Kerry,
Re your response to my question below:
"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."
Actually I'm not suggesting that post-mdernism
"evolved from ideas in earlier noir . . ." so much as I'm
suggesting that people are reading way too much into
something as simple as the Op enjoying a book, Mike Hammer
recognizing a classical composition, or Steve Carella
enjoying an episode of DRAGNET.
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.
And all Hammett was doing when he had the Op read THE LORD OF
THE SEA, and all Fleming was doing when he had James Bond
pick up a copy of "Raymond Chandler's latest" at the airport
so he'd have something to read in-flight, and all Estleman is
doing when he has Amos Walker recall how his murdered
partner, the comic strip buff, could tell you what all the
different colors of kryptonite did to Superman, was revealing
a little bit about their characters.
It's just a device, a piece of craft, an artifice to serve
the story or reveal something about the character. It's not
the foundation for a new way of looking at literature.
And, just to be clear, to the degree that Miker's description
of post-modernism is accurate (and really, I don't care all
that much; if Miker had just said
"po-mo" is short for "post-modern," I'd have been satisfied),
my mainobjection to it is based neither on political grounds
or on my own reverse snobbery, but simply because the
incessant analyzing of the thing keeps one from simply
enjoying it.
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.
If that makes me guilty of "non-academic, anti-intellectual
snobbery," so be it.
JIM DOHERTY
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