<\/p>\n
While primarily focusing on Detective stories as a genre and briefly tracing its origins and characteristics, Michael Holquist\u2019s essay \u201cWhodunit and other questions: Metaphysical detective stories in post-war fiction\u201d tackles the issue of the fusion between high and low art as a prominent characteristic of Postmodernism.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>I think his argument about the \u201cpattern of reassurance\u201d as a sophisticated form of a happy ending is interesting.\u00a0 <\/span>From the way he describes it, it appears to be a common denominator in the different forms of literary kitsch.\u00a0 <\/span>Another tendency is the shortcut they take to the \u201ccatharsis,\u201d by skipping the \u201cpain\u201d and \u201ctragedy,\u201d which denies the reader a full experience and possible meaning.\u00a0 <\/span>These features render such works as merely quick and easy crowed pleasers, as opposed to high art that may not be accessible to the majority.\u00a0 <\/span>Taking this into consideration, the \u201cred herrings\u201d that have been used in the \u201cThe Crying of 49\u201d begin to make a little more sense to me. Similar to Oedipa\u2019s confusion in her search for clues and their meaning, the novel suggests allusions that can be misleading to the reader who is expectant of an easy answer.\u00a0 <\/span>Also the toying of the author in his dealing with the relationship between signifier and signified is an effort to mislead the presumptuous reader; while the names can be telling of character as talked about in a few of this week\u2019s posts, there are some names like \u201cDr. Hilarius\u201d that seem to me sort of pointless, or maybe I\u2019m being too cynical.<\/p>\n In \u201cPostmodernism, or the cultural logic of late capitalism,\u201d Jameson describes the canonization and academic institutionalization of the modern movement as a plausible explanation of the emergence of postmodernism.\u00a0 <\/span>Postmodernism subsequently rejects the complete focus on what is thought to be high art by creating a bridge between high art and popular art, as Holquist mentions.\u00a0 <\/span>The inclusion of the polar opposites is evident in \u201cThe Crying of Lot 49\u201d as we are introduced to \u201cParanoid,\u201d a pot smoking band who write songs like, \u201cLonely girl in your lonely flat, well, that\u2019s where it\u2019s at, so hush your lonely cry,\u201d and later an opposite representation is seen in the play Oedipa attends that causes her to visit a university professor for clarification on the play, which reinforces Jameson\u2019s statement about the control of institutions on art.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" While primarily focusing on Detective stories as a genre and briefly tracing its origins and characteristics, Michael Holquist\u2019s essay \u201cWhodunit and other questions: Metaphysical detective stories in post-war fiction\u201d tackles the issue of the fusion between high and low art as a prominent characteristic of Postmodernism.\u00a0\u00a0 I think his argument about the \u201cpattern of reassurance\u201d … Continue reading Relating some features of Postmodernism to “The Crying of Lot 49”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[15,30,29],"class_list":["post-130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pynchon","tag-jameson","tag-signified","tag-signifier"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=130"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":131,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130\/revisions\/131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}