{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1877",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
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  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 1877,
    "subject": "More modernism (and postmodernism)!",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1999-10-28T02:14:27+00:00",
    "last": "1999-10-28T02:14:27+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0028-0292@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Daniel Fusch",
        "address": "dfusch at hotmail.com"
      },
      "date": "1999-10-28T02:14:27+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) More modernism (and postmodernism)!",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Well, I'm glad I didn't just annoy everyone by bringing up modernism! \nEspecially glad...I'm having a lot of fun with this discussion.\n\nThe rest of you people are far more familiar with the current modernist \ntrends than I am! I've mostly studied the early modernists.\n\nWhile we're on the topic of who we've left out, it seems that we've skipped \nquite a few fantastic writers from the midcentury generation. Ralph Ellison, \nfor instance. Not to mention Eudora Welty.\n\nBy the way, I hold up \"Invisible Man\" as another example of modernist \nfiction that is \"easily readable.\" The novel is told in \"fairly \nstraightforward\" first-person narrative (like TBOTNS). Someone a while back \nasserted that it is interesting how little Wolfe used modernist techniques \n(i.e., stream-of-consciousness) in The Book of the New Sun. Well, I'd just \nlike to say, purely for the sake of debate, that if modernist techniques are \nreduced to stream-of-consciousness and distorted-perceptive language, then \nit is very interesting how few modernists use modernist techniques.\n\nOn the other hand, I admit that I'm just being outrageously argumentative. \nIt IS notable that Wolfe does not use stream-of-consciousness, and it is \nworth speculating why stream-of-consciousness would not serve his purpose. \n(I would answer: Severian's story is, as far as plot goes, a heroic \nromance--a fantasy about a torturer's apprentice who has many adventures and \neventually becomes the ruler of the land. Wolfe used first person narrative \nbecause he wanted to write the memoirs of Severian, as it were; \nstream-of-consciousness is unfortunately not very effective for writing \nmemoirs.)\n\nSo whoever brought up stream-of-consciousness had a point (I've forgotten \nwho it was). I do think we need to go further and analyze the modernist \ntechniques that Wolfe DOES use, however. The shifting into Thecla's \nconsciousness is the most obvious example, but there are others, as well.\n\nBut for the sake of argument, how does this shifting into Thecla's viewpoint \nwork? When is it used in the narrative, and why? How does it function in the \nstory? It would be interesting to get everyone's thoughts on these \nquestions.\n\nAlso--what do we learn about Severian during these shifts? How do these \nshifts point the reader to certain themes? Finally, what is Wolfe trying to \nsay about the perception of reality?\n\nNow that I've tossed out a few questions, I'll answer one, or try to. Robert \nasked for some information on modernism/postmodernism.\n\n(snip)\n\"But all of his work has that air of \"everything's been done before, so I'm \njust going to throw all past and present genres and styles in the blender \nand have fun riffing off them,\" which is what I think of when I think of \npostmodernism. Modernism (Joyce being the keystone example) always struck me \nas a lot more rigorous. Didn't the modernists believe that they were \ndragging art into a more advanced era, with the postmodern era arriving when \npeople finally decided that this progress was an illusion?"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "Anyway, I'm speaking out way beyond my knowledge. Please feel free to\ncorrect me.\n\n-- Bob\""
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Bob, I think the modernists also had a reputation for throwing all past \ngenres and styles into the blender (Faulkner and T. S. Eliot in \nparticular--but perhaps we shouldn't bring up Eliot lest we end up \nsidetracked onto a whole other topic--modernist poetry!). The modernists did \nwant to bring art into the modern era...specifically by examining our \nfragmented perceptions of reality in the modern age. They were very \ninterested in time, in applying mythological structure to ordinary people \nand events, and in experimenting with new types of narration that would \nbetter convey the actual perceptions of the characters.\n\nThe modernists were extremely interested in the way we perceive reality. A \nmodernist would argue that we can never fully capture reality as it is, \nalthough we can get as close as possible (that's where \nstream-of-consciousness and experimental narration come in). Or we can take \nmany different perceptions and add them all together to get as close as \npossible to the Truth. Faulkner does this in \"The Sound and the Fury\" -- a \nbook which he described as a work at which he failed...four times. Meaning \nthat none of the perspectives in the book gave us the final and complete \nTruth, although by adding all the perspectives together, we get as close as \npossible to having the big picture.\n\nLeGuin is a modernist writer of science fiction. Her novel \"The Left Hand of \nDarkness\" begins: \"I'll make my report as if I told a story, for I was \ntaught as a child on my homeworld that Truth is a matter of the \nimagination.\" Also, LeGuin shifts between two separate first-person \nnarratives throughout the book, for as the first narrator says, \"The story \nis not all mine, nor told by me alone. Indeed I am not sure whose story it \nis; you can judge better. But it is all one, and if at moments the facts \nseem to alter with an altered voice, why then you can choose the fact you \nlike best; yet none of them are false, and it is all one story.\"\n\nThat is a distinctly modernist view, and indeed, it is very Faulkneresque. \nWhen reading \"The Sound and the Fury,\" we may not be entirely sure whose \nstory it is, but it is \"all one story,\" though composed of multiple \nnarratives.\n\nIf you remember the old Eastern fable about the ten blind men examining the \nelephant...well, that's modernism.\n\nSo, in summary: modernism deals with the nature of our perception of \nreality.\n\nNow to postmodernism. It is very difficult to say anything concise about \npostmodernism, because by its nature it is a very nebulous \nphilosophy--complicated by the fact that there are postmodern narratives (in \nwhich you apply the postmodernist philosophy to art) and there is also \npostmodern criticism (in which you apply the postmodernist philosophy to \nliterary criticism...which is a whole 'nother ball of wax).\n\nDamien--I think it was Damien--paraphrased McHale earlier in saying that \npostmodernism looks not at the perception of reality, but at the reality of \nreality. This has to be the best definition of postmodern literature that I \nhave heard to date. I'll see if I can expand on it. Possibly Damien can \nexplain it better.\n\nBut here goes. Postmodernism (as a philosophy) questions the reality of our \nreality. While modernists wonder whether we can ever reach Truth through our \nflawed perception, postmodernists question the existence of Truth at all. A \npostmodernist believes either that there is no Truth, or that there are many \ntruths, each of them valid. In postmodernism, it is not \"all one story.\" It \nis many, or none at all. Postmodern literature, you see, is also very \nexperimental.\n\nFor example--one of the more popular branches of postmodern literature is \ndeconstructionism, which questions the idea that you can convey ideas \nthrough language. In a deconstructionist view, language can take on any \nmeaning because there is no final Meaning to language. There can never be a \nconnection between the word \"chair\" and the Platonic ideal chair.\n\nAn example of postmodern science fiction--I'm reaching a little here--might \nbe Doris Lessing's \"The Memoirs of a Survivor.\" That work owes something to \nmodernism as well, I think--but in the end, the book questions the reality \nof reality. The narrator exists in at least two realities (I'm referring to \nthe existence in her apartment and the journeys \"through the wall\"), and at \nthe end, reality breaks down altogether, and the events of the ending are \nopen game for the reader. In the end, the events don't really matter.\n\nPostmodernism, then, forces the question: \"Is there a reality? Is there a \ntruth?\"\n\nDoes this help you any, Bob?\n\nBy the way, I'm MUCH more familiar with modernism than postmodernism, so if \nanybody can clarify or correct my explanation here, I won't mind!\n\nDaniel"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}