What Makes Literature 'Liturature'?

I don't know many people who voluntarily read James Joyce. I only attempted Ulysses after I had loved “The Portrait of the Artist As A Young Man.” “Portrait” is much more like his short stories, but “Ulysses” is nearly indecipherable without some sort of class or extensive commentary to help you read it. While I like his characterizations, his playfulness with mythology and language, that book has had little to no impact on the general public. Yet every class on modern British Literature treats Joyce as if he were the Second Coming. Give me Aldous Huxley, Virginia Woolf , G.B. Shaw, Oscar Wilde, J.R.R. Tolkien. I prefer the introspective/ironic/witty/mythopoeic writers poking at themselves and 'literature' with a wry thumb.

The best arguments involve dinosaurs.


You see, Modernism (Mo) has a 'canon'--- essential texts that are supposed to compose the essence of English literature. Postmodernism (PoMo) says that that canon is there for a reason, but that it is fluid. I'd like to make an analogy, for those of you who who'd like to see the difference between PoMo and Mo:

Imagine that you want to go out to eat. In the Modern age, you would go to a restaurant that specializes in certain cuisine or signature dishes. You would sit down and order from a menu of what is available. Your main concern, as you sit at your table, is what is 'the best' from the limited selection. If you consider yourself a gourmet, you might order based upon your 'sophisticated' palate. If you are more health-conscious, you might tabulate the calories of a given dish to meet your specific needs. Novelty, expertise, and/or convenience are your essential motivators. Food feeds the engine of the body to make it work.

The PoMo dining experience would be a little different. If you decide to eat out, you'll end up at a buffet---a potluck, if your nose pulls you in that direction. You can choose a little sampling of all sorts of foods, from the exotic to the mundane. You are only limited by the sensitivity/capacity of your stomach. While some revel the variety of offerings, there are some who are overwhelmed. It's better to sample than to deny. Most choose based upon what appeals to the senses---gut-reaction becomes the guiding force, but you still use your brain. Your main concern is the quality of your experience as well as your company. Food is an essential part of fellowship and can take on the aspects of the sacramental.

Everybody has to eat, so the difference between PoMo and Mo is a difference of what is deemed food. They both operate on 'ultimate' assumptions. In the PoMo worldview, there is freedom to be Mo, but the reverse is not necessarily true. PoMo, in the extreme, denies absolutisms----a view that is rightly critiqued. Anyone can see that human beings operate because at some point, there are assumptions made, and these assumptions are created solely by an individual. Our views are formed by a variety of things that are completely out if our control. We're always looking for truth, even if we know it is contextual. Modernism allows for absolutes to be asserted without shame or the fear that you will offend someone else. In the PoMo view, difference is expected, whereas in Mo, there is a sense that one way or another, it the Truest view will rise to the top, will naturally convince others by its sheer...'genius.' No one believes in halves---we're all searching for a whole Truth---something that we find undeniable. Just because we have this need (as basic a food), for truth (no capitalized T), that doesn't mean that all other truths are consequentially crossed out. One person makes truth claims that effects how he or she experiences life and reacts to others, but someone making similar truth claims might live in a very different manner. Another person may make different claims entirely, but the effects could be very similar to someone with even contrary assumptions. No one agrees completely with the other---nor should we. So rather than spent time and energy getting folk to believe in a certain formula, perhaps it might be more fruitful to find out what makes that person unique, and what helps he / she to not just survive, but live well---especially with other people.

Ultimately, it is a little silly to try and define an age that we're still living in. Whether PoMo is just really politically-correct Modernism or some relatively new incarnation of the Zeitgeist, we cannot say for certain. The defining characteristic of the next epoch will be decided by future historians and such. Besides, the arguments of Mo versus PoMo are old arguments---any given society is always balanced somewhere between extremes. The terminology may differ, but not the essential idea that there are ideas/worldviews that are in competition with one another, but why must that be the case? Why must one view 'dominate'? All these terms of competition come from metaphors that may have been well-intended when they were uttered, but don't necessarily work in the world that we are living in. Cooperative metaphors and ideologies are what seem most useful in this pluralistic time---whatever terminology will be chosen to define it for future generations.