Postmodernism - "To be or not to be".
Given the fact that Postmodernism has no clear-cut definition in literature (it started mainly as an Architectural trend), it is difficult to say anything valid about it. The most suitable description of the phenomenon - "more than Modernism" - is rather vague and quite encrypted. The same idea was expressed when Realism took control over the Romanticism. Except maybe for one thing: Postmodernism doesn"t deny anything! Realism wanted something different, something new, a more pragmatic approach towards life. - Postmodernism accepts all trends; it includes every single bit of literature that has ever been written. .
That's the reason for my saying Postmodernism doesn"t exist!.
For when a thing is everything, you can"t say what it is: which means it is nothing. And Postmodernism tries to mix every form literature has taken from its beginning to nowadays into a chaotic medley meant only to impress the reader with the author's large bunch of knowledge . .
A literature aware of itself, always looking into the mirror, like Narciss into the lake, has no future - if we accept that it has a present, that is. This kind of literature is meant to drawn itself - in a suicidal act - into the waters of the very same lake. .
The least we can accept is that there are some writers who write not out of talent, but out of guts, out of ambitions, writers who, visited by no interesting idea, believe they can "charm" us with a blank page or a series of words lacking any meaning put together. And they, yes, like to call themselves Postmodernists. They practice any other art but literature. They are like a carpenter who makes a chair look like a table just because other carpenters have already built a chair which looked like a chair before. Their way of expression is not literature. .
Nevertheless, this is not the case with Ron Butlin. Even though considered a postmodern writer, he writes driven by the old spin: the "just-because" spin.
