In the Slipstream

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In 1973, a group of frustrated American writers, united in their disgust with trade publishing, founded the Fiction Collective, an organization dedicated to finding and publishing "worthwhile fiction outside of the impoverished commercial taste of mainstream publishing." For the next 25 years, the Collective has suffered decided economic and critical ups and downs, identity crises, and a name change (to FC2). They have survived all of this, and have now issued an anthology of excerpts drawn from the books published by the Collective over the past quarter century. The twenty-nine pieces provide a useful survey of the varieties of experimental writing in the US, ranging from stream of consciousness (Richard Grossman, "Alphabet Man") to the surrealistic (Constance Pierce, "When Things Get Back to Normal") to the aggressively postmodern (John Shirley, "New Noir") and to the incendiary (Samuel Delany, "HOGG"). Most of the writers here, though (Gerald Vizenor, Fanny Howe, Mark Leyner, Rob Hardin, Steve Katz, Marianne Hauser, et al.), defy easy categorization. They have in common only a willingness to alter the definitions and intentions of fiction. What they have produced ranges from the puerile to the masterful, and, in its variety, the anthology offers a useful (and unsettling) introduction to the vital byways and back alleys of modern fiction. Libraries should have it, and more adventurous readers should seek it out. (Kirkus Reviews)