Subject: Sex and the mod/pomo debate
From: Jon Tveite (jontv@ksu.edu)
Date: Sat Mar 01 1997 - 23:53:15 GMT
WILL <hochman@uscolo.edu> offers:
> The love I read in Salinger says less about sexuality than in most modern
> and postmodern texts (i think...)
Yeah, that's my view as well. In fact, Salinger is often attacked by
critics (W.French included) for being a prude -- harboring disdain for
sex. Between his fixation on childhood innocence and his interest in
Vedantic transcendence, it's not hard to see where people would come to
that conclusion. Myself, I've tried never to fault a writer for what
s/he decides *not* to write about. There's plenty of human experience
that doesn't involve sex (sorry, Dr. Freud). Maybe J.D. just doesn't
have anything to say about it.
Will, back in black:
> Matt, if you are saying that for something to be postmodern it needs that
> intention, i disagree. I think the time disjunction and links to glass
> family are more like hypertext than postmodernism, but I think the glass
> stories are stronger when we use postmodernist sensibilities like not
> limiting a text to genre, accepting a text's fragments as the reader's
> challenge to cohere, and living without clear resolutions so much as an
> ongoing pastiche.
Intent has a lot to do with my definition of postmodernism. Blurring
genres isn't enough, for me, without evidence that the author is
self-consciously aiming to subvert modernist conventions. Late modernism,
which is how I would classify Salinger, is very much concerned with
expanding the reach and range of modernism through innovation of form,
adaption of pop culture forms, and taking new points of view.
Postmodernism does many of the same things, but with a certain amount of
malice toward modernism which is missing from late modernism (obviously).
SEYMOUR: AN INTRODUCTION is probably Salinger's most unconventional work,
but it doesn't do a lot to subvert modernist conventions. Sure, it's
wordy and fairly anti-narrative, but many of Faulkner's works include
long, awkward epistles. Faulkner also makes many cross-references between
different works in his fictional universe, and nobody's going to call him
postmodern.
Somebody also suggested that Joyce may be postmodern. Again I disagree.
Joyce certainly anticipated and influenced postmodernism, but still his
overall aim was to commit the human experience, in all its complexity, to
fiction -- making him the ultimate modernist. Postmodernism, on the other
hand, tells us that human experience can't really be represented in
literature, and makes fun of those who try.
I wouldn't claim to be an expert on this subject, but I will admit to
being fairly obsessed with this distinction, so I welcome any debate!
Jon (Tveite) <jontv@ksu.edu>
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