1957: American avant-garde filmmaker Stan Brakhage releases his film Anticipation of the Night. Attempting to portray the world as it would look to an infant who has yet to develop the ability to organize his impressions, the film has no narrative content and presents a continual flow of shadows and colors.

1961: Jazz saxophonist Ornette Coleman releases his recording of Free Jazz. Featuring the Jackson Pollock painting White Light on its album cover, Free Jazz dispenses with many of the traditional melodic and harmonic conventions of jazz in order to allow the musicians to improvise without constraint.

1965: Folksinger Bob Dylan is booed at the Newport Folk Festival for playing an electric guitar, an instrument that was frowned upon by traditional folk music fans.

1973: Thomas Pynchon's novel Gravity's Rainbow wins the National Book Award. Complex as well as comic, the novel uses a variety of styles and...