Post Modernism

[Terrance F. Flaherty]

Paul Mackin wrote:
> 
> On Sun, 19 Sep 1999, Terrance F. Flaherty wrote:
> 
> >
> >
> > 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
> >
> > We are getting there. Perhaps in the next six months critics
> > will begin calling GR Modern? Traditional? Thanks, I like
> > this essay, although McHale seems unwilling to toss the
> > post-modern shell game out completely--the postmodern
> > ontological.
> >
> > "it is clear that it will not do simply to set Post-Modern
> > fiction in opposition to the whole prior development of
> > narrative."
> >
> > No it will not do it will not do it will not do any more...
> 
> Wonder if McHale would still (how many years later) be into distinctions
> between dream and waking, between fictive reality and fictive fantacy. Has
> not postmodernism (or whatever we want to call current reader expectation)
> come some  way from the late seventies. I don't necessarity have a
> firm opinion--just asking.
> 
>                 P.


Don't know, but these are shifting sands as I see it. As I
said with only a slight wink, wait six months and see. One
thing that drove me crazy about the pomos is that I often
wondered if many post-modern critics even bothered to read
novels. McHale certainly has and I really think he was on to
it, finding the traditional in the rebellion if that's what
it may be called. I don't remember where he went with the 92
book. Too much of this all seemed to be talking at such a
distance from the texts. This essay does not seem to have
had much impact on the pomo crowd, but than things are
changing all the time in the pomo world where
beingknowingmeaningblend and one can not even know what is
pomo. Never been convinced that some pomo thing happened to
writers of fiction and they suddenly began writing as the
shifting sands of theory dictated. No, and of course even
pomo knew this and started looking for pomo texts before
there was pomo and well I guess that sort of put them in the
position of so many movements come and gone. In any event,
Thomas Pynchon is very traditional and I don't find anything
in GR or any other Pynchon novel that can't be found in
literature elsewhere. That being said, I think GR has more
of the things we find in a whole bunch of guys he "stole
from" as he says in SL. 

TF

TF