Re: jds&postmodernism
Camille Scaysbrook (verona_beach@geocities.com)
Fri, 28 Aug 1998 10:01:26 +1000
> I'm interested in the way postmodernism (whatever that really means
beyond
> fragmentation and synthethis) creates new reading opportunities in
> salinger's fiction.
To me, postmodernism is only definable by its conditions - you can't really
say what it is, only what its context is, which is *really* what it is (got
that ???). For example, it couldn't be POST modern without the pre-existing
condition of Modernism. It couldn't be synthesis without the elements to be
synthesised, and so on. But it's also a lot of other things - double coding
for example (that is, the paradoxic acknowledgement and denial of something
- for example, Uma Thurman's character in Pulp Fiction who is both the same
and opposite to the traditional femme fatale). Intertextuality is an
interesting Salinger issue because the universe of texts he draws from is
his own; the Glass family is his own pop culture.
> I think that "Hapworth" gets a better context these
> days than when it was published,
That's probably true. I think S: AI sits a lot more comfortably with a lot
of the postmodernist texts I've been studying lately than anything else.
What fascinates me about this or any movement is that the artists involved
in it come up with similar ideas simultaneously on opposite sides of the
globe
> but what about other salinger work and
> postmodernism?
Hmmm ... well I think TCIR is a major step away from the grand narratives -
that is the Western ones - the very fact that Salinger chose (or was at
least influenced by) the Eastern grand narratives is an acknowledgement of
the failure of the Western ones. The idea of synthesising the Eastern and
Western viewpoint, particularly in his short stories (I'm think of all the
things I said about how Salinger adapted the koan to a Western mode here)
seems to me particularly postmodern. And just yesterday, like I said, I
found out that the kind of book S:AI is has a name - a `metatext'. Such
texts are characterised by collage - that is, the snatches out of Seymour's
diary, Muriel's `Sex is Fun-Or Hell' magazine article, even Boo Boo's
message on the bathroom mirror. Also Buddy's knowledge that he is creating
a book in which he doesn't even attempt to hide his persona as the author.
> Is mr. salinger resistent to lit theory or are amateur
> readers assisted with new approaches to lit? will
The thing I like best about postmodernism is that we are all, whether we
like it or not, whether we acknowledge it or not, caught up in it and a
part of it. In fact it's a characteristically postmodern thing to know that
you are part of a literary movement rather than classifying it as such many
years later. Therefore I think that by thinking of Salinger in terms of
postmodernism, we're just putting in more scholarly words the things that
anyone may think - a kid who thinks `hey! that scene in Pulp Fiction
reminds me of that scene in movie X' is in essence saying the same thing as
a scholar who says `Here Tarantino is using intertextuality and bricolage'.
You don't need to understand Derrida to be a postmodernist (and let's face
it - who does (: ) Postmodernism is essentially populist, and the thing I
like most about it is yes, it allows a synthesis to occur between the
amateur reader and the scholar! I'm just as ever-so-slightly bemused to be
studying `Pulp Fiction' at university as anyone might be - but I'm finding
it so very valuable in considering texts right across the board.
Camille
verona_beach@geocities.com
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