Date: Thu, 29 Jan 1998 12:13:34 -0800 (PST)
From: oconnell-AT-oz.net (Mark O'Connell)
Subject: pm





>> >From the pages of that Post Modernist Rag- The New York Times
>>
>>  December 21, 1997   week-in-review   op-ed
>>
>>           Geraldo, Eat Your Avant-Pop Heart Out
>>
>>
>>           By MARK LEYNER
>>
>>           [H] OBOKEN, N.J. -- J ENNY JONES: Boy, we have a show
>>               for you today!
>>
>>           Recently, the University of Virginia philosopher Richard
>>           Rorty made the stunning declaration that nobody has "the
>>           foggiest idea" what postmodernism means. "It would be
>>           nice to get rid of it," he said. "It isn't exactly an
>>           idea; it's a word that pretends to stand for an idea."
>>
>>           This shocking admission that there is no such thing as
>>           postmodernism has produced a firestorm of protest around
>>           the country. Thousands of authors, critics and graduate
>>           students who'd considered themselves postmodernists are
>>           outraged at the betrayal.
>>
>>           Today we have with us a writer -- a recovering
>>           postmodernist -- who believes that his literary career
>>           and personal life have been irreparably damaged by the
>>           theory, and who feels defrauded by the academics who
>>           promulgated it. He wishes to remain anonymous, so we'll
>>           call him "Alex."
>>
>>           Alex, as an adolescent, before you began experimenting
>>           with postmodernism, you considered yourself -- what?
>>
>>           Close shot of ALEX.
>>
>>           An electronic blob obscures his face. Words appear at
>>           bottom of screen: "Says he was traumatized by
>>           postmodernism and blames academics."
>>
>>           ALEX (his voice electronically altered): A high
>>           modernist. Y'know, Pound, Eliot, Georges Braque, Wallace
>>           Stevens, Arnold Sch=F6nberg, Mies van der Rohe. I had all
>>           of Sch=F6nberg's 78's.
>>
>>           JENNY JONES: And then you started reading people like
>>           Jean-Fran=E7ois Lyotard and Jean Baudrillard -- how did
>>           that change your feelings about your modernist heroes?
>>
>>           ALEX: I suddenly felt that they were, like, stifling and
>>           canonical.
>>
>>           JENNY JONES: Stifling and canonical? That is so sad,
>>           such a waste. How old were you when you first read
>>           Fredric Jameson?
>>
>>           ALEX: Nine, I think.
>>
>>           The AUDIENCE gasps.
>>
>>           JENNY JONES: We have some pictures of young Alex. ...
>>
>>           We see snapshots of 14-year-old ALEX reading Gilles
>>           Deleuze and Felix Guattari's "Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism
>>           and Schizophrenia." The AUDIENCE oohs and ahs.
>>
>>           ALEX: We used to go to a friend's house after school --
>>           y'know, his parents were never home -- and we'd read,
>>           like, Paul Virilio and Julia Kristeva.
>>
>>           JENNY JONES: So you're only 14, and you're already
>>           skeptical toward the "grand narratives" of modernity,
>>           you're questioning any belief system that claims
>>           universality or transcendence. Why?
>>
>>           ALEX: I guess -- to be cool.
>>
>>           JENNY JONES: So, peer pressure?
>>
>>           ALEX: I guess.
>>
>>           JENNY JONES: And do you remember how you felt the very
>>           first time you entertained the notion that you and your
>>           universe are constituted by language -- that reality is
>>           a cultural construct, a "text" whose meaning is
>>           determined by infinite associations with other "texts"?
>>
>>           ALEX: Uh, it felt, like, good. I wanted to do it again.
>>           The AUDIENCE groans. JENNY JONES: You were arrested at
>>           about this time?
>>
>>           ALEX: For spray-painting "The Hermeneutics of
>>           Indeterminacy" on an overpass.
>>
>>           JENNY JONES: You're the child of a mixed marriage -- is
>>           that right?
>>
>>           ALEX: My father was a de Stijl Wittgensteinian and my
>>           mom was a neo-pre-Raphaelite.
>>
>>           JENNY JONES: Do you think that growing up in a mixed
>>           marriage made you more vulnerable to the siren song of
>>           postmodernism?
>>
>>           ALEX: Absolutely. It's hard when you're a little kid not
>>           to be able to just come right out and say (sniffles),
>>           y'know, I'm an Imagist or I'm a phenomenologist or I'm a
>>           post-painterly abstractionist. It's really hard --
>>           especially around the holidays. (He cries.)
>>
>>           JENNY JONES: I hear you. Was your wife a postmodernist?
>>
>>           ALEX: Yes. She was raised avant-pop, which is a
>>           fundamentalist offshoot of postmodernism.
>>
>>           JENNY JONES: How did she react to Rorty's admission that
>>           postmodernism was essentially a hoax?
>>
>>           ALEX: She was devastated. I mean, she's got all the John
>>           Zorn albums and the entire Semiotext(e) series. She was
>>           crushed.
>>
>>           We see ALEX'S WIFE in the audience, weeping softly, her
>>           hands covering her face.
>>
>>           JENNY JONES: And you were raising your daughter as a
>>           postmodernist?
>>
>>           ALEX: Of course. That's what makes this particularly
>>           tragic. I mean, how do you explain to a 5-year-old that
>>           self-consciously recycling cultural detritus is suddenly
>>           no longer a valid art form when, for her entire life,
>>           she's been taught that it is?
>>
>>           JENNY JONES: Tell us how you think postmodernism
>>           affected your career as a novelist.
>>
>>           ALEX: I disavowed writing that contained real ideas or
>>           any real passion. My work became disjunctive, facetious
>>           and nihilistic. It was all blank parody, irony enveloped
>>           in more irony.
>>
>>           It merely recapitulated the pernicious banality of
>>           television and advertising. I found myself
>>           indiscriminately incorporating any and all kinds of pop
>>           kitsch and shlock. (He begins to weep again.)
>>
>>           JENNY JONES: And this spilled over into your personal
>>           life?
>>
>>           ALEX: It was impossible for me to experience life with
>>           any emotional intensity. I couldn't control the irony
>>           anymore. I perceived my own feelings as if they were in
>>           quotes.
>>
>>           I italicized everything and everyone. It became
>>           impossible for me to appraise the quality of anything.
>>           To me everything was equivalent -- the Brandenburg
>>           Concertos and the Lysol jingle had the same value. . . .
>>           (He breaks down, sobbing.)
>>
>>           JENNY JONES: Now, you're involved in a lawsuit, aren't
>>           you?
>>
>>           ALEX: Yes. I'm suing the Modern Language Association.
>>
>>           JENNY JONES: How confident are you about winning?
>>
>>           ALEX: We need to prove that, while they were actively
>>           propounding it, academics knew all along that
>>           postmodernism was a specious theory.
>>
>>           If we can unearth some intradepartmental memos --
>>           y'know, a paper trail -- any corroboration that they
>>           knew postmodernism was worthless cant at the same time
>>           they were teaching it, then I think we have an excellent
>>           shot at establishing liability.
>>
>>           JENNY JONES wades into audience and proffers microphone
>>           to a woman.
>>
>>           WOMAN (with lateral head-bobbing): It's ironic that
>>           Barry Scheck is representing the M.L.A. in this
>>           litigation because Scheck is the postmodern attorney par
>>           excellence. This is the guy who's made a career of
>>           volatilizing truth in the simulacrum of exculpation!
>>
>>           VOICE FROM AUDIENCE: You go, girl!
>>
>>           WOMAN: Scheck is the guy who came up with the
>>           quintessentially postmodern re-bleed defense for O. J.,
>>           which claims that O. J. merely vigorously shook Ron and
>>           Nicole, thereby re-aggravating pre-existing knife
>>           wounds. I'd just like to say to any client of Barry
>>           Scheck -- lose that zero and get a hero!
>>
>>           The AUDIENCE cheers wildly.
>>
>>           WOMAN: Uh, I forgot my question.
>>
>>           [D] issolve to message on screen: If you believe that
>>               mathematician Andrew Wiles' proof of Fermat's last
>>           theorem has caused you or a member of your family to
>>           dress too provocatively, call (800) 555-9455.
>>
>>           Dissolve back to studio.In the audience, JENNY JONES
>>           extends the microphone to a man in his mid-30's with a
>>           scruffy beard and a bandana around his head.
>>
>>           MAN WITH BANDANA: I'd like to say that this "Alex" is
>>           the single worst example of pointless irony in American
>>           literature, and this whole heartfelt renunciation of
>>           postmodernism is a ploy -- it's just more irony.
>>
>>           The AUDIENCE whistles and hoots.
>>
>>           ALEX: You think this is a ploy?! (He tears futilely at
>>           the electronic blob.) This is my face!
>>
>>           The AUDIENCE recoils in horror.
>>
>>           ALEX: This is what can happen to people who na=EFvely
>>           embrace postmodernism, to people who believe that the
>>           individual -- the autonomous, individualist subject --
>>           is dead. They become a palimpsest of media pastiche -- a
>>           mask of metastatic irony.
>>
>>           JENNY JONES (biting lip and shaking her head): That is
>>           so sad. Alex -- final words?
>>
>>           ALEX: I'd just like to say that self-consciousness and
>>           irony seem like fun at first, but they can destroy your
>>           life. I know. You gotta be earnest, be real. Real
>>           feelings are important. Objective reality does exist.
>>           AUDIENCE members whoop, stomp and pump fists in the air.
>>
>>           JENNY JONES: I'd like to thank Alex for having the
>>           courage to come on today and share his experience with
>>           us.
>>
>>           Join us for tomorrow's show, "The End of Manichean,
>>           Bipolar Geopolitics Turned My Boyfriend Into an
>>           Insatiable Sex Freak (and I Love It!)."
>>
>>           Mark Leyner is the author, most recently, of "The
>>           Tetherballs of Bougainville."
>>
>>
>> __________________________________________________________________
>>




Mark O'Connell
oconnell-AT-oz.net

"You can't write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say sometimes,
so you've got to rely on a giraffe filled with whipped cream."
-zappa