During class, we were discussing techniques of postmodernist
writers. I mentioned the tactic of making up artificial constructs and
unbelievable plot points (on this planet yawning is illegal!!! on this planet
all the trees are made of plastic!!) to draw attention to Planet Earth’s own
weird and arbitrary constructs (an idea or theory containing various conceptual elements, typically one considered to be subjective and not based on empirical evidence. Amusingly, the example given is "history is largely an ideological construct."). It occurred to me that
the attention-grabbing is not the only reason to use such devices. For one, the author could be
just poking fun, saying “what if?” Doctorow loves to flaunt this power, telling
us that of course this all happened,
that Ford and Morgan and Houdini and the family and all these people had these
meetings that history never noticed.
A postmodernist author might also just
make unbelievable things up, well, just for the hell of it. And Doctorow does
this a lot (see: Little Boy as God theories, all the chance meetings, tiny
amusing details) but I wanted to bring in a favorite postmodernist sci-fi
author of mine, Douglas Adams. You know, the guy who wrote about all the
dolphins leaving earth before the apocalypse because they’re way smarter than
humans, and decided that their parting words to their favorite marine biologist
would be “So long, and thanks for all the fish.” Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Universe is full of stupid, funny quirks
like that. Think of the swamp planet Squornshellous Zeta, which is home to living mattresses who are "slaughtered, dried out, and shipped around the galaxy to be slept on by grateful customers." source. Or maybe the time a character met Thor, and due to "a rather classless sub-etha video (involving a latex bustier and Damogranian pom-pom squids) ..." making him "the 68th most popular deity in the universe." Agreeing that all kinds of deities are real, then deciding that people would rank them-- How postmodernist is that? (for the curious: the 67th most popular deity is Skaoi, god of snowshoes.)
A more modern equivalent might be Guardians of the Galaxy, which utilizes the same sheer enjoyment of weirdness and eccentricity for entertainment and amusement value. Doctorow's pointed what-ifs don't quite fit into that same class of just-plain-weird current and postmodernist stuff. Somehow, Doctorow takes himself more seriously than someone.
There's a lot more to be said on this topic, and I'd love to be contested in the comments.
If postmodernist authors put stuff in their work just because they want to, then where does that leave literary criticism? Suppose some author puts something in their novel just for fun, but it happens to have some larger importance that they didn't see. Is analyzing that bit justifiable?
ReplyDeleteSuppose someone writes a paper on that unintentionally important part. Then someone asks the author about the idea, and they respond that it's just in there for fun and has no real meaning. Is the paper automatically invalid? Does it hit some deeper truth about the author themselves? How do we know that there aren't papers about Shakespeare that did just that, but the author isn't around to point it out? Does it really matter that it wasn't intentional if it's there?
-Reed
I have seriously thought of this I remember someone asked me once what postmodernism was and I was like basically just edgy artists. Even though this may be the case, that postmodernists may be doing things for the hell of it, I think we see something deeper with postmodernism: critiques about the grain or society at the time. Like that one artist who put the urinal in the art show, maybe he was doing it for the hell of it, but I think it reflects how he straight up dismisses conforming to art show norms perhaps because he thinks they are ridiculous. Whatever the case I think there may be more than changing art just for kicks.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, I think Douglas Adams is the absolute pinnacle of humanity's artistic and intellectual achievement and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is honestly iconic. Second of all, for some reason I had never realized it was so postmodern until you mentioned it, but you're completely right: just completely inventing the most absolutely ridiculous ideas is definitely postmodern. I'm not so sure I buy the similarities to Doctorow though. There are definitely a lot of weird things going on in Ragtime, but I think that they are for the most part really deliberate. Rather than making stuff up for just no reason, it seems like Doctorow has very precise reasons for including what he does, even if they're not immediately obvious. I do think though that Ishmael Reed 100% does include random stuff like Douglas Adams. In particular I feel like the random names of dances, people, and organizations are just made up for Reed's amusement. And of course there are the random typos and just strange things going on with the physical typesetting of the novel; some of them probably do have a deep literary meaning, while others are just completely for laughs, and part of the postmodern weirdness of it all is how it's so difficult to tell the difference.
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