Mario wrote:
"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."
I agree with most of what you say (and would add Tristram
Shandy to your examples of postmodernism before there as even
a modernism; it was clearly there from the very beginning of
the novel), but I'd like to quibble with your assertion that
"the story isn't serious." Isn't meant to be a serious
example of the genre it is deconstructing, maybe, but I find
it very hard to think of Paul Auster's New York Trilogy, for
example, as anything less than serious. And when it comes to
postmodern criticism, well, you don't get much more serious
than Lyotard and/or Jameson.
Mark
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