{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1884",
    "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'"
  },
  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 1884,
    "subject": "Mo/Po-mo",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1999-10-28T12:13:15+00:00",
    "last": "1999-10-28T12:13:15+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0028-0313@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Alex David Groce",
        "address": "alex_groce at gs246.sp.cs.cmu.edu"
      },
      "date": "1999-10-28T12:13:15+00:00",
      "subject": "Re: (urth) Mo/Po-mo",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Maybe the best distinction is one of underlying epistemology/ontology, as it\napplies to non-literary things that can be labeled modernist or post-modernist\nas well.  Modernists belive that things (stories, whatever) exist and have a\nreal nature, but that this nature may be only approximated by any method of\ntelling about the things:  Joyce is does not doubt Dublin, but can only show it\nby a collection of perspectives, styles, voices, allusions, and even then does\nnot capture the real thing.  Post-modernists go beyond doubt that we can \ncapture the nature of the things to doubt that the things have real, unitary\nnatures, or even, for that matter, exist apart from the (doomed) attempts to\ncapture them.  It's essentially a universal agnosticism/atheism, applied to\nthings other than God (and the \"author\" often takes the place of God in \ncriticisms structurally similar to those offered by other thinkers against\nGod).  Wolfe obviously falls into the modernist camp, and from this point\nof view, ignoring the techniques, fits very snugly, and is quite different many\nof his literary \"parents\"--Dickens, one suspects, did not consider, as Wolfe\nclearly does, the impossibility of describing/constructing the \"soul\" of\na character to be an important element of attempting to describe a character.\n\n...\n\nBy the way, I did like CASTLEVIEW, I just didn't \"get it.\"  Unlike most Wolfe\nworks that remain fundamentally mysterious (like \"The Ziggurat\", his best \nshorter work in years), it left me puzzled rather than awed.  But it _was_ fun\nto read.  On the other hand, if he'd only written it, I think our quest to\nsave him from the rubble-heap of history would be less worthy.  On the third(?)\nhand, if he'd written only THE FIFTH HEAD OF CERBERUS or BOTNS, there would be\nfodder for canonization.\n\n\n\"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.\" John 8:32"
        },
        {
          "kind": "sig",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Alex David Groce (agroce+ at cs.cmu.edu)\nPh.D. Student, Carnegie Mellon University - Computer Science Department\n8112 Wean Hall (412)-268-3066\nhttp://www.cs.cmu.edu/~agroce"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}