What makes avant-garde avant-garde?

[Cyrus]

Malignd wrote:

>Generally, though, it seems we're at the end of a
>period of narrative experimentation or, if not the
>end, the most noted practictioners of it are getting
>old or are dead:  Barth, Barthelme, Nabokov, Borges,
>Coover, Calvino, Pynchon, Roth, Delillo; the usual
>suspects, the early postmoderns, in other words.  
>

A reason for the apparent death (or near death) of the avant-garde may 
be the ever-growing distance between the artist and the art-consumer 
(ugly term, please recommend another). In the most part of the 20th 
century, art had been "accelerating", constantly seeking new themes, 
methods and media. The term "Avant-garde" had meaning back then, as 
you've said. But art-consumers haven't been able to follow this 
acceleration. Many readers today, all educated people, are  unable to 
read many of the names you mention above. Just like many listeners, 
including students and graduates of music, are unable to listen to 
Stravinsky, Bartok, Schoenberg and Webern (old as they are) , not to 
mention Cage, Xenakis, Crumb and Maxwell Davies. My guess is that 
artists have been aware of that for some time now, which might explain 
the appearance of composers like Arvo Part, Alfred Schnittke, and 
others, seeking to expand on earlier forms. Who knows what might come of 
it in literature?

Cyrus