Tuesday, December 30, 2008

The Pomo Con

In a eulogy to David Foster Wallace in Harpers, Zadie Smith refers to "pomo relativity" as she and other esteemed commentators gush over DFW's writings. It all comes across like Keith Gessen defending global warming-- hysteria and bluff contradicted by the real world.

This is the point: to pomo thinkers, reality is what they say it is. It's all relative; i.e., made-up.

DFW produced an outpouring of verbiage and was a very sensitive guy, but he was no literary artist. He literally had nothing to say, in that the end of his thoughts was: nothing. Like the solipsistic ruminations of his character on a diving board, his art ends in a void. Is this what the public wants from its writers? Pomo lit is a dead end, a sad waste of effort. The worst period of American literature. It consist of armies of expensively trained writers who like Foster Wallace expend gargantuan numbers of words saying nothing.

THE ELITE CON
How do they get away with it? As their writings are largely incomprehensible, but LOOK impressive at first glance, readers assume they are. That the reader gets nothing from it is his own fault! (So it's thought.) Perhaps a tiny Elect does get something from it-- the pomo gang themselves. A circular argument. "WE are great because WE say we are." A swiftly-spinning spaceship rising higher and higher into the void, away from the general public.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm interested in hearing from you how you feel that "pomo nonsense" is in fact unrelated to rebellion. It is neither aloofly academic nor elitist to point out that the sorts of games that you deplore are often devoted to rebelling against literary convention and are connected quite directly with an implicit or explicit critique of the establishment of which you so disapprove. It seems to me that you're the actual conservative, seeking to retrench against developments and trends that you find threatening to some vague tradition that you would prefer to see continue uninterrupted. Although most of the practitioners and originators of "pomo nonsense" have traditionally been marginalized, you insist on seeing a huckster like Dave Eggers as the rule, rather than the exception, and on confusing the insularity of an essentially conservative outfit like The Paris Review with a heedless vanguard unconnected to "folk." Interestingly, David Foster Wallace was alienated in the extreme from the hype about his work for which you, apparently, hold him responsible, and tried, almost routinely, to write about the sorts of people, and their difficulties, that you have insisted are the true "stuff" of literature. It's hard to evaluate--rather than simply dismiss--a critique like yours when you don't appear to have thought through your positions. You attribute the revanchist impulse to the innovative work, endow deeply reticent personalities with self-promotional attributes, you manipulate reality to create a set of "facts" that you find useful, although even then your arguments are never convincing, only consistent.

King Wenclas said...

What you're still giving us, Harland/"Christian," is the pov of the status quo, ig noring thwe fact that the "pomo critique" you celebrate is coming FROM the academy and other large literary institutions.
Your argument is simply more sophistry. It sounds plausible within your bubble world mentality, but is contradicted by reality.
Btw, I have not called the pomo crowd conservative, but reactionary-- it was part of a reaction against American populist literature which became dominant in American letters in the 30's and 40's, including in the critical realm. This is easily documented.
To pick out just a couple points from your misguided post:
Practitioners etc of pomo lit "traditionally been marginalized"??
On the contrary; they either have come from the heart of the academy like Barth, or from the uppermost reaches of Caste America like Thomas Pynchon.
The two biggest forces of more recent years, William Vollmann and Foster Wallace, have been overeducated to the max. (DFW had a Phd.) Weren't in both instances their parents from deep academic backgrounds? I'll have to refresh my memory on that.
Paris Review? I'll be discussing this some more. It was in no way "conservative." It was liberal, reactionary, and anti-populist all at once.
You say DFW was alienated in the extreme from the hype about him and his work-- but he never moved to stop it. He continued to make public appearances, give commencement addresses, accept large advances, publish well-hyped books, et.al. Hardly a recluse.
Was he that much owned by the Machine that he had no say in how his own work was propagated?
It's kind of ridiculous to compare him or any pomo-er with, say, experimental populist writers like Jack Saunders and Bill Blackolive who have no machines of hype behind them; no cushy academy jobs; are in fact barely surviving economically and are truly marginalized.
It's YOU who enjoy dummying up facts and applying terms to your own crowd which don't apply.
My argument stands well and will be only further strengthened in future posts. Postmodernism was designed to alienate the audience. For its purveyors, this is what their "rebelling" against literary convention results in. They don't use new techniques to bring more of the audience INto the wonders of literature, which should be the goal of the true artist.
p.s. excuse me if I don't engage each and every one of your continuous comments. You spend an enormous amount of time reading and commenting on this blog. Do you not have a job? Are you being paid to do it? It remains curious. . . .

King Wenclas said...

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scofflaw said...

Sweet, KING turning the mirror (technology)up into the face of the Spectacular Heil Society turning their peeping-tom geek anonymity inside out and holing it out to them in public.

Sweet as a white Russion or a Black Russin or is it a black mule?-- absolut'ly--- go git 'em daddy-yo, hit 'em where it hurts!

King Wenclas said...

Re the Heil society you mention: watch for my review of the movie "Valkyrie" upcoming on my Happy blog. I recommend the film to all resistance fighters.

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