What is post modernism in fiction? How do YOU define it? Can you provide examples of post modern writing in recent fiction? I'm aware that the film "Blue Velvet" is considered to be post modern, but I'm trying to see how that applies to fiction.
Post Modernism - Your Opinion Please
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Don Quixote was the first postmodern novel. He addressed the reader, talked to the reader about plot and narrative. All of that stuff that didn't become fashionable until the 20th century.
I think I could spend hours trying to define postmodern literature, and still feel like I'd not given a full and complete explanation.
I'm not an expert on the subject, but to me the heart of postmodern literature is the absurdity of looking for meaning and rationality in human affairs; sort of a rejection of either a God looking out for mankind, or man's ability to truly control his own destiny. The only thing that anyone can predict is that he can't predict anything when it comes right down to it, let alone manage his own fate. Chaos rules the universe. Well, something like that anyway. It's easy to start waxing poetic when trying to describe an art form.
Some example that come to mind off the top of my head are the works of Kurt Vonnegut, E. L. Doctorow, and Thomas Pynchon.
I'm not an expert on the subject, but to me the heart of postmodern literature is the absurdity of looking for meaning and rationality in human affairs; sort of a rejection of either a God looking out for mankind, or man's ability to truly control his own destiny. The only thing that anyone can predict is that he can't predict anything when it comes right down to it, let alone manage his own fate. Chaos rules the universe. Well, something like that anyway. It's easy to start waxing poetic when trying to describe an art form.
Some example that come to mind off the top of my head are the works of Kurt Vonnegut, E. L. Doctorow, and Thomas Pynchon.
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this is actually a good explanation of postmodern literature.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodern_literature
it's a good place to start. if you want to read some postmodern that isn't too out there, definitely try pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49.
You've probably read some of the books listed without realizing it was supposed to be "postmodern". It's not all weird. lol
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodern_literature
it's a good place to start. if you want to read some postmodern that isn't too out there, definitely try pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49.
You've probably read some of the books listed without realizing it was supposed to be "postmodern". It's not all weird. lol
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The play Waiting For Godot is what I think of when I think of Post-Modern literature, but it can be hard to tell the difference between post-modernism and surrealism IMHO. Where they overlap is that both play along the border between sense and nonsense, and are not about strict logical causality. Self-referentialism and level-crossing are typical post-modern features, but not present in all post-modern work. I dunno... I took a class on Post-modernism but I got a C in it because I have a very modern structural mindset myself and even after studying it for a semester I didn't really understand it, although I've come to understand it a bit better as I've gotten older and come to see how little sense reality actually makes. Ha! there's a definition for you: "Postmodernism is to classical fiction what quantum physics is to classical science."
Plenty of Victorian novels address the reader: Dickens did it all the time. That doesn't make him a postmodernist.
Briefly, read almost any novel written before the twentieth century, and you have a sense that the author is saying: here is the world and it is possible to have a full and complete picture of it. Modernism didn't take hold until the early twentieth century. Anything written in the earlier style before then is pre-modernist, anything later is anti-modernist. (Unless it's postmodern pastiche, more later.)
Early Modernist writers include Henry James and Joseph Conrad. What they seem to be saying is: here is the world and it MAY be possible to see it whole, but we can only see a partial or incomplete picture of it. Hence ambiguity and possibly unreliable narrators (cf. James's The Turn of the Screw), uncertainty and insecurity, non-linearity (Conrad was one of the earliest exponents of flashbacks). This tied in with movements in other arts, such as music and a breakdown of previous certainties, a process accelerated by the First World War. Also tied in with this was an interest in reproducing the flow (or "stream") of human consciousness - more an emphasis less on what happens than what is going through the protagonist's head as it happens. See novels by James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, some William Faulkner, etc. Many of these devices and themes have been so absorbed into western culture that we don't notice them any more. Most fiction nowadays, certainly most literary fiction, is modernist.
Postmodernism goes a step further, in denying that there is some objective truth or world out there and our ability to contain it. Often characterised by irony, deliberate pastiche of writing styles (usually to show up its assumptions and hidden values and to emphasise the artificiality of literary forms), emphasis on life's absurdity, black comedy and so on. Hence you get things like extreme non-linearity, removal of cause from effect, multiple endings (see John Fowles's The French Lieutenant's Woman amongst others), direct address to the reader - all of which is intended to emphasise the novel's status as artifice, not reality.
Not all works which can be defined as postmodern are that extreme. Many can simply be read as stories, though maybe told in a slightly unusual way. Alice Walker's The Color Purple, for example, is a series of letters from the protagonist, Celie, to God. Walker uses the old (and certainly predating the Modernist era) convention of the epistolary novel, but as the letter writer is a poor black woman, someone who would normally not be given the "authority" to write. And while that is going on, you can read the novel simply as a very moving story - no wonder it did so well.
Briefly, read almost any novel written before the twentieth century, and you have a sense that the author is saying: here is the world and it is possible to have a full and complete picture of it. Modernism didn't take hold until the early twentieth century. Anything written in the earlier style before then is pre-modernist, anything later is anti-modernist. (Unless it's postmodern pastiche, more later.)
Early Modernist writers include Henry James and Joseph Conrad. What they seem to be saying is: here is the world and it MAY be possible to see it whole, but we can only see a partial or incomplete picture of it. Hence ambiguity and possibly unreliable narrators (cf. James's The Turn of the Screw), uncertainty and insecurity, non-linearity (Conrad was one of the earliest exponents of flashbacks). This tied in with movements in other arts, such as music and a breakdown of previous certainties, a process accelerated by the First World War. Also tied in with this was an interest in reproducing the flow (or "stream") of human consciousness - more an emphasis less on what happens than what is going through the protagonist's head as it happens. See novels by James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, some William Faulkner, etc. Many of these devices and themes have been so absorbed into western culture that we don't notice them any more. Most fiction nowadays, certainly most literary fiction, is modernist.
Postmodernism goes a step further, in denying that there is some objective truth or world out there and our ability to contain it. Often characterised by irony, deliberate pastiche of writing styles (usually to show up its assumptions and hidden values and to emphasise the artificiality of literary forms), emphasis on life's absurdity, black comedy and so on. Hence you get things like extreme non-linearity, removal of cause from effect, multiple endings (see John Fowles's The French Lieutenant's Woman amongst others), direct address to the reader - all of which is intended to emphasise the novel's status as artifice, not reality.
Not all works which can be defined as postmodern are that extreme. Many can simply be read as stories, though maybe told in a slightly unusual way. Alice Walker's The Color Purple, for example, is a series of letters from the protagonist, Celie, to God. Walker uses the old (and certainly predating the Modernist era) convention of the epistolary novel, but as the letter writer is a poor black woman, someone who would normally not be given the "authority" to write. And while that is going on, you can read the novel simply as a very moving story - no wonder it did so well.
This kind of discussion always reminds me of Lillian Rearden's anniversary party in Atlas Shrugged, at which philosopher Simon Pritchett is expounding his belief that "Nothing is anything." Someone asks what Pritchett's rival, Hugh Akston, believed. Francisco D'Anconia replies, "Everything is something."
My own feeling is that if your point is that nothing has meaning, why bother writing at all? Writing implies meaning. The psychological and political uses of "nothing is anything" are also interesting.
My own feeling is that if your point is that nothing has meaning, why bother writing at all? Writing implies meaning. The psychological and political uses of "nothing is anything" are also interesting.
Cute quote, but of course quantum physics still serves the same purpose as classical physics; investigating, describing and predicting the real world.
If you think novels are chunks of narrative prose that tell a story in an absorbing way, then a post modern novel isn't really a novel.
Appreciate the post. It reminded me that I needed to find the book, "The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentlemen," by Laurence Sterne. Went down to B&N and ordered it. A very old book, it is sometimes listed under postmodern classics.
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It seems to me yet another to categorize literary fiction into certain sub-genres. It's probably of more interest to lit classes than the normal discerning readers.
Or a postmodern novel two centuries before the term was invented, and a strong influence on many postmodernists. And still funny.
It's totally litclass and literary criticism. I can't imagine too many readers standing in the bookstore going "wow how very postmodern." More like, "geez, this doesn't make any sense." lol
It's not really an attempt to categorize in sub-genre so much as to categorize into movements.
All art has movements, and postmodernism is one. It's been expressed in art, film, philosophy, etc., as well. Previously, there's been Romanticism, Modernism, etc., etc.
And maybe some of us crazy lit geek readers actually do sometimes stand in bookstores saying to ourselves, "hmmm, I want something postmodern, with some existentialism in it, and maybe feels kind of like Batman, and maybe a few things blow up in it."
I couldn't think of anything, so I decided to write it.
All art has movements, and postmodernism is one. It's been expressed in art, film, philosophy, etc., as well. Previously, there's been Romanticism, Modernism, etc., etc.
And maybe some of us crazy lit geek readers actually do sometimes stand in bookstores saying to ourselves, "hmmm, I want something postmodern, with some existentialism in it, and maybe feels kind of like Batman, and maybe a few things blow up in it."
I couldn't think of anything, so I decided to write it.
Wink-wink-nudge-nudge cynicism that misses its own ideological centre in its false position as self-appointedly post-ideological, apathy, interpassivity, and incredible smugness.
That is postmodernism.
That is postmodernism.
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I agree with alleycat. The heart of post-modernism is that subjectivity is reality, there is no underlying absolute truth.
Irony and cynicism is more post-post-modern is it suggests the ability to judge others rather than the need to accept any perspective with no way to suggest it is inferior to another perspective.
From current books I would count the Da Vinci Code as post modern in how it blends history/alternative history and fiction with disregard to the difference. From earlier books I would count Clockwork Orange due to the ambiguity and absence of overt moral judgement of Alex (ignoring the final chapter).
Irony and cynicism is more post-post-modern is it suggests the ability to judge others rather than the need to accept any perspective with no way to suggest it is inferior to another perspective.
From current books I would count the Da Vinci Code as post modern in how it blends history/alternative history and fiction with disregard to the difference. From earlier books I would count Clockwork Orange due to the ambiguity and absence of overt moral judgement of Alex (ignoring the final chapter).
I think of Finnegans Wake by James Joyce. An interesting accomplishment and virtually unreadable. I can't tell if it's a work of genius or a practical joke.
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