Obokata didn't publish gibberish. Sokal did. In that way, they are nothing alike. I don't. Just postmodernists. I think the best comment on postmodern *cough*' scholarship' *cough* is Cartmill's critique of Primate Visions in the International Journal of Primatology as follows This is a book that contradicts itself a hundred times; but that is not a criticism of it, because its author thinks contradictions are a sign of intellectual ferment and vitality. This is a book that systematically distorts and selects historical evidence; but that is not a criticism, because its author thinks that all interpretations are biased, and she regards it as her duty to pick and choose her facts to favor her own brand of politics. This is a book full of vaporous, French-intellectual prose that makes Teilhard de Chardin sound like Ernest Hemingway by comparison; but that is not a criticism, because the author likes that sort of prose and has taken lessons in how to write it, and she thinks that plain, homely speech is part of a conspiracy to oppress the poor. This is a book that clatters around in a dark closet of irrelevancies for 450 pages before it bumps accidentally into its index and stops; but that is not a criticism, either, because its author finds it gratifying and refreshing to bang unrelated facts together as a rebuke to stuffy minds. This book infuriated me; but that is not a defect in it, because it is supposed to infuriate people like me, and the author would have been happier still if I had blown out an artery. In short, this book is flawless, because all its deficiencies are deliberate products of art. Given its assumptions, there is nothing here to criticize. The only course open to a reviewer who dislikes this book as much as I do is to question its author’s fundamental assumptions—which are big-ticket items involving the nature and relationships of language, knowledge, and science. But, I will keep an open mind. If you can provide me with a few URLs to postmodern professional papers which are readable and have something significant to add to the intellectual content of literary theory, I will readily acknowledge that my opinion of postmodernism has been distorted by the sewer spewage it caused in the social sciences.
I get the impression that most people in this thread don't really understand what postmodernism is. There are way too many generalizations here. Just my humble opinion.
I thought I had a general impression of the entry level, but this thread rapidly made me doubt even the most fundamental parts of my supposed understanding. All I feel capable of offering now are a couple of chuckleworthy things I found while bludgeoning Google with 'postmodernism', relevant or otherwise. http://www.elsewhere.org/pomo/
Hope away. I didn't say anything about romance stories, or porn. It shouldn't be necessary to preface every post here with, "I think ...". The idea is that everything posted here is the personal opinion of the poster. Many people believe that Justin Bieber is a great musician. I respectfully disagree. Doesn't make me a hater.
My argument had nothing to do with the scholastic merit of postmodern literary theory. Frankly, I don't care enough about the topic to argue it. My argument was that there is a postmodern book that was worthy of merit and devoid of pretentiousness and all the other negative attributes given to all postmodern works earlier in the thread. Therefore, calling all postmodern works that isn't valid IMO because I was able to provide a counterexample. As to my comments that you quoted, they had to do with Bookster writing this: "Insisting on mistaking legitimate negative opinion for hatred seems all too 'modernist' to me." I was saying he wasn't just giving a simple negative opinion such as "I don't like postmodern stories." His comment denigrates all authors of postmodern works, all readers of postmodern works, and all postmodern works. That is fundamentally different than a simple negative opinion because of the way it is structured. I agree it shouldn't be necessary to preface every post that way. It's not necessary when you don't claim all authors of postmodern works are pompous and all readers of postmodern works are drawn to golly-I-want-to-be-so-very-special-too toadies.
As I mentioned earlier, my experience is with postmodernism in the social sciences, not literary theory. Rainy_summerday has sent me some links to postmodern literary theory articles when I'm reading. Who knows? She might change my mind.
I guess it depends on the example of Postmodern you are talking about. People seem to like throwing names of Postmodernists about (like Pynchon) but I have a funny, very strong feeling if you called Pynchon a 'Postmodernist' to his face he'd just laugh at you. And knowing the guy through his writing, he'd also then tell you to fuck off. It's frankly very hard to explain what 'Postmodernism' is without a very good grasp of what 'Modernism' is, and in many ways 'Postmodernism' doesn't exist, it's just an extension of Modernism, with a different aim in the same way Romanticism morphed from Burns and Wordsworth, and the Noble Savage, to Shelley and Byron and the Gothic. Basically if Modernism was about existentialist expression in literature, post-modernism was ironic embracing of 'Dionysian' qualities, that's why in Pynchon you get epic drinking sessions and drug use, and in Heller you get jokes that stretch into ridiculousness. Irony is the name of the game, and Moe the bar tender summarized it well in The Simpsons as 'Weird for the sake of weird'. That's true, but that 'weird' still has a reason to be weird. I first said Postmodernism changes depending on what you are talking about, Delillo doesn't have epic drinking sessions or rampant drug references and zanny cartoon jokes like Pynchon, Heller has the bitter zanny humour, but nothing of the sober reality of McCarthy. So tread carefully, all ye who seek to define. Especially when you consider 'Modernism' cannot be exactly defined either, scholars have been arguing for years over what it exactly means.
I think you expressed that rather beautifully. It's actually quite funny how we argue about definitions when something like literary periods are artificial categories in themselves.
I'm rather partial to postmodernism. In fact, I'm considering the muted post horn from Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 as a contender for my first tattoo.
For 5-fucking-thousand years art has had one purpose. Entertainment. Now postmodenists want to come in and redefine the system? Decide that are is supposed to represent "truth, or maybe something else, who knows?" Artists know. It's to entertain. And then they want to look down on the artists that do what they have done since we figured out how to put paint on to brushes? They guys who know what they're doing? Fuck them.
Isn't it true that entertainment means different things to different people? In various corners of the Internet are people debating, even vehemently arguing, over what is true and they find such discussions entertaining (and they find the idea that they are spending their time on something with such serious gravity entertaining as well).
Well, I wonder if literary postmodernists aren't redefining art, rather they are pointing out that entertainment equates to a search for truth. Which means that art is absolutely about entertainment, but there's much more going on in entertainment than is immediately apparent.
The only purpose of art is entertainment? Not sure I agree with that. Sometimes artists like to draw attention to social/political problems or to communicate experiences. For example, I don't think Picasso painted Guernica simply to entertain.
Why did he paint it then? Was it because his painting was going to be so powerful that it put a stop to war? Were world leaders, on the eave of invading Poland going to stop and think, "Boy that painting by Picasso really made me second guess this whole 'war' thing. Maybe we should send cookies?" Was Picasso going to win the first Nobel peace prize by dint of some paint on canvass? Or is expecting concrete outcomes from color splashed on cloth pretty stupid? Was his only option to make something that would stand in the minds of viewers only if they could relate to it? Was the point to make a picture that people would think about, and by that token, be entertained by?
If I had to guess, he painted it to inspire change, not necessarily cause it (which is out of his control). He wanted to show the world the horror of what had happened. If people read/looked at/listened to art only for entertainment, then I'd be willing to bet we wouldn't have works like To Kill a Mockingbird, Things Fall Apart, or Anne Frank's The Diary of a Young Girl.
With the exception of Anne Frank, all of those author's were chosen because their work was predicted to sell copies. You're example of Harper Lee is very interesting, because her publish asked her to go back and rewrite the story to focus on the most entertaining attributes, which is why the original (Go Set a Watchman) was never intended to see the light of day. Why buy and then read a book that didn't entertain you?
@Jack Asher @Justin Rocket @thirdwind Any time you observe a creative work that moves you or study something that interests you, you are entertaining yourself. Entertainment can have side effects (like inspiring you to cause social change), but it is still entertainment. Different kinds of entertainment do different things for you (reading literature is more mentally stimulating than watching porn), and so some entertainment might be more worthwhile than other entertainment, but it is all still entertainment. Some people find it entertaining to think about the postmodern message of a creative work; others do not. I can disagree with a philosophical statement by a postmodernist, but I cannot disagree with someone for finding a postmodern work interesting. (How would I contradict it? "No, you actually find this uninteresting"?) If they read into it more than I do and therefore get more enjoyment out of it, then good on them for entertaining themselves, I guess.
But that's kind of the point. There's a school inside postmodernism that says that art has to create some deeper meaning, or expose inner truth. They say that "entertainment" is a plebeian pursuit, and look down on commercial (real) artists that understand what the fuck they're doing. It's the difference between Citizen Kane and Star Wars. One has an incredibly rich and meaning full amount of who-gives-a-fuck, and the other entertains and enraptures on a visceral level. And outside of cinema students and shitty critics no one gives a fuck about Citizen Kane. Neglecting the entertainment side of art in pursuit of some position of moral rectitude is the foundation of postmodernism, and it's the reason the rest of the world stopped paying any attention to art and decided to watch movies about comic books instead.
I agree with you. I've always held on to the theory that if a book (or work of art) engages people's attention and entertains them, they will think about it. Maybe revisit it many times. And by thinking about it over a long period of time, they can arrive at some pretty weighty conclusions about life, as portrayed in the work of art. There is no reason a work containing big themes can't also be entertaining. And being snooty about entertainment, as a writer, seems ...snooty? So many people on this forum have said how much they hated certain books they were forced to read in school It would be interesting to discover how many of these people have gone back to the books they hated and have read them with adult eyes and new appreciation. I'd be willing to bet a dog biscuit that the number isn't very high. Over-analysis can turn people off a writer or a work for life. Maybe 'entertainment' is the wrong word. Maybe the word I'm looking for is 'accessibility.' If the work is accessible, it will have more impact on more people than if it's obscure and difficult to read and/or understand. By the way, I do make a distinction between 'being entertained' and 'filling time.' Entertaining novels are truly engaging, fun, enjoyable, cathartic even. You remember these novels. Maybe even read them again, then go to see 'the movie.' Time fillers give you something to do in your spare time, but don't have any more impact on your life than a crossword puzzle has. If you can't remember a thing about the novel two days after you read it, it won't influence how you see the world. Of course different people will see books differently, and what might be highly entertaining for one person will be a simple time filler for others.
Art has not always been about just entertainment. The first poems and songs where to instill values, teach ethics, and teach history and religion, and building a sense of culture. Homer's poems were religious texts and history as well as entertainment. Same with Ancient Greek drama which also ained to inspire debate, and same with the Romans too and their Virgils and Ovids. To separate art into entertainment or meaning is missing the point of art for most of history. Art can be both fun and deep, and it's such a shame to see how many people think you need to sacrifice complexity for fun. The best works consistently have fun. Shakespeare's plays often gave philosophy musings, and psychologically rich characters telling dick jokes and flashing their bums. He's wise and dirty, and that's why he rocks!
But again I'll make the point that, without being entertaining art can accomplish exactly none of that shit. No children were sitting around saying, "Tell us the story of Gilgamesh, so that we can be instilled with values." Nor do I believe that Sophocles sat down to write and said, "I definitely need to build a sense of culture, with this story. Let's have a dude fuck his mom, that'll do it." But because I'm better with visual art, what value does this instill?
I think people misunderstand what 'meaning' is in the context of art - not just literature. Take art for example, I'll use an Greek vase used in the Symposia - basically intellectual parties held by the elite in Greek society where people drank wine and talked about philosophy and art and science, and other culturally important ideas. He have symposia debates recorded by Plato and Xenophones, usually around Socrates - but Socrates had a major effect on Athenian intellectual life. What does this vase mean? Well, Athens was a major maritime power, and the image in the center of the vase is of Poseidon - a god the Athenians thought they owed so much. Perhaps the second most important god in the day to day running of Athens beside Athene - the patron god (this is talking about the Athenian golden age, which this vase is dated to). The eyes on the side of the vase is to remind the people participating in the Symposia that the eyes of society are watching. Now, the symposia was not just a place to be all clever and get really drunk, actually, they were very serious occasions. If you become so badly drunk at a Symposium you were looked down on, you would lose the respect of your city, at least in some ways, and the Ancient Greeks valued sober judgement and intelligence as much as they valued strength and purity, in a religious and even physical sense. Competition was everything to the Greeks because Ancient Greece was a hard place to live, the arid rocky landscape barely sustained the people who lived there, so the people who did had to be physically perfect. There are stories of Spartan babies being nearly drowned in wine to see if they could survive it, and if they were not physically perfect human beings from birth they would be left in the wilderness to die. The number of people who lived to maturity cannot have been great, but those who were were tough - really tough. And it didn't stop there. The Olympic games, athletes were frequently disqualified for killing each other, they did not want to lose so much - and they valued intellectual gifts which was tested in the Symposium. Think of it as never-ending initiation rites. The eyes were always watching, the eyes were always judging. I'm not familiar with the example you provided, it could be a reference to a story, Ancient Greek stories are full of bawdy sex and violence, or it could be a reminder of sexual values. Their values were very very different to ours. Art usually reflects the values of the period it was produced in. Look at these two: And: Both of these works were produced in about the same era, the high renaissance. They are both aesthetically complex and detailed, but they both reflect very different ideas about beauty and ideal. One is of the Christian god almost touching the hand of mankind - mankind is almost holy, while the other is The Birth of Venus - the beauty has come in the form of a reference to the pagan classics, and desire. Venus is still unclothed, but clothes are being put over her. Is Venus here a stand in for primitive human nature? Is primitive nature beautiful? Also she is protecting her own body parts, is the artist saying the Classics prefigure Christianity? Context matters. Here is one of my favourites, 'Aeneas Flees Burning Troy': The contemporary audience would be very familiar with the story of Aeneas carrying Anchises from Troy as the Greeks are victorious in their slaughter behind him. It'll be a very beautiful reminder of Virgil's epic which even by the time of the renaissance was used in the education of Latin in schools. It's a reminder of the main message of Virgil's Aeneid: what mankind must suffer for the whims of the gods. Or what mankind must suffer to protect their loved ones, if you want a secular interpretation of the painting, but the contemporary audience would have saw it in more religious terms than we would now today. Now, to literature, take a simple one like 'On First Looking into Chapman's Homer' by John Keats: 'Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold, And many goodly states and kingdoms seen; Round many western islands have I been Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold. Oft of one wide expanse had I been told That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne; Yet did I never breathe its pure serene Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold: Then felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken; Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes He star'd at the Pacific—and all his men Look'd at each other with a wild surmise— Silent, upon a peak in Darien.' At first glance this poem can seem nothing more than the poet expressing admiration for Chapman's translation of Homer. But think about the poet, and his time. Even in Keats' time, the early 1800s, classical education was still restricted to the elite of society. Keats was a commoner, in fact he was attacked by Blackwells for being an apothecary, a sort of pharmacist, and not a gentleman. 'Yet did I never breathe its pure serene/Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold' - this is a commoner coming to Homer through someone else, Keats has only heard the 'realms of gold' of Homer 'which the bards in fealty to Apollo hold'. This apparently simple poem has a more complex, social message that the poor can be just as moved and impacted by Homer as the rich people who have the 'good' education. Now, Modernism - the Modernist movement that Postmodernism is following on from is partly a result of existential crisis put into over drive by WW1. Suddenly you get people like Picasso and stuff like this: It isn't meant to make sense, it's not even supposed to be beautiful. But is the urbanization and heightened sensations of a capitalist culture very beautiful? It isn't meant to make a conscious sense anyway, but the artist is reflecting that he doesn't find the world makes a lot of sense, and society is increasingly complex - and Modern Art has tried to reflect that, often at the expense of an objective standard for beauty. And does that really exist either? Even something as simple and strikingly beautiful as Sappho's remains having meaning beyond what they literally say. Anyone who is unmoved by this, especially knowing this was written 2,500 years ago by a bisexual/gay woman (it's the subject of debate) must have a heart of stone: 'You will have memories Because of what we did back then When we were new to all this, Yes, we did many things back then - All beautiful...' 'Meaning' isn't something you work out and get to feel clever about, it's something you can actually use to look at your own live and existence with. And, as these examples hopefully show, you don't need to sacrifice complexity or honesty for beauty or fun. I love looking at these, and reading these anyway. And even really complex things, you can find beauty in it somewhere. I mean, there is a strange beauty in something like H.R. Giger: 'I am a birth machine' Or T.S Eliot, which really is an example of complex high art, such as the first stanza of 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock': 'Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherized upon a table; Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets, The muttering retreats Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells: Streets that follow like a tedious argument Of insidious intent To lead you to an overwhelming question. . . . Oh, do not ask, "What is it?" Let us go and make our visit.' It's a strange dark kind of beauty that is being used by these two more modern artists, but it's still beautiful I think. I especially love this line from later in the Prufrock poem: 'I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;' How good is that line! Also, yes, Greeks of all ages wished to hear Homer over and over. They had professional singers of Homer who would go from place to place reciting The Iliad and The Odyssey from memory - they were called Rhapsodes. The Anglo-Saxons had the same poets and called for Beowulf. In Anglo-Saxon culture the poets were called Scoops. These were popular stories, nationally known. They also had religious and instructive significance in teaching the young Greek values. The kids and adults would have likely liked the violence of The Iliad while learning its messages through the years in various ways - Plato tells us this in his dialouge with a Rhapsode. As Beowulf instructed Anglo-Saxons in their ideal warrior and king. War and adventure stories are often very popular. Sophocles wouldn't have said to himself 'I'll become a center for culture', but he wrote to praise culture, and specifically Dionysius. He wrote his plays to be seen by everyone in Athens. So, yes, he would have tried, consiously, to take an active role in the development of and upholding of Greek culture by writing for Athens, and writing great work for it. Everything was competition in Ancient Greece after all. In Ancient Greek the theatre was more than mere entertainment, it was a civic duty - it was a civic duty to cultivate yourself. The difference between something like that, the literature that tried to excite and instruct, and Modern art might be twofold: the nihilism of modern life and the lack of objective standards of art. There is even the suggestion by John Cary in his book Intellectuals and the Masses that Modernism is intentionally difficult so normal people don't like it. That idea might be criticised, though, with the story of Picasso who met an American GI who complained the artist did not capture real life, and then showed Piccaso a picture of the GI's girlfriend, Picasso said 'it is true to life? Look how small she is!' Maybe these artists are in love with being misunderstood. I realize this is a long post, but it's a very complicated subject and I've barely even scratched the surface of Criticism as a discipline or part of artistic appreciation. A lot of it is about putting a work into context, and to approach it in terms of building an interpretation of the piece that works well. There is a lot of things still left to be said about Literary Criticism - or any other kind of Criticism, even without going into the utterly pretentious madness of Literary Theory, or Art Theory. And - trust me - even I don't want to go into Literary Theory.
