Daniel the Writer

>

My friend Thomas Gibney knows the meaning of post postmodernism. He’s living in Hong Kong right now, and has just launched his website. He has written four short stories that allow you, the reader, to guide him to the story’s ends.

This example of avant-garde art, especially the interactivity, is what our moment is all about. The internet allows us to access a much vaster amount of information than we ever previously have. Not to make our moment sound so important, but it shares many similarities to the time when the printing press changed the world. The repercussions from this groundswell are just beginning to be felt, mostly in the business world (Facebook’s alignment with Goldman Sachs) but also in the poliltical arena (the Obama grassroots youth movement that helped him win office two years ago).

I read a story by George Saunders this morning at Schiller’s from the latest Harper’s. It was good because he writes in an Olde English style, since the story is about him working at a Medieval Times kinda place. The dichotomy between that style and his 21st century slang is comical. That led me to thinking about Northrup Frye and archetypal literary criticism.

We’ve discussed the irony of postmodernism. In Frye’s theory, satire is aligned with winter, a.k.a. end of the millennium. Well metamodernism, according to the theory, is aligned with spring. Spring is the season of comedy, romance summer, fall tragedy.  Spring means the birth of the hero; it is about wish-fulfillment and community. Let’s see, a coming of age story about wish fulfillment, check; community, well, that’s the internet, right? Chiggity check check. Frye has five spheres: human, animal, mineral, vegetation, water. In our moment of post postmodernism we need marriage, pastoral animals, gardens, parks, roses, cities, and rivers (about which I dreamed last night).

Now this is plenty reductive. To say that all postmodernism was satirical goes against what postmodernism was about; namely, the incorporation of many different styles and genres. But Infinite Jest isn’t exactly a panegyric on American culture.

We are all so preoccupied with updates and ways to stay connected that literature has inevitably begun to feel it too. The blog, for one, is a great example. The best blogs are pitstops on the internet highway. Jump here, answer some idiot’s response about global warming; go here, drop a link to this funny site you found; retweet it and like it on Facebook, check out your friend’s post of a viral video, etc. So metamodernism is everywhere. Thomas’ work is a good way to understand it.