Structuralist live in a dream world

[CharleyH]

Wasn't the latter 20th century a post-modern writers RL camp world, so what's next for us authors or even artists for that matter?

 

[rgraham666]

Isn't today modern?

So how can we be post-modern?

Our craft never changes; entertain, titillate, educate, and in our particular genre, hope we get them off.

 

[Liar]

Isn't today modern?

So how can we be post-modern?

We're post-what-used-to-be-modern

 

[CharleyH]

Isn't today modern?

So how can we be post-modern?

Our craft never changes; entertain, titillate, educate, and in our particular genre, hope we get them off.

Form a better argument, then Ya sure, so what kind of modern are we? Have we defined ourselves as an era? There is no art, (LIT, FINE or FILM) but post modern ....

Are you saying literature and art or porn are stagnant?

 

[Liar]

Have we defined ourselves as an era?

Does eras define themselves? I always think of that as a job for the next generation.

 

[The_Fool]

I have no clue what you're saying, Charley, but I think it sounds really sexy.


See whether or not that gets her stirred up...

 

[BlackShanglan]

Does eras define themselves? I always think of that as a job for the next generation.

You know, that's just what I was thinking. I believe my precise thoughts were along the line of "we haven't even gotten enough distance to really look back at the last half of the 20th century yet."

There's this, too. The history of literature thus far has been the history of ever-increasingly quantities of published material. Thus we have "the classics" (thousands of years), "the Victorian period" (only about 70 years), "the Beat poets" (perhaps a decade), and now mini-movements that hardly last five. I think it's the mass of material, and the Internet is only exacerbating it. I'm starting to wonder if we're actually seeing the death of "movements" altogether; one must scream so loudly to be heard, and the torrent moves on at such a tearing pace, that it's getting beyond the most ardent of us to get to grips with almost any of it.

Or possibly it's just getting beyond me.

Shanglan

 

[CharleyH]

Does eras define themselves? I always think of that as a job for the next generation.

LOL so you are not avate-garde? I had so hoped you were. The past defines where we go? No? If post modern is post? Prey tell? What movement replaced it? Where are we?

 

[CharleyH]

I have no clue what you're saying, Charley, but I think it sounds really sexy.


See whether or not that gets her stirred up...

"lalalalal, "If you only had a brain" lalalala" LOVE YOU!

 

[CharleyH]

You know, that's just what I was thinking. I believe my precise thoughts were along the line of "we haven't even gotten enough distance to really look back at the last half of the 20th century yet."

There's this, too. The history of literature thus far has been the history of ever-increasingly quantities of published material. Thus we have "the classics" (thousands of years), "the Victorian period" (only about 70 years), "the Beat poets" (perhaps a decade), and now mini-movements that hardly last five. I think it's the mass of material, and the Internet is only exacerbating it. I'm starting to wonder if we're actually seeing the death of "movements" altogether; one must scream so loudly to be heard, and the torrent moves on at such a tearing pace, that it's getting beyond the most ardent of us to get to grips with almost any of it.

Or possibly it's just getting beyond me.

Shanglan

I agree. So, how do we scream loud and beyond? Should that not be a goal? What defines us as we live as authors? Its kind of like being a one hit wonder band, or being a Stone or a Madonna? What is the "new writing?" I asked this to the poets once, and they could not answer what new poetry was ... are we not in a position to define new? I believe we are. We are still very post-modern though.

 

[BlackShanglan]

I agree. So, how do we scream loud and beyond? Should that not be a goal? What defines us as we live as authors? Its kind of like being a one hit wonder band, or being a Stone or a Madonna? What is the "new writing?" I asked this to the poets once, and they could not answer what new poetry was ... are we not in a position to define new? I believe we are. We are still very post-modern though.

Well, I can't say where others are going; I know where I am headed. But I wonder if that might not itself become the touchstone of some modern literature. Perhaps it will be catering to smaller markets and more focused groups, either by region or by genre or by some other divisor. Tough call, though. With mass marketing pulling one way and simplicity of getting into print pulling another, it's anyone's call where it will end up.

I suppose part of it will fall down to who wants to write, and who wants to be read. Being read has always had a fair bit to do with forming groups, gathering support, and pressing ahead together. One may write in quite a lonely and isolated condition, but it's much more difficult to be read without friends in literary circles.

Perhaps the new movement will be called "Commercialism"?

Shanglan

 

[CharleyH]

Well, I can't say where others are going; I know where I am headed. But I wonder if that might not itself become the touchstone of some modern literature. Perhaps it will be catering to smaller markets and more focused groups, either by region or by genre or by some other divisor. Tough call, though. With mass marketing pulling one way and simplicity of getting into print pulling another, it's anyone's call where it will end up.

I suppose part of it will fall down to who wants to write, and who wants to be read. Being read has always had a fair bit to do with forming groups, gathering support, and pressing ahead together. One may write in quite a lonely and isolated condition, but it's much more difficult to be read without friends in literary circles.

Perhaps the new movement will be called "Commercialism"?

Shanglan

LOL, I am sure Andy Warhol hit that one.

 

[Lauren Hynde]

Wasn't the latter 20th century a post-modern writers RL camp world, so what's next for us authors or even artists for that matter?

The latter? No. Only a very small segment of the middle 20th century was "post modern". What we as a society are today was much more affected by the modernist movements, rather than post-modern. The post-modern was empty shell of a movement, admittedly and purposefully plastic and superficial. It was dead as an artistic force by the mid-seventies, and its corpse was dragged through the Miami Vice and Corporate Manhaten 80s.

What lies ahead is, as is always the case, the return to a cycle.

Currently, we are witnessing a neo-modernism, a return to the slick yet functional aesthetics of the early 20th century. The modern before the post. But this time, this neo-modernism lies on a powerful and very driven baroque base. When I say baroque, I'm not talking about the visual saturation and bric-a brac. That's secondary to the baroque essence. I'm talking about the sense of space, the sense of motion, and the tension between elements. The path is the fulcrum element. Basically, it's a structuralist's heaven.

 

[cantdog]

For me, barock was always about the counterpoint.

 

[Guest]

Charlus: I'm of a mind with Liar and Shang. "We" cannot define ourselves, however much we try.

At a Beethoven seminar once I listened to a fine musicologist discuss the last string quartets. He gave everyone pause for thought, and a grin, when he plainly stated, "Beethoven did not know this was his Late period."

As for a temporary term, to do with your query, I'd use meta-anything.

Bessos, P.

 

[Lauren Hynde]

For me, barock was always about the counterpoint.

It's more about the not being able to see (but being able to antecipate something) the next point until you're there, and then it hits you full-strength.

 

[CharleyH]

The latter? No. Only a very small segment of the middle 20th century was "post modern". What we as a society are today was much more affected by the modernist movements, rather than post-modern. The post-modern was empty shell of a movement, admittedly and purposefully plastic and superficial. It was dead as an artistic force by the mid-seventies, and its corpse was dragged through the Miami Vice and Corporate Manhaten 80s.

What lies ahead is, as is always the case, the return to a cycle.

Currently, we are witnessing a neo-modernism, a return to the slick yet functional aesthetics of the early 20th century. The modern before the post. But this time, this neo-modernism lies on a powerful and very driven baroque base. When I say baroque, I'm not talking about the visual saturation and bric-a brac. That's secondary to the baroque essence. I'm talking about the sense of space, the sense of motion, and the tension between elements. The path is the fulcrum element. Basically, it's a structuralist's heaven.

JESUS BABY, you stopped me at your sexy AV photo! I am in no mind for you, Cant or Shaglan tonight, but will be back!!!! Take it away you three!

 

[cantdog]

Movement, shmovement. I don't pay any attention to that shite.

I have so many rounds of polish, polish, polish on my stories now. I wind up with specific aims, yes, specific things I want my words to do. But it is not related to any other writer. They are my aims, mine alone. Even if I were aware of any 'movements,' which I'm not, I would ignore them. Critics will have their day. In the end, all that any of us do will be seen through a lens provided by some critic. But I do not read critics, and i do not emulate other writers. If there is a movement, I am not in it.

 

[Liar]

LOL so you are not avate-garde? I had so hoped you were. The past defines where we go? No? If post modern is post? Prey tell? What movement replaced it? Where are we?

The future will define what we were.

And I'm not even sure what avant-garde really is, let alone if I'm it. Even the definition of what post-modernism seems to be open to debate, so really, why even ask the question?

 

[Stella_Omega]

Thanks to the internet, It's the 500 monkeys movement

 

[rgraham666]

It must be because of my lack of formal education.

I have no idea whatsoever of what 'school' or 'movement' I belong to.

I just tell the story.

 

[BlackShanglan]

Thanks to the internet, It's the 500 monkeys movement

How I love you

Let me add that it's high time we outlawed the use of the terms "new," "post-", "modern", "nouveau", "neo-", or any equivalent term to describe schools of thought, whether literary, aesthetic, scientific, or otherwise. One need only try to sort out which is the more recent and/or currently more ridiculously named of New Historicism, Neoclassicism, Modernism, Post-Modernism, Really Post Modernism, New Criticism, and Art Nouveau to realize how silly that all becomes after a while. At least the Pre-Raphaelites had the ingenuity to head backward. I can't say that I have much faith in artists who can't come up with a better name for their movement then some version of "happening at the moment."

Shanglan

 

[cantdog]

Like the This Afternoonists?

 

[dr_mabeuse]

The whole idea of movements and manifestos and all that is passe. It was tied up with the idea of "progress," the assumption that the human race was moving onward and upward, and predicated on the competition for limited media attention, so that the critics and public had to keep up with the Next Big Thing.

No one believes in progress anymore, and the media are free to everyone. There's no cultural elite to dictate hipness, and so anything goes. Anyone can start their own school of One.

As far as topics in art and fiction, religion is going to be the next big thing. In fact, it already is. As the baby boomers retire and face old age and death, they're going to get serious about these foggy New Age values they've lived with and start re-examining the big questions. It won't be Christianity or fundamentalism necessarily, but there'll be a transcendental tone seeping into fiction, an attempt to grasp the big picture and find some value to life beyond mere consumerism.

For us in the USA especially, the party's over and our world is shrinking. You already see it in the fantasy explosion in books and movies over the last 20 years or so--we've had it with the world outside and we want to go someplace new where things are better.

Fantasy's a young person's genre, though. Adults need something meatier and more real and they're not getting it in what's currently available. They want to find their meaning and freedom in the here and now, and that spells some sort of religious approach: an attempt to reconnect on a very deep level. We need for art to do more than just entertain. We're up to here with entertainment.

The Passion of Christ, the da Vinci Code, Harry Potter, are all groping in this direction but they haven't hit it yet. The new religion will be based on humanism and liberality and probaby nature and mysticism.

We want the world to be sacred again. That's what I think.

 

[rgraham666]

I like that, Zoot.

At the heart of all my problems is the fact that I've lost my faith, in myself and the world I live in. There's such a wide gap between what we say we believe and how we act that I couldn't take it anymore.