23:3 Winter 1972

RONALD SUKENICK

from Out

During the 1970s, Chicago Review published many writers who experimented with chronology, characterization, and the nature of narrative; Jonathan Baumbach, Raymond Federman, John Mella, and Gilbert Sorrentino were among those who contributed “metafiction” or “superfiction” to the magazine. The Winter 1972 issue featured an excerpt from Ronald Sukenick’s forthcoming novel, Out, along with an interview with the author and an essay discussing his work by Jerome Klinkowitz. Sukenick, already the author of the experimental novel, Up (1968), and of a collection of short fiction, The Death of the Novel (1969), explained the attraction of self-reflexive narration in the interview with Joe David Bellamy:

My whole idea about fiction is that it’s a normal, if I may use the word, epistemological procedure; that is, it is at the very center of everybody all the time at any period; and you don’t have to search for psychological reasons, although they may be there too. But I think the epistemological ones are far more anterior. It’s a way of making up the world and making sense of it.

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