Re: Yeah, what th’ heck *are* the “points” of pomo?

[David Morris]

Speaking of Charles Jencks:

https://www.architecturalrecord.com/articles/15325-charles-jenckss-eclectic-the-cosmic-house-opens-in-london

Charles Jencks’s Eclectic “The Cosmic House” Opens in London

It’s definitely very Pomo.

The former West London home of Charles Jencks, critic, land artist, and
patron of architecture, has been converted into a museum and is now open to
the public. Little else has been touched in this maximalist, encyclopedic
building.

On Sun, Oct 3, 2021 at 6:10 PM David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:

> Back again, #3.
>
> So, following the logic that new movements are usually reactions against
> previous regimes or modes of thought, what might Lit Modernism have been
> reacting against? (Here’s where my lack of any schooling on the subject
> quickly shows.)  My initial thought/guess was that it was against
> Romanticism.  In my mind Realism would be The opposite of Romanticism, and
> thus it might be Modernism ‘s goal.  And if I were to ask myself “Who is
> modernism’s greatest author and its greatest work? I would respond with
> James Joyce and Ulysses.  But Ulysses is anything but realistic.  It pushes
> Style to the forefront in overtly absurd ways. So I then quickly lose all
> traction.
>
> But maybe we can look a some of Modernism’s experiments, like Sound &
> Fury’s stream of  consciousness, a contrivance that seeks a kind of deeper
> reality, somewhat in the way that Picasso’s cubism sought a “realism”
> gotten via multiple perspectives simultaneously seen, mashed-up onto a
> single canvas. Maybe Joyce’s obtuse Ulysses stylings are an attempt at a
> code requiring deeper analysis from the reader to find deeper truth?
> Aren’t both these possibly attempts at a realism deeper than surface
> appearance?  So maybe Realism really was a goal of Modernism.
>
> Now let’s go back to Michaels first question about the “points” of Pomo.
> Again, Pomo was reacting against what it felt were the puritanical
> strictures of Modern architecture: rejection of all historical forms, and a
> bare, strictly honest lack of unnecessary embellishments.  So Pomo started
> using historical references and shapes, but reinterpreted to be free of the
> traditional rules, or a willful breaking of them, hopefully in a
> non-obvious way.  Sometimes deconstructed historical fragments incorporated
> within  a modern bigger whole.  A kind of richness of “unnecessary”
> decoration was allowed again.   But in clumsy hands this all became a
> pastiche of bad tastes and ugly excess, and quickly became old.  And then
> the pendulum reverses direction again.
>
> OK, now I’m running out of steam.
>
> David Morris
>
> On Sun, Oct 3, 2021 at 3:02 AM David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> OK, back already.  So maybe I should start by describing arch Modernism
>> as my springboard into discussing lit Modernism.
>>
>> I think arch modernism has to start with understanding what it was trying
>> to escape or trying to reform.  It was trying to escape the shackles of
>> history (hence “modernism”), which meant the manifestations of history in
>> the most previous “styles” of architecture.  In fact “style” became a dirty
>> word.
>>
>> The major styles of the day were based on the archeological finds of
>> pre-dark age civilizations.  And after these resurrected ancient cultural
>> forms were exhausted during the post Renaissance eras (including the
>> exotica of Egypt and the permutations of baroqueism and mannerism), then
>> even the dark ages style, Gothic, became reconsidered as a kind of “honest
>> style” before the Renaissance resurrections.  All these styles became
>> pastiche systems like patterns in a catalog.  Thus style became seen as a
>> dishonest form of decoration, without substance.
>>
>> Modern architecture sought to transcend the very concept of styles, which
>> were seen as preconceived forms and preconceived systems of form.  So maybe
>> this is a way to start thinking about the goals of modernist writing.
>>
>> Again, done for now…
>>
>> David Morris
>>
>> On Sun, Oct 3, 2021 at 12:59 AM David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Pomo.  What is it?
>>>
>>> As you said “ Something that is clearly a development beyond modernism.”
>>> I’d agree, but only “beyond” in terms of chronology.  And Mark probably
>>> thinks modernism never left.
>>>
>>> As I said earlier, the term Pomo was coined by Charles Jencks, referring
>>> to architectural tendencies emerging some time in the mid/late 60s but
>>> fully born (yet still exciting) by the mid 70s.  Jencks’s focus was narrow,
>>> but what he saw as a break from architectural modernism was very real in a
>>> wider sense. I grew up into arch Pomo’s 70’s beginnings, first embracing it
>>> when my teachers mostly hated it.  But I rejected it completely by the
>>> mid/late 80s.  Since then architecture has been exploring many and various
>>>  aspects of what I (but nobody else) call neo modernism.
>>>
>>> This architectural neo modernism is publicly manifested in the
>>> aesthetics of Dwell magazine [  https://www.dwell.com/  ]
>>> and the  love of all things “mid-century modern,” the time of the  last
>>> breaths of Modernism’s first wave.  A renewed love of the “new” has been a
>>> very big in all today’s “cutting-edge” architecture for over 30 years.
>>> It’s probably also a very real thing (or anti-thing) in the rest of the Art
>>> world.
>>>
>>> Today arch Pomo would be remembered by all its bad things, it’s
>>> failings.  Now most commonly known by what became the worst things we
>>> culturally remember from the 80s, when it was already well on its way out.
>>> Did literature have a parallel trajectory?  I wouldn’t know.  I’d guess
>>> not.  Things like this are more obvious in architecture, for some reason.
>>>
>>> Modernism.  What was (is?) it?
>>> I think that’s an important question in considering of literature, and
>>> more esoteric art forms.
>>>
>>> I’ll stop this for now, but maybe pick it up again soon.  Feel free to
>>> jump in. And I will also  try to address some of Michael’s comments.
>>>
>>> David Morris
>>>
>>> On Sat, Oct 2, 2021 at 11:19 PM Michael Bailey <
>>> michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> There is a ligature in the “m” - I’m not asking what are the points of
>>>> porno, as would be the purport if the humps of the “m” were unbound…
>>>>
>>>> With porno - as some judge said,
>>>> “I know it when I see it!”
>>>>
>>>> With Pomo?
>>>> Author cropping up in the tale?
>>>> Experimental structures that subvert expectations?
>>>> Something that is clearly a development beyond modernism -
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> which, what th’ heck is modernism?
>>>> Long frickin’ books?
>>>> Also experimental but not as radical as Pomo?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> And - what do you call
>>>> Churlish non-appreciative types - Sokal and Bricmont - submitting
>>>> gibberish
>>>> in an effort to discredit complex argument, as in the Science Wars?
>>>>
>>>> I have this in common with them: when I apply the blade of my
>>>> vocabulary to
>>>> the wrought iron of description, the teeth get worn down and I start
>>>> sounding like their parodies, failing to make the cut.
>>>> (Need the carbon steel, or the zircon-encrusted tweezers!)
>>>>
>>>> Other literary trends with roots in modernist, postmodern, and even
>>>> pre-modern lit make more sense:
>>>>
>>>> Queering - questioning fundamental tenets of sex and gender, exploring
>>>> transgressiveness
>>>>
>>>> Postcolonialism (Joyce as Irishperson working out on English, eg)
>>>>
>>>> Deconstruction - yeah, break it down!
>>>>
>>>> Theory - application of particular tenets of individual theorists to
>>>> texts
>>>> - which in aggregate, I think, is the phenomenon most often called
>>>> postmodernism- this is vulnerable to debunkers like Sokal and Bricmont,
>>>> who
>>>> rip through the lace of fanciful argument because it isn’t denim (would
>>>> Levi-Strauss approve?)
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> And thank you, too, for your forbearance!
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Dave and Mark wrote:
>>>>
>>>> First, I really like that analogy. I'm gonna use it somewhere.
>>>>
>>>> Second, I think Pynchon is and has always
>>>> been a modernist. All of the indebtedness is there. Literary
>>>> postmodernism
>>>> is NOT
>>>> simply the narrative trickery of GR particularly, or the way that rocket
>>>> keeps on falling.
>>>>
>>>> Although I think, if he had to answer, Thomas Pynchon would say he knew
>>>> what postmodernism is
>>>> and it ain't him. Philip Roth, when asked by Terri Gross about his
>>>> postmodern turn---re *The Counterlife*, I think,
>>>> maybe *Operation Shylock*,--the one with the two Philip Roths--- dunno,
>>>> said "Terri, I don't even know what postmodernism
>>>> is, I just try to tell my story in the best way I can." [not
>>>> necessarily an
>>>> exact quote]
>>>>
>>>> And, yes, I see less talk of postmodernism in the facile lit sphere than
>>>> just a few years ago. It seems taken for granted in
>>>> academic books I learn of. So, yes, we are beyond it or always in it as
>>>> we
>>>> seem to have been in late capitalism for longer than we've
>>>> all been alive.
>>>>
>>>> Thanks, David.
>>>>
>>>> On Wed, Sep 29, 2021 at 7:57 PM David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com
>>>> <https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> >* A ramble:
>>>> *>>* Does everyone (or MOST everyone) agree that Postmodernism, however
>>>> *>* problematic that label might be, is now in the past us?  I don’t
>>>> hear
>>>> *>* anyone taking about it anymore. Although I don’t know what we might
>>>> be “in”
>>>> *>* right  now, I gather whatever it is, it’s still described in
>>>> relation to
>>>> *>* modernism somehow, aspects of modernism, either “neo” or “post”
>>>> *>* **something** or other (like, maybe, post or neo structuralism).
>>>> Or maybe
>>>> *>* “it” just claims ownership of some aspect of modernism without
>>>> admitting
>>>> *>* lineage, maybe as if there never really was a modernism?
>>>> *>>* I’ve never been a part of lit-theory, but being a long time member
>>>> of this
>>>> *>* list, I remember when Pynchon was often called a postmodernist.  I
>>>> think
>>>> *>* most of the early postmodern fiction writers were consciously
>>>> rebelling
>>>> *>* against aspects of modernism, so there was some consciousness of
>>>> being in a
>>>> *>* writer’s “generation,” but probably not a school or movement.
>>>> Being put
>>>> *>* into a labeled category usually is the work of critics and
>>>> historians after
>>>> *>* the fact (like Charles Jencks inventing the term “postmodern” - Is
>>>> that
>>>> *>* really true?  And he was ONLY taking about architecture!  So that’s
>>>> ANOTHER
>>>> *>* major aspect of this discussion).
>>>> *>>* Anyway…
>>>> *>* The reason I’m thinking about this is that I recently joined a
>>>> Facebook
>>>> *>* group for things Art Deco.  And people there are always posting
>>>> things that
>>>> *>* AREN’T Art Deco, and then asking, “Is this Art Deco?” And off to
>>>> the races
>>>> *>* we go, with the ever-present comment that all opinions on the
>>>> subject are
>>>> *>* equally valid, which is, of course absurdly ignorant.  It is a
>>>> moderated
>>>> *>* group, so, odds are, my days there are numbered…  So be it.
>>>> *>>* So in response to someone saying that all opinions are valid, I
>>>> wrote this:
>>>> *>>* “Art styles are like breeds of dogs.  A dog breed is judged by a
>>>> set of
>>>> *>* “points” specific to that breed.  Art styles also have points that
>>>> have
>>>> *>* been agreed upon by art historians and art critics.  These points
>>>> identify
>>>> *>* if a dog/artwork is of a known style, and also the level of
>>>> excellence the
>>>> *>* dog/artwork reaches in meeting those points.  Not all dogs are
>>>> Great
>>>> *>* Danes, and artworks are not all Art Deco, no matter how much the
>>>> viewer
>>>> *>* loves them.“
>>>> *>>* This kind of analysis is probably only useful for visual medium.
>>>> But I
>>>> *>* enjoyed coming up with this analogy that even those (on Facebook)
>>>> without
>>>> *>* any knowledge of “schools” or eras might understand.
>>>> *>>* Thanks for your forbearance.
>>>> *>* David Morris*
>>>> --
>>>> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>>>>
>>>