ABSTRACT
Experimentation in prose fiction needs to be approached with circumspection, if only out of respect for the generic demands, the possibilities and limitations of the medium. The unquestioned veracity and propriety of poetic experiment in the 1920's, together with the publication of a great variety of prose that seemed to derive from the same fountainhead as that of poetry, conspired to urge many writers to experiment. The history of the 1920's is littered with both genuine and pseudo experiments in prose. Since those two orders of writing are so often confused in history and criticism, it is to the point to try to sort out the American variety, always keeping in mind the European model or counterpart. It is the Greeks and Romans and the traditions preserved in Europe by the translators of Plutarch and by Montaigne and Goethe which, if one is an American, exasperate the imagination.
