is more likely to be very turned on by seeing a person act dominant in a sexual context than she is to be aroused by either male genitalia or the naked male form. The average woman is not defined by male-focused sexual attraction, but rather dominance-focused sexual attraction. This is one of those things that would have been blindingly obvious to anyone who ran a simple survey of arousal pathways in the general American population, but has been overlooked because society has come to define “default” sexuality not by what actually turns people on, but rather in contrast to that which groups historically thought of as “other. ...more ”
― Simone Collins, The Pragmatist's Guide to Sexuality

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