I was struck by the part in Hassan’s piece “POSTmodernISM” about “Periods.”  I am trying to wrap my head around periods as well.  This short post sorted out some of my confusion with Realism, Naturalism, and Modernism, but considering that those three movements came over the span of only 60 years, it stands to reason that individuals were alive and writing over multiple literary periods, and perhaps in multiple literary styles.  Hassan asks, “Does modernism stretch merely to stretch out our lives?” (7)  I would be interested in knowing the reactions of authors historically to shifts in literary trends.  Do they welcome the change, or try to “stretch out” the old period?  Hassan says that the avant-garde should “serve as the agent of change, which is recognizable when still newer change is in progress” (10).  Can we really not recognize change as its happening enough to name it?  Will post-modernism acquire a new name after something else takes its place?  It’s strange that although Realism, Naturalism, and Modernism all reacted to each other and were more or less chronologically progressing, we don’t call Naturalism “Post-Realism,” etc.  (What did they call Naturalism while it was happening?) So why is postmodernism called postmodernism?  The name is almost a negative space – a sign: “Reserved for the name of the period after Modernism.” Does postmodernism have no defining characteristic of its own other than that it defies categorization?  And seeing as many authors neither knew nor cared what literary period or style they were writing in, how useful are these literary categorizations – and to whom are they useful?

In a related development chronicled in the article “Modern Book Publishing and Book Culture – TIME, the publishing industry seems to be shifting into a more postmodern form. So not only literary movements are shifting, but literary media are shifting as well.  As we discussed in class, postmodernism is a product of new technology. I liked the lip service to fandom, but it was a little vexing that the author implied that fandom’s postmodern activities only started recently with the Internet.  The article’s vision of the future of publishing – amateur writers blazing new trails while professional writers lay back and watch – reminded me of Hassan’s view of critics “Taking few risks, the best known among them wait[ing] for men of lesser reputation to clear the way” (9).

The DeLillo piece I found extremely offputting at first, but as the narrative became faster and more ridiculous it caused a sort of Brechtian-alienation shift within me to not only become aware of the component parts of narratives but also to become aware of the component parts of our visual experience of society. By starting in a more conventional, slow-moving narrative style and then moving toward the more extreme style, it also exposed my own assumptions that stories are supposed to “make sense,” characters are supposed to be developed, and actions are supposed to be motivated.  At the end, I found myself wondering if the soldiers that they killed would be soldiers if they had been out of uniform, and if the women that they raped would be women if they weren’t wearing skirts and dresses.

Link’s “Some Zombie Contingency Plans” was one that I loved at first – I found Soap’s internal narrative hilarious.  That’s why I was so taken off guard by the kidnapping at the end.  I felt like I had missed some sign earlier – a clue that this was going to happen.  A big clue, of course, is the painting.  It is at the center of what caused Soap’s life to change so dramatically by going to prison, and Soap shows a strange attachment to it that even he does not understand. Its shifting identity parallels Soap’s and Carly’s own shifting identities.  It changes depending on how the viewer looks at it.  So too do Carly and Soap’s identities shift depending on how another person perceives them.  Soap’s name was given to him by others, and the reader only realizes Carly’s “friend of the family” identity is false when Soap points it out.  Given the extent to which the reader sees the inside of Soap’s head, it’s amazing that I just didn’t see the kidnapping coming.  This lack of real internal access, coupled with the emphasis on outer identity implies that there IS no real internal identity, that we are all shifting constantly like the painting, made up of “stuff that isn’t the same every time you look at it.”