What's a literary postmodernist?

Question

What's a literary postmodernist?

Answer 1

Well, there's a lot of conflict on that issue, but here's my take.

Modern era happened prior to World War II; post-modern came after the modern (and we don't know what to call it yet, thus "post" the previous period).

Postmodernism in the arts is marked by the following stylistic features:

--a stubborn insistence that the individual creates unique art, art that's disconnected from any other artist's style, and also that the art must not be explained by the artist, e.g., "My work speaks for itself."

--a tendency toward "in your face" violation of social norms--potential desecrations of patriotic or religious icons, images that create intense feelings of repulsion, often connected to a very self-destructive lifestyle for the artist.

--economics that reward either grant-writing geniuses or mass-produced works that appeal to the monied consumer.

--world fusion styles; a tendency to incorporate elements of style from several different cultures in a way such that they comment on one another.

--increasingly, a seeming lack of technical skill.

So a literary postmodernist would have to be someone who started publishing after 1950 and who did work that reflected some of the above.  It would include, in literature, Kerouac, Fehrlinghetti, King, Rowlings, Burroughs, Ginsberg, Keillor, Angelou, Shange, Simon, Rabe, Mamet, Kopit, Grotowski, MacClure, Dan O'Neill, Douglas Adams, Piers Anthony, Stan Lee, Harlan Ellison, Tony Kuschner, OK that's enough names I'll never get them all.