"Anti-novel" is a term derived from the French concept of antiroman, corresponding to the terms "antinovel" (English), "antinovela" (Spanish) or "antiromanzo" (Italian)...
Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy, fully titled The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman , is a humorous, autobiographical novel that conveys the metafictional genre of “poioumenon.”
Philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre is the creator of the term "antiroman" (Jean-Paul Sartre is the creator of the term "antiroman")
Dictionary.com defines: An antinovel is "a literary work in which the author rejects the use of traditional elements of novel structure, especially in regard to development of plot and character." In other words, "An antinovel is any experimental work of fiction that avoids the familiar conventions of the novel, and instead establishes its own conventions" (Wikipedia).
In the introduction to the work Portrait d'un inconnu ( Portrait of a Stranger , 1948) by French female writer Nathalie Sarraute, philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre used the term "antiroman" in its current meaning, and the first person to use this word was French writer Charles Sorel, who in 1633 used "antiroman" to describe the satirical nature of his novel Le Berger extravagant .
Anti-novels tend to be fragmentary, distorting the experiences of the characters, presenting events outside of time, attempting to disrupt the idea of the characters having a unified and stable personality. Some of the main features of anti-novels are the absence of a clear plot, minimal character development, changing the chronological order, experimenting with vocabulary and syntax, and interchangeable beginnings and endings. The genre's distinctive features are the presence of blank or removable pages, drawings, and hieroglyphics.
The anti-novel was a popular element in the Nouveau roman movement in France from about 1950 to 1970, however similar characteristics can be found throughout literary history.
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes, the original Spanish text is El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha; translated into Vietnamese with the title Don Quixote, the Ingenious Noble Knight of La Mancha
For example, in Tristram Shandy by the Irish writer Laurence Sterne, a humorous, seemingly autobiographical novel, it conveys a kind of metafictional "poioumenon" that makes the characters escape the linearity of time. And somewhere the anti-novelistic quality is also found in Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes, a novel with a strong magical realism.
In the decades after World War II, the anti-novel became increasingly important, emerging as a literary element, suggesting "an expression of nihilism that fills the void created by the abolition of positive imperatives for life" ( Postmodernity , Ethics and the Novel, p. 92, by Andrew Gibson, 2002). "Technically, however, the anti-novel's defining feature is its self-reflexive, anti-copyrightful attention to its own fictionality, an element of anti-realism. Paradoxically, such anti-conventionalism eventually forms a distinctive convention of its own" ( The Columbia Dictionary of Modern Literary and Cultural Criticism , p. 57, by Joseph Childers, 1995).
Two representative works of anti-fiction are Matthew McIntosh's theMystery.doc and David Markson's This is Not a Novel.
barnesandnoble.com, amazon.co.uk
In addition to the above works, when talking about anti-novels, we cannot ignore Matthew McIntosh's theMystery.doc , a work that uses classic elements of anti-novels, combined with structural experimentation to create a plot; David Markson's This is Not a Novel is a work written from the perspective of an anonymous author, facing imminent death, trying to write something true before losing his life. In addition, we must mention Milorad Pavić's Dictionary of the Khazars , a great example of a writer completely abandoning the traditional way of writing novels to create novelty. It is a work written in Serbian, published in 1984, a series of books without a real plot, instead consisting of three small encyclopedias, discussing the conversion of the Khazars with contradictory "truths".
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