Post Modernism

[Terrance F. Flaherty]

JBFRAME at aol.com wrote:
> 
> An essay on Pynchon & post modernism by Brian McHale:
> 
> http://spinoza.tau.ac.il/hci/pub/poetics/art/mod6.html

McHale notes Ulysses, To the Light House and The Sound and
the Fury. 

Some of the features found in stories prior to Falkner's
masterpiece:

Stories which, while apparently comprehensible, have plots
(mythos), that extend beyond literal interpretations to
mythological import and in which characters have
plausibility, but the simplicities and complexities of their
qualities do not connect
plausibly to humans; in which thoughts influence action and
character, without issuing from the reasoning processes or
the subconscious impulses of character and without
appearing in their statements; and in which the language
that characters use in conversations has no plausible
literal content or cultural origin. Melville, often uses
ideas as context and environment for the development of
action in his novels; Dostoevski constructs in the narrative
the several dimensions in which different characters view
their own actions and those of others, as well as act; Kafka
permits characters, situations, and thoughts to emerge alike
from a dream context and sets action in frames that shift
and alter literal meanings; the
 structure of what men think, do, and are, develops from the
intricacies of Jame’s involuted prose; the history of
mankind and of human thought and language are concentrated
in a few hours in Dublin by the linguistic devices of
 Joyce; Sartre and Queneau permit their characters to create
their circumstances and themselves.Also, Pynchon's science
fiction influence is rarely mentioned in criticism and I
wonder why? And Pynchon's "junkshop quality" and "crowded
surrealism" is also neglected. 

TF