At 12:24 PM 17/03/2007, you wrote:
>Kerry,
>
>Re your comment below:
>
>"We don't like po-mo here, though there's no reason
a
>story cannot be po-mo and noir at the same time,
so
>far as I can tell."
Wow, I guess the first part of that statement has been
verified- at least by one:
"So, if I understand you correctly, "po-mo," briefly, is
short for "post-modern," and "post-modern" is a lot of
left-wing, pseudo-intellectual horse shit."- your summation
of Miker's summation of po-mo.
Didn't see anything that responded to the second half of my
statement however.
>My curiosity is overcoming my reluctance to display
my
>ignorance. What, exactly, is "po-mo?"
>
>And, as for "pop-culture references," which
you
>described as po-mo, how is a reference to, say
a
>rock-n-roll song the protagonist grew up with in
a
>contemporary hard-boiled/noir story, different
from,
>say, the Continental Op's commentary on M.P.
Shiel's
>THE LORD OF THE SEA in "The Gutting of Couffignal,"
or
>Ed McBain's references to movies like THE QUIET MAN
or
>TV shows like DRAGNET in the early 87th
Precinct
>novels?
None, that I can tell, in and of themselves. And not much
different from allusions to classical literature in the old
bugaboo
"literature" for that matter. They're all a shorthand for
conveying ideas, or establishing common references for the
reader- and as such they are probably examples of the
structuralism found wanting by deconstructionists.
But if you'll recall, I was responding to Kevin's difficulty
in finding new initiatives in noir and hardboil, and pulling
his leg regarding earlier e-mails in which he'd dismissed
post modernism and expressed his annoyance at pop-culture
references. He'd responded earlier to a query of mine that it
wasn't the references themselves that bothered him, but the
volume of them that appeared within certain works. In that
context I'm inclined to agree with him that a large number of
such references may create a hyper-real environment that
readers might perceive as post modern. The thing about
hyper-reality is that it must be constantly changing or
advancing, it seems to me, as readers accept each new wave of
hyper-reality as their new reality, and so require constant
reinforcement.
I think there are elements of deconstructionism in earlier
noir and hardboil too. In a sense the detective in any
mystery deconstructs the stories, lies, alibis and relative
truths she/he is told in order to solve the crime. In the
original version of the story, a murder is a mystery, and an
anomaly. It wouldn't have happened if the people involved are
to be believed. No wonder someone wants to take those stories
apart. Of course the detective also builds a different, often
unexpected structure to explain why the crime was committed
and, unlike the post-modern explanation, that structure too
is usually based an alternative, rational argument, though
even then they tend to deal with the corrupting influence of
power more than the idea of certain types of misbehaviour
belonging to certain types of people. It's more than a case
of "rounding up the usual suspects," in other words.
So I'd agree with you, if I'm correct in thinking you're
suggesting that post-modernism might have evolved from ideas
considered in much earlier noir and hardboil (and other
genres), rather than having been dropped out of the ozone in
the 1960's by an evil group of anti-American literary critics
to confuse and mislead innocent readers.
Best, Kerry
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