As an autistic person who happens to have got into experimental writing at a young age and, despite not having practiced it seriously enough, still stands for it whenever it's subject to gross conservative reactions (as it happens all the time in my country, Romania)... I have this theory - somewhat questionable as even I can admit - that there is some connection between it and the autistic spectrum - actually, it's not an entirely unique theory, there is a book called Autistic Disturbances: Theorizing Autism Poetics from the DSM to Robinson Crusoe that claims to trace autistic traits in the writing of figures such as Gertrude Stein as well as others who are more conventional -, and that.. maybe experimental literature, or at least some part of it, should be rebranded by us as tied to our identities as autistic people.
I know to some of you it might sound ridiculous or just cynical, but my thought is the natural outcome of witnessing how identity matters have become so important (no hard feelings on my side, it was bound to happen). In the same time, the conservative literati in my country are defending what they consider to be the aesthetic and the formal, yet would never take seriously anything rooted in the avant-garde.
My impression is that neurotypical people generally care the most about "stories" as well as "lyricism" and "expression" or "sentimentality", whereas it would seem that it has always been the people with autistic traits who are ever prone to being more concerned with the actual writing, with the "how" of it - which tends to be treated by neurotypicals as "intellectual onanism", "hoax", "gibberish", "bourgeois elitism", "emperor's new clothes", you name it. It's very clear to me that there are actually different mindsets that dictate what one's getting out of writing.
The issues with my theory? Well, you can't certify historical writers as having been autistic or not; as for living writers, one can't look up their mental health records just like you can look up where they've studied. Then how do you deal with authors who claim to be on the spectrum yet react to such a theory with replies like "that's such petit-bourgeois claptrap, I am proletarian and I write rhymed poetry, that's what proletarians want"...?
I've had this discussion before only to reach the same thought-stopping conclusion - that it all depends on nurture and context. Ok, but that still leaves me with discontent. From my perspective, experimental writing needs to hold a more visible and get more respect - while modernism might be over, we still can experiment and perhaps spinning an identity perspective on it will draw more interest.
I am more than well aware that there are Western countries where in the academia, most especially, the "tradition of the avant-garde" is alive and well, but it has been a pain for me - as a lower middle class person who can't buy my way, can't afford studies - to even attempt navigating those spaces from the distance of a poorer country, where Instagram poets and the likes of Bukowski are all that's getting translated and published. Oh, and random poets who happen to know the translator and oftentimes had translated the latter, who's also a poet. I haven't had that sort of opportunity yet, that's my luck.
Autistic Disturbances: Theorizing Autism Poetics from the DSM to Robinson Crusoe that claims to trace autistic traits in the writing of figures such as Gertrude Stein as well as others who are more conventional -, and that.. maybe experimental literature, or at least some part of it, should be rebranded by us as tied to our identities as autistic people.
I know to some of you it might sound ridiculous or just cynical, but my thought is the natural outcome of witnessing how identity matters have become so important (no hard feelings on my side, it was bound to happen). In the same time, the conservative literati in my country are defending what they consider to be the aesthetic and the formal, yet would never take seriously anything rooted in the avant-garde.
My impression is that neurotypical people generally care the most about "stories" as well as "lyricism" and "expression" or "sentimentality", whereas it would seem that it has always been the people with autistic traits who are ever prone to being more concerned with the actual writing, with the "how" of it - which tends to be treated by neurotypicals as "intellectual onanism", "hoax", "gibberish", "bourgeois elitism", "emperor's new clothes", you name it. It's very clear to me that there are actually different mindsets that dictate what one's getting out of writing.
The issues with my theory? Well, you can't certify historical writers as having been autistic or not; as for living writers, one can't look up their mental health records just like you can look up where they've studied. Then how do you deal with authors who claim to be on the spectrum yet react to such a theory with replies like "that's such petit-bourgeois claptrap, I am proletarian and I write rhymed poetry, that's what proletarians want"...?
I've had this discussion before only to reach the same thought-stopping conclusion - that it all depends on nurture and context. Ok, but that still leaves me with discontent. From my perspective, experimental writing needs to hold a more visible and get more respect - while modernism might be over, we still can experiment and perhaps spinning an identity perspective on it will draw more interest.
I am more than well aware that there are Western countries where in the academia, most especially, the "tradition of the avant-garde" is alive and well, but it has been a pain for me - as a lower middle class person who can't buy my way, can't afford studies - to even attempt navigating those spaces from the distance of a poorer country, where Instagram poets and the likes of Bukowski are all that's getting translated and published. Oh, and random poets who happen to know the translator and oftentimes had translated the latter, who's also a poet. I haven't had that sort of opportunity yet, that's my luck.