WHAT END DOES POST MODERNISM SERVE?

[Emil Miller]

Well, as I said, there may be writers that don't fit that particular description but some of them appear to be reflective of the nihilism that is becoming self-evident in artistic endeavour generally and, ironically, not only reflect it but also contribute to it in so doing. J K Rowling cannot be taken seriously as one might take Lewis Carroll or Kenneth Grahame, who were writing before the advent of the Random House publicity machine and the cinema industry who are the true progenitors of Harry Potter.
Whilst we all read for various reasons, my preference is, and will remain, for well written stories that don't require me to scratch my head after every couple of sentences.

[YesNo]

I have not touched Rowling, but that is economics, and I know enough about her revival of the fantastical tradition in Britain that her Potter can wait.

According to my teenage children the Harry Potter movies follow the books closely. They've consumed both almost as soon as they come out.

So you can skip the books and see the movies instead.

Whilst we all read for various reasons, my preference is, and will remain, for well written stories that don't require me to scratch my head after every couple of sentences.

What is the best, most representative post-modernist novel that someone would recommend?

I don't mind scratching my head for 20 pages, but if it goes longer, for the sake of my hair, I'd have to stop, which is why I won't even bother asking for poetry recommendations.

[Jozanny]

Yes, maybe you'd enjoy sampling John Gardner; he died while I was an undergraduate, and doesn't expect his readers to brace for pyrotechnics. I have a soft spot for Gardner, and his wry optimism that still manages to convey he is nobody's fool. I would not recommend Grendel to start, as it is a bit deep and Gardner expects you to understand literary irony, but maybe October Light, or similar title.

[YesNo]

Yes, maybe you'd enjoy sampling John Gardner; he died while I was an undergraduate, and doesn't expect his readers to brace for pyrotechnics. I have a soft spot for Gardner, and his wry optimism that still manages to convey he is nobody's fool. I would not recommend Grendel to start, as it is a bit deep and Gardner expects you to understand literary irony, but maybe October Light, or similar title.

Thanks! It turns out October Light is in the local library. I'll check it out this evening.

[sixsmith]

Well, as I said, there may be writers that don't fit that particular description but some of them appear to be reflective of the nihilism that is becoming self-evident in artistic endeavour generally and, ironically, not only reflect it but also contribute to it in so doing. J K Rowling cannot be taken seriously as one might take Lewis Carroll or Kenneth Grahame, who were writing before the advent of the Random House publicity machine and the cinema industry who are the true progenitors of Harry Potter.
Whilst we all read for various reasons, my preference is, and will remain, for well written stories that don't require me to scratch my head after every couple of sentences.

Brian,

It seems to me that many of the exemplary 'post-modern' novels (by way of achievement rather than homogenous technique) are railing against the very nihilism (such as it is) that you decry. White Noise, The Crying of Lot 49, Infinite Jest, Cloud Atlas, for example, are all, to a greater or lesser extent, parodying and/or criticizing what their authors see as an increasingly obscuratanist and deracinated culture. The popular conception of 'post-modern' novels as exceedingly difficult is mostly erroneous. That said, if one is going to enjoy the pleasures of post-modern literature, they must be willing to loosen their grip on the tenets of 'realist' fiction, an exercise that, at least for a while, engenders some scratching of the head. Alas, I suspect that it is far too late in the day to convince you that scratching the head, whilst likely bad for the scalp, can be pretty darn good for the brain and, indeed, the soul.

[Emil Miller]

If, as you say, the writers named are parodying the nihilistic state of society, then I'm glad to hear it. However, surely it is better to do so in a manner that will carry their message to the greatest number of readers. There have been many books that have been written parodying the state of affairs at any given date. Indeed, it's one of Literature's raisons d'etre. Reading Gulliver's Travels, Brave New World or Animal Farm for example sends a message direct to the reader, albeit one that is allusive.
Trying to reflect obscurantism by writing obscurely is simply self-defeating unless, that is, you are writing only for people who like scratching their heads.

[mal4mac]

If, as you say, the writers named are parodying the nihilistic state of society, then I'm glad to hear it. However, surely it is better to do so in a manner that will carry their message to the greatest number of readers. There have been many books that have been written parodying the state of affairs at any given date. Indeed, it's one of Literature's raisons d'etre. Reading Gulliver's Travels, Brave New World or Animal Farm for example sends a message direct to the reader, albeit one that is allusive.
Trying to reflect obscurantism by writing obscurely is simply self-defeating unless, that is, you are writing only for people who like scratching their heads.

Since Joyce and Proust, a certain faction of literati have thought that 'head scratching' was the way to go. It's a ploy by an elite to keep them 'above the mass'. If everyone can read Dickens then, if the elite reads Dickens, how can the elite say they are better than others? The solution is to dismiss Dickens and put forward Proust, Joyce and other modernists/post-modernists as 'the way to go'.

The members of this elite are *very* happy that most people don't read their books, because they are against the mass either (i) because they are aristocrats who don't want to associate with plebs in any way, or (ii) because they are intellectuals who need to feel intellectually superior to the mass.

John Carey de-constructs their position in his superb book: "The Intellectuals and the Masses" and indicates another way to go - which is basically the way you suggest - the 'intellectuals who support the mass' can concentrate on books that most of the mass can appreciate, and view the whole of mankind as intellectual partners rather than as 'beneath them'.

Intellectually honest members of the intellectual elite, who are still blinkered enough to genuflect before Proust and Joyce, cannot dismiss Dickens, Shakespeare, Swift, Huxley, Orwell, and many other readable great authors - enough for a lifetime of reading. So 'the mass' can experience intellectual riches at the highest artistic level, while avoiding the unreadable.

Intellectuals like Carey can help them do this, and become not only true intellectuals but true humanists - they can lead the young to Dickens rather than Proust and make the world a much happier place.

[Jozanny]

Intellectually honest members of the intellectual elite, who are still blinkered enough to genuflect before Proust and Joyce, cannot dismiss Dickens, Shakespeare, Swift, Huxley, Orwell, and many other readable great authors - enough for a lifetime of reading. So 'the mass' can experience intellectual riches at the highest artistic level, while avoiding the unreadable.

Intellectuals like Carey can help them do this, and become not only true intellectuals but true humanists - they can lead the young to Dickens rather than Proust and make the world a much happier place.

I may have had a few inflammatory moments since I've been registered here, as I am not perfect, but it is assertions like these that make me care very little whether I stay or go.

I have never dismissed literary populism, ever, regardless of my personal tastes, but see nothing wrong with a preference for linguistic intricacy over and above Dickensonian exaggeration--indeed, I recently defended Dickens on my blog against Christopher Hitchens.

I'm a smart woman, like theory and the constructs surrounding it, and will not be ashamed of it.

As to Shakespeare, mal, it is only academics that keeps his work in the concourse of popular culture. As some prominent minority intellectuals know, like McWhorter, we are becoming rapidly too far removed from Shakespearean semantics for students to understand the verbal ironies of the actual plays, and it takes some work to get the context, which even scholars have lost in relation to the farces.

Good God, if people don't like to take some effort for their pleasure, then don't, but if I can spare equal delight in Ovid and David Mitchell both, then I have contributed to the evolutionary, intelligent advance of this amazing species, one that evidently beat some long odds in that African genetic bottleneck a million years ago.
*************
Why I am still bothering raises an interesting point, but look at the sheer complexity of our modern world, its technical, industrial systems-- examining BP as an energy conglomerate is a good example, or our multicultural accommodations and clashes brought on by total conquest of the planet, or our increasing empowerment of identity.

Sitting around with our noses entrenched in Tolstoy's Christian plebianism is no match for the modern world the West has made, and the East, as it is increasingly claimed, is taking back. Scholars like Ferguson don't sit on their butts citing explorers like Livingstone without also globe-trotting to explore and understand the complexity of the systems we've created, politically, economically, and post-modernists have been ahead of this drumbeat since Sterne's Shandy, remember him?

Don't read them; fine by me, but their influence affects your television viewing (Lost, Simpsons), film, arcitecture, design, and will no doubt continue to do so even if we collapse these systems back on ourselves.

Conservative retrenchment isn't going to change a damn thing about the complications of modern life.

[YesNo]

Yes, maybe you'd enjoy sampling John Gardner; he died while I was an undergraduate, and doesn't expect his readers to brace for pyrotechnics. I have a soft spot for Gardner, and his wry optimism that still manages to convey he is nobody's fool. I would not recommend Grendel to start, as it is a bit deep and Gardner expects you to understand literary irony, but maybe October Light, or similar title.

The first chapter of Gardner's October Light was entertaining. It started with a Big Bang on page 2 when the old man James Page fired a shotgun at his sister's TV while she was watching it. I didn't have to scratch my head at all, at least not after that. He has a nice way of waking up the reader.

Thanks for the recommendation.

[Jozanny]

The first chapter of Gardner's October Light was entertaining. It started with a Big Bang on page 2 when the old man James Page fired a shotgun at his sister's TV while she was watching it. I didn't have to scratch my head at all, at least not after that. He has a nice way of waking up the reader.

Thanks for the recommendation.

You're welcome Yes.

[Jassy Melson]

How much I would have missed if I had not read Pre-Post Moderist fiction. But I'm glad I have read Gravity's Rainbow too, and other Post-Moderist works. Fiction is and has been undergoing an upheaval since WW11. It will probably continue to do so. As long as the reader can keep in mind that contemporary fiction is for the most part without direction (the Potter books are an exception, I guess, but even they , it could be argued, have no real direction) he or she will be able to keep their boat from capsizing. I love John Barth's poem "Night Journey". It relates, in poetic terms, the delimina we all face living as we do in this time. I don't think it has an end.

[Jozanny]

Even though I'm busy today, I'd like to be clear about a few points:

a. I do not claim that post modernism is the end of history in terms of literary movements, only that it does offer something at its best which can as facile as Shakespeare. I do not have time right now to analyze the virtues of what the pomos offer in an aggregate sense, only that the experience can be as rewarding.

b. It is not better than Renaissance literature, or 19th century realism or other more traditional forms, it simply recognizes something else that other literary periods cannot speak to, understandably so.

c. I understand the weariness with versatility that threatens to topple the reader over with too much gimmick and not enough heart going into the text, but to claim that Humanities are these days misguided for not sticking to core canon classics is simply ridiiculous.

Modern academics is changing. Scholars, including Shakespeareans, engage in the field with a hands on approach. It is not just, "here is your syllabus and required reading," not anymore, and to claim that this somehow detracts from the Grecian plays, or Ovid, or Tolstoy is simply absurd; his Russian grand niece makes her living accredited in our academic structure, and she's a magical realist, go figure.

[JBI]

Meh, postmodernism functions to take the idea of literature and the world, and flip it so that it laughs, or cries over itself. We here are so obsessed with American post-modernism, that we fail to realize there is highly accessible, great literature written elsewhere than can be termed post-modern.

The thing with the United States was it was rather confused given the disaster and death of Vietnam, the gloom of the cold war, and also this desire to criticize itself, while maintaining itself as superior to its enemy - this went wackier after the Berlin wall came down, from what I can tell, bringing an end to what was originally called post-modernism, in favor of an open question of identity. Of all cultures though, the States, given its place, had and seems to have one of the hardest times laughing at itself (China would be another example of a culture unable to ironize itself, though the population in general has moved from fiction to Blog as an outlet for self-satire, thereby breaking through).

Generally speaking, from what I can gather, the reason for all the nonsense and inaccessibility of American post-modernity is the simple fact that the authors, like the readers, have no idea exactly what everything means - the culture is totally uncertain which direction it is going in - that's why so many argue and argued it went downhill, or that certain people are ruining it.

So basically you have modern ideas of narratology and open form exploited with uncertainty and failure, self-loathing and pride, and you give birth to American post-modernism.

Canadian post-modernism on the other hand is stranger - it for the most part, functioning primarily in novels, is about undercutting narrative itself. But generally our novels tend to be far more comedic than anything else, featuring often rather bawdy humor and self-depricating jokes - a good example would be Kroetch's hero Hazard from The Stud Horse Man literally "fucking the pants off of" history (embodied in a museum historian, making wax figures of historical figures. The idea of laughing at oneself was far more accepted, as was ignoring the "greater cause" that persisted in The States. Simply put, not really at war, we weren't preoccupied with saving our image and history, and searching for that justifiable fragile lost innocence and identity - only recreating it and redefining Canada as without definition.


As for Post-modernism now, well, the authors are being weeded - virtually none of the commonly anthologized American poets are really surfacing - there is a strange void from what I see in new poetry anthologies, that has a missing generation, or perhaps, a strange generation of American poets - the big Post-modern figures seem to be dying or dead now, with long established careers - someone like Wilbur, who is still kicking is anthologized, whereas someone like Adrienne Rich is rather difficult to write into a book - she simply cannot hold up as anything outside her sphere of writing, whereas other poet's can - perhaps the emphasis on American political and cultural reconstruction held artists back, as do and did the political games of exposure that have all "black" anthologies, or all "Chinese" anthologies, or perhaps the more hideous, all "Asian" anthologies. The question is, are any of those worthy of the "all poets" anthologies?

On the whole though, things are being weeded. The true excellence or failure of the artists now esteemed and to be esteemed is still in the question. One thing is certain though, as a tradition, Post-Modernism found a much stronger artistic delivery, from what can be seen now outside of The United States - we just look to Latin America to see the real literary boom and greatness of post-modernity, not to Europe or the States (in point of fact, this was realized a long time ago, in places as far as China, where, few speak English, and fewer other languages but somehow the major trendsetters since the 1980s have been pulling from Latin America and not the States.

[Jassy Melson]

You say that the U.S. has perhaps one of the hardest times laughing at itself. You should read more southern literature. The south's writers are the only ones in the U.S. who are laughing occasionally at ourselves. The writers from the north, midwest and west take things too seriously. Southern writers for some reason are able to get past the seriousness and see the humor.

[YesNo]

Generally speaking, from what I can gather, the reason for all the nonsense and inaccessibility of American post-modernity is the simple fact that the authors, like the readers, have no idea exactly what everything means

I didn't follow most of your post, but I placed in bold the part that I think I could agree with.

Where I would disagree is that I think the readers have a different "idea exactly what everything means" and this is what leads to the conflict. The readers aren't as clueless as I think you portray them.