gnostic and Gnostic

[jbor]

----------
>From: lorentzen-nicklaus at t-online.de (Lorentzen / Nicklaus)
>To: o.sell at telda.net
>Subject: Re:  gnostic and Gnostic
>Date: Wed, Dec 20, 2000, 8:53 PM
>

> but where are the great 'pomo' works from
>   the 80s and 90s? [vineland and m&d will not be accepted as representatives
of
>   this genre!]

I would say that it is the very notion of "genre" as being something stable
and finite which has been overturned, both by postmodernist criticisms and
postmodern fictions (such as _M&D_ and _Vineland_, among many other examples
c.1950-2001.) And, not all of those critical texts Otto listed are from the
60s and 70s. What of post-colonialism (eg Homi Bhabha's _Nation and
Narration_ 1990, and _Location of Culture_ 1994) . . . cyberpunk (Gibson et
al) . . .  the hypertext novel (perhaps a dead end, admittedly) . . .
Rushdie, Coetzee, Gibson, Gaddis, Foster Wallace . . .

> let's face it: a generation has gone into the land (- as we say
>   here, don't know if this formulation does exist in the english language),
and
>   "pomo" has turned into a fat bitch kept up by exactly that kind of
>   institutional indolence brinkmann and fiedler wanted to overcome ...
>
I don't know that this is at all true. (Would you say the same of Pynchon,
for example? Or is it easier to claim that his later texts are no longer
"postmodernist" and seek to redeem him somehow, while slagging
"postmodernism" in the very same breath?) Anyway, it's the practitioner who
becomes a "fat bitch", not the practice.

best