A Poetics of the Conceptual Novel

I've sort of given up on my Raymond Roussel themed novel for a bit. I am giving it away free as a pdf on lulu.com as a 'trans-literary para-novelistic assemblage'. Now if that sounds like a cop-out from completing an actual novel, it probably is, but I think about it like this, 'Do I have a literary agent? No. Will I be performing the actual labor to get a literary agent? No. Is this novel likely to perform as a regular novel, even one as strangely attenuated as those of its supposed author of homage? No. Can I muster the traditional understanding of the novelistic form and structure, give it new value, and life through this work? No. What can I do? I can present whatever it is I have done as the story of itself, as an attempt, as a trace of my self. Like a performance artist, like Paul McCarthy cooking hotdogs, or making cereal. This is the paint splattered hot dog, the plastic letter filled cereal bowl. I guess I am announcing it. This is a conceptual novel, a novel which is not a novel, but a prop produced to stand in for a novel, or it is pure and infantile naivete', or to take that a step further, it is a strange foetus arrived too early and barking absurd commands to an empty room which is in fact a vast and gigantic stomach and circus combined into blizzard of dancing traces whirling through space and time. Whatever the f*&k it is. Here it is:

Jogging With Roussel (free)