Subject: Re: JDS, Modernism (was Eric's sexuality)
From: WILL HOCHMAN (hochman@uscolo.edu)
Date: Sat Mar 01 1997 - 14:25:04 GMT
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. I can explain this with links to glass stories but i
think you know them. Am I looking at postmodernism too much as an idea
and too little as an age? will
ps: I've been trying to see seymour as a gay man and have to admit that
could explain why he might have married muriel but not much else.
On Sat, 1 Mar 1997, Matt Kozusko wrote:
> On Fri, 28 Feb 1997, WILL HOCHMAN wrote:
>
> > Matt, I think jds is more than marginally postmodern--his later longer
> > stories blur genre distinctions and use a "pastiche" of story
> > characterization and time fragementation that is as brilliant an example
> > of postmodernism...by the same token, I argue that hypertext exists
> > without computers...will
>
> I'm not sure I follow you on that last move, but the "blurring" of
> distinctions is precisely what I have in mind, as well. Time
> fragmentation? Is that an essential characteristic of Saligner's fiction,
> or is it incidental? A function of his apparantly arbitrary shift in
> focus from story to story? A Glass story, a couple of non-Glass stories,
> an early Glass story, a late one, a *really* early one, etc. I guess it
> comes down to whether we look at his stories as written in a preconceived
> order or of some sortm aand to what extent. I s there some particular
> reason that "Raise High" comes after "Zooey," and is that reason a player
> in some larger scheme that also resulted in "Hapworth" being published
> last? I don't think so, although I don't doubt that certain stories might
> appear in a certain order for whatever reason. I guess what I'm driving
> at is that for the chronological abberance to qualify as truly postmodern,
> would't it have to be intentional in some larger sense? Doesn't the
> postmodern always know it's postmodern?
>
>
> -----------------------------
> mkozusko@virtual.park.uga.edu
>
>
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