{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1886",
    "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": 1886,
    "subject": "Mo/Po-mo stuff",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1999-10-29T09:25:35+00:00",
    "last": "1999-10-29T09:25:35+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0028-0316@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Jonathan Laidlow",
        "address": "laidlojm at hhs.bham.ac.uk"
      },
      "date": "1999-10-29T09:25:35+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Mo/Po-mo stuff",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Have to agree with Alex's epistemological/ontological theory.  \nIndeed its the one that McHale puts forward in _Postmodernist \nFiction_. The usual way I try to explain it to students (on a simple \nlevel) is that modernism was concerned with finding new ways to \nrepresent reality, because old models did not seem adequate (ie \nC19 realism). Postmodernism takes this a step further and \nsuggests that reality cannot be successfully represented, so the \nalternative is to turn away from that and play with the form of fiction \nand the way reality can only ever be 'represented', not described.\n\nI'm not sure I liked McHale's first book - like the work of Linda \nHutcheon it seemed very good as a undergrad student but now \nseems to suck some of the excitement out of po-mo fiction. I \nbelieve McHale's 'Constructing Postmodernism' is better, but that \ncould just be because he actually spends a lot of time on sf in that \none.\n\nThe American early postmodernists like Gaddis, Barth, and \nBarthelme haven't really stayed in print over here (UK), and I must \nsay that the most exciting postmodern fictions I've read recently \nhave been Delillo's 'White Noise', Rushdie's 'Midnights Children' \nand 'Satanic Verses', and (an oldie) Pynchon's 'Crying of Lot 49'. I \npersonally thought that the short version of Pynchon is not only the \nmost accessible, but also the most focussed of his works. Still \nhaven't got past the Baseball game in Delillo's 'Underworld' yet. \nSince I began the book early this year I've finally had the chance to \nattend a Baseball game and so must try again, just in case it \nmakes more sense.\n\nAll this concentration on 20th century Modernism/Post-modernism \nignores the fact that there have been modernisms throughout \nhistory. I've been attempting for a while now to put together a \ncoherent argument that my man Sterne has to be considered as \npart of an 18th century modernism (as in an attempt to undermine \nand reformulate established models of representation and find a \nnew way to express the 'real') rather than as a man out of time who \nprefigures our 20th century concerns.\n\nAnd I haven't mentioned Wolfe once! Sorry....\n\nSo - to briefly add to the introducing Wolfe to others - I have \nsuccessfully passed 'Shadow of the Torturer' to two of the Profs \n(and in the UK a Professor is the top job - you only get the title when \nyou're a real bigwig) who both thoroughly enjoyed it. Indeed one of \nthem has migrated to  5th Head and I've now just put him onto Long \nSun.\n\nAnd I haven't even begun to wade thru the Whorl stuff of recent \nmonths, so can I just say that OBW is a masterpiece which left me \nunable to read anything but comics and magazines for about three \ndays, as nothing else I might consider reading would even come \nclose....\n\n\nJonathan\nVisit Ultan's Library - A Gene Wolfe web resource\nhttp://members.tripod.co.uk/laidlow/index.htm\nJonathan Laidlow\nUniversity of Birmingham, UK"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}