Even Cathy Berberian knows...she can't sing

[Mark Kohut]

"Am I the only writer who does not know what postmodernism even means?"---Philip 
Roth, NPR interview a few years ago....

I think, but ask Dave, Ian or Alice, that modernism in literature began, say, 
1922?................I still don't know what postmodernism is,
but I keep struggling...




________________________________
From: Jude Bloom <jude.bloom at gmail.com>
To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Sat, September 11, 2010 7:35:12 PM
Subject: Re: Even Cathy Berberian knows...she can't sing

Don't words mean, in the end, what people use them to mean? Whatever the 
integrity or non of its roots, doesn't postmodern mean something that people 
have by and large agreed upon?  Maybe people should or shouldn't use them 
sparingly and in precise original meaning -- I dunno -- but they sure don't. Any 
musicologist, art historian, philosopher, etc etc has a broad idea of what 
someone means when they say "modern" and "postmodern." They may think the terms 
are dumb, mis-used, and mis-named, but they still get it. So unless I'm missing 
something -- and please be gentle, I'm sensitive, modern in fact doesn't mean 
contemporary, even if it should. It means, very broadly, the shit that was going 
on in the late 1800s and early to mid 1900s. 






On Sat, Sep 11, 2010 at 11:33 AM, Ian Livingston <igrlivingston at gmail.com> 
wrote:

Yes, David, I know where the terms come from. In fact, the term
>"Modern" (modernus) goes back to the 5th century of the current era.
>Anyway, using it to describe the current period in philosophy, science
>and the arts has merit, so long as it is, as Joseph suggests used with
>a modicum of grace. My point, which is already old and trite so I'll
>shut up on it after this, is that "Postmodernism" cannot exist,
>because the word itself refers to something that has not yet happened,
>something after the current time, which is modern. No style of
>architecture, no literary or philosophical trends, and no scientific
>investigative procedures fit the category. There just is no such
>thing. Pynchon is a contemporary writer, not a future one. Unless he's
>really one of his own characters from AtD, in which case I suppose he
>is plagiarizing works he is going to write when he actually exists at
>some period in the future.
>
>Please understand I say all this with a wry grin and wonder why I'm
>not posting on V. as I want to be doing, but I only have these few
>moments each morning to say anything at all. Perhaps it's just an
>expression of my own frustration with modern pressures.


      
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