At 02:05 PM 20/03/2007, JIM DOHERTY wrote:
>If all it takes to evoke the "post-modernism"
spectre
>is to make some pop culture reference, then
Jane
>Austen, decades before the crime story
crystallized
>into a separate, distinct literary genre, is
being
>post-modern when she hs her characters in
MANSFIELD
>PARK prepare a private performance of a
then-popular
>stage play, LOVER'S VOWS.
>
>Really, though, all she was doing was using a
familiar
>touchstone that her readers would be familiar with
in
>order to serve the needs of the story she was
telling.
I agree, and I think I said that it is the use of many, many
POP references in one book that might be part of creating a
post-modern hyper reality. Post-modern isn't so much a
coherent philosophy or point of view, as a number of
responses to modernism, as I understand it. But you don't
care, so why go to such efforts to reinforce this point?
Perhaps you're po-mo yourself and just never checked your
shorts?
>People want to get the shorts twisted over
>structuralism and decontruction and God knows
what
>all, it's nothing off me. I'll just go on, in
my
>plebian, non-intellectual way, enjoying the
books,
>music, and movies I like for reasons that have
nothing
>to do with any of that stuff, and which, in my
view,
>are profoundly more important than any of that
stuff.
That you enjoy the books without worrying about
post-modernism etc. is fine by me. I like to read that way
too, and I expect most of us do. But if someone likes to
analyze from the point of view of a particular philosophy,
I'm cool with that too. It can be fun. I don't know that one
is more important, profoundly or otherwise, than another
(except to the reader, of course.)
Best, Kerry
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