With "Momentum," the form is also expressed through the complete absence of any forms of punctuation. As such, the story develops as a train of thought where the ideas seem to move from one aspect to another, enumerating characters, facts or actions.
The side note mentioned also has two authors at its end: Wordsworth, Proust. This was probably the first and strongest response I had when reading Sukenick's work: it sounds like Proust, in the way there is no censorship (in the case of "Momentum," not even punctuation marks) to the writer's train of thought. With "The Death of the Novel," this impression is even stronger, as the writer mentions, from the first page of his story, that "reality is, simply, our experience"
This reminds me of the part in Proust's works where the author takes a bite out of his Madeleine, a way to remember a woman named Madeleine and, thus, to start the entire train of thought through his different experiences, recreating his own reality. It is the same in "The Death of the Novel."...
Starting with that, the story develops in a recreation of the writer's erotic reality and his encounters with various female characters.
The development of the storyline is ornamented here with similar poetical approaches, such as the insertion of what seems to be an article from a newspaper, referring to news from the South-East Asia. I don't think that this is necessarily tied into Sukenick's
With "The Birds,"
Sukenick, Ronald. The Death of the Novel and Other Stories. Dial Press. New York: 1969.
The development of the storyline is ornamented here with similar poetical approaches, such as the insertion of what seems to be an article from a newspaper, referring to news from the South-East Asia. I don't think that this is necessarily tied into Sukenick's
With "The Birds,"
Sukenick, Ronald. The Death of the Novel and Other Stories. Dial Press. New York: 1969.