Everything the writer has read, from the telephone book up, has influenced him. He’s amoral, omnivorous. He will rob and steal from any source, because he is not only willing but if anyone after him robs and steals from him, he’s flattered. That means that he did it pretty well if somebody else wants to steal it.
William Faulkner
The problem was, I couldn’t find my own voice. I didn’t have a voice as far as I could tell. So I began to do what I had to do if I wanted to write, and that was appropriate, imitate, and find whatever ways I could to work with and improvise off of other texts. When I was in high school I was imitating Shakespeare. It’s been that way ever since. What it comes down to is that I don’t like the idea of originality.
Kathy Acker
For this assignment your task is to use some other text or texts to produce a scene, sketch, or piece of fiction. For October 9th, you should spend at least 50 minutes on this task. The final work should be at least one and no more than five pages (though if you enjoy this exercise, feel free to submit a longer version for your workshop submission). Ive imagined this with the library as a resource, but feel free to use whatever books, websites, scripts, junkmail, etcto produce the work you would like. My only request that everything that you copy from your source text be written or typed by you. Try not to use computer-based copy and paste for this assignment.
Examples of the type of projects you could take on:
The Cut-UpWilliam Burroughs developed this technique of writing prose (it had been used for poetry since the Dadaists). Burroughs suggested cutting (or folding) pages into sections. He often cut texts into quarters, columns, or other shapes, and then recombine multiple texts (such as political speeches, scientific papers, old sci-fi novels, and his own writing) to produce something new. See the image to the side for an idea of how he would divide a page in his more complicated cut-ups.
The Mash-UpKathy Acker would combine her own writing with direct copying of a source text. For example in the opening chapters of Don Quixote she would switch to copying passages from Don Quixote when she didnt know what to write next. She would later edit the work to produce the juxtapositions she desired.
QuotationSometimes characters or the narrator simply quote from works Remember in Bobcat, the narrator would quote from books that she had read that connected to the action of the plot. A more experimental, or extreme example would be the novel, Genoa, by Paul Metcalf, which is told mostly through quotations from the works of Herman Melville and Christopher Columbus by a narrator who spends most of his time reading.
EpigraphsMany writers have used epigraphs, or quotations that placed outside of the story (often under chapter or section headings). The epigraph often serves to reflect or reveal something about the story.
InsertionInsert non-fictional material directly into the fiction. For example, when discussing the Holocaust, the novelist Dasa Drndic will sometimes insert, as a memorial, a list of every victim killed from the city or village the story takes place in.
MotifA variation on simple quotation. In The Slynx, Tolstaya uses the line from The Vassavadatta: In the city of Delhi there lived a wealthy water-bearer. His name was Kandarpaketu as a motif for the Benedikts depression. She then breaks the quotation down into smaller and smaller parts and repeats them. Find a way to use a quotation of your own choosing as a motif in some way.
TranspositionIn Oreo, Fran Ross uses myths of Theseus as a structure for the plot of the novel: each character and action has an analog in the stories of Theseus. Or a less direct transposition could be James Joyces Ulysses which loosely uses Homers Odyssey as a structural model. There are also most of Shakespeares plays which take their plots from other plays, poems, or works of history.
SubstitutionStefan Themerson, in his novel, Bayamus, would substitute some words for their definition in the dictionary. You could tackle a similar project using reference materials (dictionaries, thesauruses, encyclopedias, almanacs, atlases, etc) to subsitute words for their entries. Or you could find some other variation that doesnt use reference works.
Satirical ParodyUse the style of a particular type of writing, to mock it in some way.
FanfictionUse the characters or setting from another work in a new piece of fiction. Though we often think about the transformation of YA novels and television shows these days, there is a long literary precedent: Dantes Inferno is in some ways a fanfiction of Virgils Aeneid (with Virgil leading Dante through a hellscape from the Aeneid), which was itself took parts of the Homers Odyssey and the Illiad.
Find your own means of using other texts. Perhaps something I have not put here or something of your own invention. Or combine some of the above. There are no limits to what you can do here.
Most writers admit that other books have an effect on how they write, and acknowledge that to write in a tradition means to be familiar with what has come before. For this assignment dont worry about plagiarism (in fact, plagiarizing creatively is encouraged). I want you to play with other texts, and see what you can create from them.
