--- In
rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com, Kevin Burton Smith
<kvnsmith@...> wrote:
>
> What do you mean exactly when you say post-modern,
anyway? When did
> it start? Is there a clear date?
>
> You often slam things for being post-modern, but I'm
not sure what
> you mean by it most of the time.
Hi, Kev. I think people refer to a "postmodern book or style"
when the author somehow puts the reader in the know that the
story isn't serious, where the text parodies or at least
draws on the genre itself. The systematic or generalized
wink, in other words, the text becoming mainly a literary
object and not a straight narration of events. The word
"postmodern" became widely known through the book
_The Postmodern Condition_. Since then, it has been used with
many meanings (also without a very specific meaning, let us
acknowledge).
What would be some early postmodern mysteries? The Borges
story "Death and the Compass" is postmodern, I would say. And
if you read Cervantes's Don Quixote, he puts himself in
there, in the second part talks about the first part,
sometimes addresses the reader with a clear wink, and so on.
As a technical device, it's old. There is also a wonderful
book by the great Portuguese writer E硠de Queiroz,
called
_The Correspondence of Fradique Mendes_, made up of letters
supposedly written by this Mendes guy, who is and at the same
time is not E硬 a very curious book. Sometimes Mendes sounds
like E硠making fun of E硊 the writer. If it were published
today instead of over 100 years ago, people would call it
postmodern.
And Norbert Davis couldn't help but know what he was doing in
some of his stories and novels (_The Mouse in the Mountain_,
anyone?).
Best,
MrT
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