The Novel Novel.

We all know about the western, YA, chicklit, historicals etc... but have you heard of Bildungsroman or trangressive fiction? If you haven't, neither did I until a short time ago and it intrigued me enough to go looking for other unusual novels. I found them in The Complete Idiots Guide to Creative Writing.
Bildungsroman - is German for "novel of development' - a fictional form of a hero's journey from his dysfunctional childhood, through his growing awareness of himself and how he changes the way he relates to the world around him - usually in a positive way. Examples - Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain, Samuel Butler's The Way of All Flesh, and of course James Joyce's A Portrait of a Young Man.
Epistolary Novel - this novel uses correspondence between characters to advance the story, or diary entries, or as in the case of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein a one-way letter.
Picaresque Novel - Spanish in genre - this is a novel that reads like a travelogue with a twist describing the exploits of a rogue. e.g. Henry Fielding's Tom Jones, and Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
Roman a clef - uses contemporary historical figures with fictitious names. eg Joe Klein's Primary Colors thinly veiled fiction about the CLinton Administration.
Transgressive Fiction - is a relatively new term for fiction that graphically deals with aberrant sexual practice, urban violence, dysfunctinal family relationship, and drug use. Described as 'subversive, avant-garde, bleak, and pornographic" with bizarre art covers, lots of italics and undersized formats. William Burroughs and the Marquis de Sade were the forefathers of this genre.
All These examples were found in Idiots Guide to Creative Writing. (1997)

As a side note here, In the IGCW there is a little box which says " To figure out what pseudonym you should use if you decide to write a romance novel, take the name of your first pet plus your mother's maiden name."

So I sign off today as the mysteriously known - Kidney Lee.