The Bays Are Sere (1888) – Édouard Dujardin
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Edouard Dujardin’s “The Bays are Sere”, first published in 1887, was the first novel written entirely in interior monologue or stream of consciousness. For a long time its impact was dormant, until James Joyce read it in 1903 and subsequently revealed its influence upon him. As a result it was republished to great acclaim in 1924, after which Dujardin wrote “Interior Monologue”, an essay on the origin of this style and how he came to adopt it. This book was freely translated into English by Joyce’s friend Stuart Gilbert and published in 1938 as “We’ll To The Woods No More”. The present completely new translation is faithful to the original and reproduces all Dujardin’s innovations. “Interior Monologue” is translated here for the first time. Edouard Dujardin (1861-1947) was editor of the “Revue Wagerienne”, one of the most influential literary journals in Paris in the 1885. He was a poet and playwright who also wrote on the history of religion. –from the publisher

Édouard Dujardin (1861–1949) was one of the early pioneers of the literary technique stream of consciousness, exemplified in his 1888 novel Les lauriers sont coupés (which remains in print into the 21st century). —http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89douard_Dujardin [Oct 2006]

See also: French literature – stream of consciousness – 1888

Counter-Clock World (1967) – Philip K. Dick
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While the 1991 Time’s Arrow is very much the best-known example of reverse chronology literature, the idea had been explored previously by Philip K. Dick’s 1967 Counter-Clock World. [Oct 2006]

“Dick’s best books always describe a future that is both entirely recognizable and utterly unimaginable.” –The New York Times Book Review

Counter-Clock World is a 1967 science fiction novel by author Phillip K. Dick, in which time has started to move in reverse, resulting in the dead reviving in their own graves, living their lives in reverse, eventually ending in returning to the womb, and splitting into an egg and a sperm during copulation between the receiving woman and a man. —http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counter-Clock_World [Oct 2006]

See also: reverse chronology in fiction – 1967 – sf-literature

Hopscotch (1963) – Julio Cortázar
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Rayuela (1963), translated into English as Hopscotch, is the most famous novel by the Argentine writer Julio Cortázar.

Hopscotch is a dazzling literary experiment that ranks among the most important novels written in Spanish in the 20th century. It has been highly praised by other Latin American writers including Gabriel García Márquez, Mario Vargas Llosa or José Lezama Lima. The novel has an open-ended structure that invites the reader to choose between a linear reading or a non-linear one that interpolates additional chapters. Cortázar’s employment of interior monologue, punning, slang, and his use of different languages is reminiscent of Modernist writers like Joyce, although his main influences were Surrealism and the French New Novel, as well as the “riffing” aesthetic of jazz. —http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rayuela [Oct 2006]

Biography —http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julio Cortázar [Oct 2006]

List of superlatives:
“The most powerful encyclopedia of emotions and visions to emerge from the postwar generation of international writers.” — New Republic

“A work of the most exhilarating talent and interest.” — Elizabeth Hardwick

“Cortazar’s masterpiece…the first great novel of Spanish America.”– Times Literary Supplement

“The most powerful encyclopedia of emotions and visions to emerge from the postwar generation of international writers.” — New Republic

Lydia Davis came to my attention via Dennis Cooper’s blog on his Blanchot day. In that particular post Lydia Davis describes how she wanted to meet Blanchot regarding her translation of his work and because she was curious about his personality. By that time, Blanchot had become so much of a recluse that he met with nobody, not even close friends who he’d know for years, apparently only exchanging letters. Below is more on Lydia Davis and the novel The End of the Story.

The End of the Story: A Novel (1995) – Lydia Davis
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“The last time I saw him, though I did not know it would be the last, I was sitting on the terrace with a friend and he came through the gate sweating, his face and chest pink, his hair damp, and stopped politely to talk to us.”

More on the first sentence of novels here.

Biography

Lydia Davis (born 1947) is a contemporary American author and translator of French. She is the daughter of Robert Gorham Davis and Hope Hale Davis. From 1974 to 1978 Davis was married to Paul Auster, with whom she has a son.

She has published six collections of short stories, including The Thirteenth Woman and Other Stories (1976) and Break It Down (1986). Her most recent collection is Samuel Johnson is Indignant, published by McSweeney’s in 2002. Her stories are acclaimed for their brevity and humour. Many are only one or two sentences. In fact some of her stories are considered poetry or somewhere between philosophy, poetry and short story.

Davis has also translated Proust, Blanchot, Foucault, Michel Leiris, and other French writers. —http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lydia_Davis [Oct 2006]

See also: translation – American literature – French literature