Creative Writing Crosses the Atlantic: An Attempt at Creating a Minor French Literature

Abstract

AbstractThis chapter analyzes literary advice culture from a transnational-comparative perspective. It sheds light on the reception of the American poetics of creative writing in contemporary France by examining the specific case of Outils du roman: Avec Malt Olbren sur les pistes et exercices du creative writing à l’américaine (2016, Tools of the Novel. Exploring American Creative Writing with Malt Olbren) by the experimental prose-writer François Bon. This text represents a broader dynamic in which French authors of literary advice resort to a repertoire of American writing techniques in an attempt to revive French literature. To conceptualize this process of transfer, I use Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of “minor literature.” This notion conveys how literary advice in France must constantly position itself vis-à-vis its American counterpart, but also how it appropriates and transforms this same body of ideas and techniques. More generally, this chapter makes a case for an increased consideration of supranational transfers in the domain of literary advice when studying processes of local literary change.