What makes a postmodern novel
Courtesy The Rumpus, I found a link to an entry on the LA Times books blog listing 61 "essential" postmodern novels. I was more amused by the alleged common attributes of a postmodern novel, as defined by the author -- LA Times books columnist and reviewer Carolyn Kellogg -- than by the list itself (of which I have read 12 of the 61 books). The list of common attributes: - author is a character
- self-contradicting plot
- disrupts/plays with form
- comments on its own bookishness
- plays with language
- includes fictional artifacts, such as letters
- blurs reality and fiction
- includes historical falsehoods
- overtly references other fictional works
- more than 1000 pages
- less than 200 pages
- postmodern progenitor
To that list of attributes, I would add "refers to pop culture ironically, i.e. in such a way as to both embrace it and distance itself from it." technorati: books, postmodernism
Labels: art, books, irony, novelists, postmodernism
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