The Imaginary 20th Century
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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The Imaginary 20th Century is a historical comic novel written by Norman M. Klein in collaboration with Gilded Age historian Margo Bistis. It is available in print (2016) and as an e-book with a companion narrated media archive (2014). The novel originated as an interactive archive with related solo and group exhibitions prior to publication. In 2012, Klein and Bistis coined the term "wunder-roman" to describe their alternative genre. As described in the novel, this term references a mythical 19th-century version of the picaresque novel where the layers—as story roll along a water wheel.
The essays
Part II of the book contains four essays: on the curating of the archive; on “picaresque disasters”; on the future city; and on the “automated utopia.” This serves as another layer, but also as a hinge between the media narrative and the novel. Readers and viewers make the transit from fiction to scholarship, and back again, from narrative hooks in the story, to spaces between the images.
