modernism

[Mr Haney]

dave morris: > > I purposely left out the particular characteristics of this radical> break, but here are its two most prominent aspects:> > > 1. Machine (and Industrial) Aesthetic - The Industrial Revolution &> mass production thrust the dominance of the machine over hand (man)> made into the world's consciousness. Buildings were likened to> machines and were increasingly assembled from mass-produced parts (or> at least that was the idea).> 
isn't that the thing that Gaddis made notes on for so many years...
although his take was more than a little splenetic:
individual virtuosity losing meaning against the player piano,
and then, too, the virtuosity of the player-piano-music factory owenr
(pride in craftsmanship in creating the piano rolls) losing out against
the deal-makers who buy companies, gut them, produce the cheapest
crap imaginable (like the school principal's door in JR, or the homes
built with 24-inches between the studs) in order to maximize revenue
 
With a dollop of optimism, seems like it doesn't have to be that way: 
still takes skill to design, not to mention to run the machines, and maybe
more skill than ever to find, make, keep and enforce an honest deal...
 
but anyway, mechanization does seem like an evergreen "modern" tendency, 
so, yeah, ok...
 
but how does that emerge in writing?  I guess the typewriter and then
the word processor, the ability to globally change, to search quickly, changes
what somebody would write to some extent...but not so very much, does it?
 
On the distribution side, new effects'll be available -- 
as people gradually switch from dead trees, though that's not going to happen overnight - 
but that _will_ change what's written
 
(snippage of some great links...)
 > 2. Avant Garde - a strategy for continous radical breaking away from the past.> 
not really a "difficulty", but at least a "problem": who, then,
constitutes the avant garde at a particular juncture?
 
problem could be addressed by the market (top sellers, or, at least,
those able to command top price), by the government (those chosen by
the commissar or the gauleiter or the New Dealer, or the GSA procurement
office, or DHS), or even by posterity (those whose work seems best to the historian; 
and/or those whose work is most influential and/or lasting...) -- anyway,
a defined position to be striven for, which does constitute 
a means of facilitating change
 
ok, but then if these things make up modernism...and the era in which they
were introduced could be called the "modernist era"...and I can sort of live
with that...(ignoring a lot of quibbles & so forth)
 
what is to be said for "post-modernism"? -
are certain sequelae to the modernist characteristics so inevitable
as not to need any definition other than positioning them after modernism?
 
 
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