The Experiment Will Not Be Bound

The whole of American literature might be seen as one extended experiment in finding a form for voices trying both to capture and pierce the nation's cacophonous history and democracy. From Whitman's constant revisions of Leaves of Grass to Stein's authorial meditations in The Making of Americans, from Toni Morrison's interlaced points of view in The Bluest Eye to William Gass's deep dig into the disappointed heart of America in The Tunnel, the great American experiment often has found...
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The whole of American literature might be seen as one extended experiment in finding a form for voices trying both to capture and pierce the nation's cacophonous history and democracy. From Whitman's constant revisions of Leaves of Grass to Stein's authorial meditations in The Making of Americans, from Toni Morrison's interlaced points of view in The Bluest Eye to William Gass's deep dig into the disappointed heart of America in The Tunnel, the great American experiment often has found its best reflection in the efforts of our most daring writers. New forms for our collective howl are yet to unfold. The infinite gesture toward accurately representing ourselves continues. Edited by acclaimed poet and critic Peter Campion, this collection of innovative prose, poetry, cross-genre, and metafictional work will not be simply an anthology of experimental writing; it will be also an experimental anthology in form. Playfully unbound, randomized, and published in a fine manuscript box, The Experiment Will Not Be Bound presents and grapples with important questions: What does the form of the anthology itself mean now? What qualifies as genuinely new, experimental and worthy of anthologizing, and by what standards? Does editorial ordering and reading arc matter when all information is digitally disaggregated? Might there be countless combinations of works changing across time? This experimental anthology identifies these and other provocative inquiries - including how the reader becomes an active, editorial participant in the evolving experiment.