Sustained Criticism

Writing a paper on Shakespeare's Julius Caesar and how people can "construe things after their own fashion" is not my idea of a good time. Why did I get stuck with this basic idiocy? (Don't remind me that I'm re-taking this because I want an A, totally irrelevant.) I, and everyone else, knows that everything is relevant. And that rhetoric is a very powerful tool.

I'd, to be honest, much rather debate in depth the uses of free indirect discourse. Or read theory (though I'm not sure I care much for anything post-New Criticism).

But, I've been slightly productive and come to a conclusion: Post-modernism did not exist before the internet. What came before was a continuation of modernism, and what we have now is really a development of that. In other words we lack an anti-thesis to modernism. It's modernism + internet. It is really just the modernist angst, distrust and "fragmentarism" taken one step further. If we are to speak of something called post-modernism it must be literature post-internet. The number of published writers, the lack of "prophetic theorists" leaves us with no serious movements to speak of: where did the real experimentalists go?

Though Bolano makes it all ok. His free indirect discourse makes the world a better place.



Disclaimer: this is not supposed to make sense. It is not coherent, and severely lacks cohesion, I'm sure. It's what too much dinner does to you.

NB, I'm sure I've written about my dislike for Paris, non? This blog wanted me to go back, and wallow in it. I'm beginning to suspect there is something about Paris I'm not getting. The idea of sharing a plate of oysters is decadently appealing. Perhaps I can ease into it with Montpellier this summer?

Great news, Katrine, I've finished The Road, and agree with you. It is blah. Terribly post-modernistic, in that it is a warning; in that he is scared of what we are doing to ourselves, our relationships, our world; in that there is very little punctuation; in that there are no names. And the list goes on. It is intriguing, as a piece of post-modernism. As a piece of writing, the work of a craftsman, it is not. Call me conservative, but I like my post-modernism with puncutation, thank you very much. I also enjoy my literature with well-crafted sentences, which McCarthy completely lacks.

The story is intriguing, and it was easily enough read for me to not throw a tantrum and refuse to finish it. But that is also it. I can't relish the writing, the soul-searching dialogue or the beautiful scenes. While a post-apocalyptic setting should perhaps rule out beauty, at least in the case of The Road, certain scenes had the capacity of heart-breaking beauty. It just didn't quite get there. The straight-forward, monotonous [fantastic word to type] prose is incapable of touching me as powerfully as the story has potential to do.

Myers wrote A Reader's Manifesto, and criticised American literature (Wikipedia article), and I agree with him on both Auster and McCarthy. I will have to get my hands on a copy of his essay. I have not yet read DeLillo, but have been drooling on his Underworld for a few years. And I think I might have found a new, wholly personal God in Myers, from what I've read of him. – Yes, I will admit that I am a nerd if you ask me to. And I want to read more literary criticism, it is.

And some educated person (I persume it is a man, for what it's worth) thinks The Road, is Post-Southerngothic. Another very interesting idea. I just have to print it out, in order to be able to read it properly.

Addendum: A Reader's Manifesto is apparently out of print, so I have to get it shipped from the US *headdesk*. But, abebooks have some very, very cheap copies. And, of course, some unnecessarily expensive ones.



(Excuse the awful pun in the title, it was, I am afraid, intended.) And I miss both New York and London.
And I found a limited edition, signed version of The Secret History.