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Bizarro fiction

Bizarro fiction is a contemporary literary genre noted for its focus on "high weirdness." The term was appropriated from popular culture in 2005 by the independent publishing companies Eraserhead Press, Raw Dog Screaming Press, and Afterbirth Books in response to the rising demand for unique and outlandish fiction. In the introduction to The Bizarro Starter Kit, Bizarro is described as "literature's equivalent to the cult section at the video store" and a genre that "strives not only to be strange, but fascinating, thought-provoking, and, above all, fun to read. According to Rose O'Keefe of Eraserhead Press: "Basically, if an audience enjoys a book or film primarily because of its weirdness, then it is Bizarro. Weirdness might not be the work's only appealing quality, but it is the major one."

While works of Bizarro may have literary merit, the primary focus of the genre is to entertain. In this respect, Bizarro has more in common with speculative fiction genres (such as science-fiction, fantasy, and horror) than with the postmodern literary movements (such as surrealism, absurdism, and beat), with which it is commonly associated.

Prominent exponents of Bizarro include Steve Aylett, D. Harlan Wilson, Carlton Mellick III, Jeremy Robert Johnson, and Chris Genoa.

Books by Bizarro authors have been awarded the World Fantasy Award, the Bram Stoker Award, the Literary Awards , the Philip K. Dick Award, and have been made into live-action as well as animation movies.

Origins

Bizarro literature can trace its roots at least as far back as the foundation of Eraserhead Press in 1999, but the description of the literature as "Bizarro" is a more recent development. Previous terms used to refer to the burgeoning scene include "irreal" and "new absurdism," but neither of these was used with consensus. On 19 June 2005, Kevin Dole 2 released "What The Fuck is This All About," a sort of manifesto for the then unnamed genre. While the essay does not feature the word "Bizarro," subsequent discussion about the essay led to the name as well as the inauguration of the Mondo Bizarro Forum.

With regard to the place in literary history this movement occupies, the British magazine Dazed & Confused has opined that "The bastard sons of William Burroughs and Dr. Seuss, the underground lit cult of the Bizarros are picking up where the cyberpunks left off.

In his essay, "The Nab Gets Posthumously Bizarroized, Tom Bradley, a scholar as well as practitioner of Bizarro, traces the genre's roots back in literary history to the time of Vladimir Nabokov's "gogolization," and his cry of despair and horror at having his central nervous system colonized: "...after reading Gogol, one's eyes become gogolized. One is apt to see bits of his world in the most unexpected places. Bradley claims the Bizarro movement is continuing and fulfilling that gogolization process, under the name Bizarroization: "...we have been completing the preposterous project which [Nabokov] took over from Gogol nearly a hundred years ago..

Elsewhere , Tom Bradley follows Bizarro's origins further back, to the letters which Ovid wrote while exiled on the Black Sea two thousand years ago.

Response to the movement

Thirdeye Magazine has this to say about the Bizarro movement:

Author and screenwriter John Skipp has written as follows about practitioners of the Bizarro genre:

Aesthetics

In his essay "The Four Rules of Bizarro," Kevin Dole 2 observed four traits common to contemporary Bizarro writings: "Provocative Offense," "Meaningful Transgression," "Experimentation," and "Brevity." The essay was met with some skepticism, the chief criticism being that as an experimental genre, Bizarro has no official "rules."

In an interview, Tom Bradley has said: