modernism

Damien Broderick · 27 Oct 1999, 12:47 · from urth-v0028.mbox · original

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From: Damien Broderick <d.broderick at english.unimelb.edu.au>
Subject: Re: (urth) modernism
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 12:47:22 +0000
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At 01:59 PM 26/10/99 -0700, Daniel Fusch <dfusch at hotmail.com> wrote:

>There are science fiction writers who are modernist (Walter M. Miller--in=20
>part. Also Wolfe and LeGuin--although you could argue that LeGuin is=20
>"post-modernist," if you could ever manage to define that literary traditi=
on=20
>precisely enough to use it as a label).

Ahem. This is not entirely unbroken ground. You might glance at, say,
Teresa Ebert, Fred Jameson, Vivian Sobchack, Brian McHale's POSTMODERNIST
FICTION or even my own READING BY STARLIGHT: POSTMODERN SCIENCE FICTION.

>Specifically, a modernist narration is one that examines the nature of our=20
>perception of reality.

And, in the McHale tradition, a postmodernist narration is one that
examines the reality of our=20
reality, so to speak.

I'm inclined to regard Gene Wolfe's central affiliation as modernist, FWIW.

And I'm loving this discussion...

Damien Broderick

*More Wolfe info & archive of this list at http://www.urth.net/urth/

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