POMO rants

[Paul York]

Meg Larson wrote:

> I started out with the following books;

[snip]

> Hutcheon, Linda. _The Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory,        Fiction._
>  London: Routledge, 1988.
> 
> ---. _The Politics of Postmodernism._  London: Routledge, 1989.
> 
> Natoli, Joseph and Linda Hutcheon.  _A Postmodern Reader._ New  York: State
> U of NY Press, 1993.

Hutcheon's _The Poetics of Postmodernism_ is certainly one book I would 
also recommend for someone interested in getting a grasp on at least 
*one* concept of PoMo (aarrgh! now you foax got me doin it) re 
literature, as it's very accessible and doesn't require a heavy duty 
grounding in the language of lit crit.  Though it's been some years 
since I read it, I would say that it should be particularly interesting 
in the light of M&D in that Hutcheon defines  as "postmodernist" those 
works which she considers to be "historiographic metafictions," which 
include (I can't remember them all) books such as Coover's _The Public 
Burning_, Doctorow's _The Book of Daniel_, Swift's (not *that* Swift) 
_Waterland_ (and maybe Wolf's _Cassandra_); books which (and I'm hoping 
Meg will correct me if this reductive bastardization is misleading) 
books which deal with historical narratives in a manner that calls the 
traditional project of such narratives into question.  All in all, 
Hutcheon's definition of "postmodernism" at least as it applies to 
literature is probably a little narrower than generally encountered 
nowadays so that it wouldn't include many novelists that others might 
classify as such.

Another helpful, and accessible, introduction re PoMo and Lit would be 
Brian McHale's (I believe I got the name right, someone correct me if 
I'm wrong) _Postmodern Fiction_.  He defines literary modernism as an 
epistemological project aimed at questioning how we look at the world 
(which he gives as the impetus behind the fictional strategies of say, 
Faulkner and Joyce) and literary postmodernism as an ontological project 
aimed at questioning the very knowability of the world (in which 
category he includes at least some of Pynchon's books if not all).  
Again, it's been awhile since I've read this book so if any of this is 
misleading, I hope someone will set my shit straight.

One interesting aspect of McHale's book is that he argues that some 
books are part modernist, part postmodernist (I think he even has a name 
for this category though I can't remember it).  For example, Faulkner's 
_Absalom, Absalom_ is largely modernist, but for the chapter in which 
Shreve and Quentin narrate the part of Sutpen's tale about which they 
have no knowledge (sounds not unlike a certain narrator from M&D) which 
chapter he argues is *post*modern.  And so on.  He has a follow up book 
which is interesting as well though, in keeping with my other memory 
lapses, I can't give you the title of.

Decaffeinated and Trying to Get His Shit Together,
	Paul