pomo rant

[Richard Romeo]

>Franzen coyly tips his hat to several forebears along the way <snip>

...has made a novel like ''The Corrections'' -- a far less dense and
>demanding read -- seem part of a new mainstream, in which either teasing 
>hints of formalism dress up the randomness or irruptions of randomness 
>juice up the formalism. (Choose one. Or not.) Whether or not this is a good 
>idea
>is a matter of taste --
--------------------------
this is kind've what I was getting at--that the mainstream has acepted this 
hybrid realist-surrealist doo-dad that tries to be everything--heck, if I 
was a writer and had many influences under my belt as many have today to 
cull from, I'd probably end doing the same thing, trying to duplicate the 
weirdness of living today on the page.  I admit I'm an odd egg, liking 
writers like Coover and Pynchon who are unafriad to throw in talking 
animals, weird sex, and cartoon characters and what not, and who write 
highly serious novels of more than 200 pgs.  Moody, Wallace, Franzen are 
picking the less icky parts of the pomo canon and incorporating that into 
their dysfunctional, highly self-reflexive tales, tales that the mainstream 
will be able to swallow. My problem w/ these younger writers is that I look 
forward to entering a new world of imagination beyond today's concerns 
exclusively, and not a replica of what I see everyday on the street.  It's 
no different from other realists writers have done over the centuries. Of 
course, there's something to the argument that some pomo writers have become 
what we fear they'd become:  clever structuralists and game playing 
overarchers who say alot about a little.
That could explain why I'm reading mostly non-fiction nowadays--it's surreal 
enough to put me off much current fiction of today.

oh well

rich


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