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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   11550 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 30, 2026

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I'm surprised no one mentioned Scott's attempt to explain postmodernism to a rationalist audience (which he later retracted, although I don't think he should have).

His explanation is really about the postmodern "mindset" rather than postmodern literature specifically, although it could be argued that postmodern literature is just a textual representation of the postmodern mindset. He sees the unreliable narrator as key to postmodern literature: much as postmodern readings of history challenge us to consider how historical metanarratives have been selectively constructed to favour the powers that be ("history is written by the winners"), postmodern novels routinely feature narrators whose testimony cannot be relied upon, forcing the reader to consider what "really" happened versus what the narrator wants us to think happened, and why they want us to think that. Unreliable narrators are likewise a common feature of films, video games etc. which have been characterised as postmodern.

My distaste for postmodern "writing" is usually for the way the authors write in their pet peeves or personal greviences, disguised as plot. The "deconstruction" usually goes one way. I'm happy for any examples where one of these deconstructed gender nonconformity or anti-classism or anti-statism or w/e with the same zeal as they are deployed usually to the other side. The only thing off the top of my head is Harrison Bergeron.

Why aren't the unambiguous literary achievements of Nabokov, especially Pale Fire and Lolita, on this list? If the defining feature of postmodernism is a metatextual nature and unreliable narrator, well, um, let's include king of it. Hell, there is quite a bit of Faulkner that is pretty close to postmodernism, too, including Absalom and As I Lay Dying, two of his very finest works. I personally view the critical achievement of Ferrante's Neapolitan novels as resting heavily on unreliable narration, though this might be more controversial and my idiosyncratic interpretation. In SF, it is precisely the postmodernism of Wolfe that puts him on a tier far above all others.

In your list, I really only see Vonnegut as having true critical achievement, so I am concerned that this is far more a critique of middlebrow than it is postmodernism.

On what list? Did you mean to reply to the OP?

He sees the unreliable narrator as key to postmodern literature: much as postmodern readings of history challenge us to consider how historical metanarratives have been selectively constructed to favour the powers that be ("history is written by the winners"), postmodern novels routinely feature narrators whose testimony cannot be relied upon, forcing the reader to consider what "really" happened versus what the narrator wants us to think happened, and why they want us to think that.

This isn't directly related to the top-level question, but having read basically this sort of explanation of postmodernism is before, the one thing that struck me as the completely obvious next logical step is to question how this particular meta-metanarrative about metanarratives has been selected by the "powers that be" and why they want the rest of us to believe that that's a meaningfully useful way to analyze metanarratives. How does it benefit them, possibly at the cost to us, because almost certainly, people pushing narratives, metanarratives, meta-metanarratives, or anything else, are doing so under the belief that success in pushing it will result in favor for themselves, possibly at cost to people they don't care about or actively dislike. The moment you realize that the turtle you're on is on another turtle, it's pretty trivial to wonder if that turtle is on another turtle, possibly all the way down.

Unfortunately, a stack of turtles seems pretty likely to be unstable even in finite numbers, to say nothing of when there's infinite of them. Unstable doesn't mean false, of course, but in this case, the instability manifests in the reality that there's no reason to stop on this turtle instead of the next one or the one after that or the one 13 turtles down which happens to be the one that concludes that all of history was actually just setup to justify you specifically getting everything you want and all your enemies being mercilessly crushed.

Scott sort of gestures at this in the linked post:

This leads to the classic freshman-philosophy critique of postmodernism: “Postmodernism says nothing is objectively true and it’s all just opinion. But in that case, postmodernism isn’t objectively true and it’s just your opinion.” Make this a little more sophisticated, and we can get an at-least-sophomore-level critique: “Postmodernism says that facts have enough degrees of freedom that they often get reframed to support the powerful. But there are bucketloads of degrees of freedom in how to use and apply postmodernism; it’s inevitably going to itself be twisted to support the powerful."

How does it benefit them, possibly at the cost to us, because almost certainly, people pushing narratives, metanarratives, meta-metanarratives, or anything else, are doing so under the belief that success in pushing it will result in favor for themselves, possibly at cost to people they don't care about or actively dislike.

In most anything related to postmodernism, I think of the midwit meme. Sometimes things are complicated and ambiguous, but that's usually a confusion about words and minds and uncertainty about the state of the underlying reality. But there usually is an underlying reality that actually is true or false, and all the words and perspective shifts won't actually change that underlying reality.

Here then, there is a recursively stable narrative climb of "I'm telling you a thing because it's true, and true things are good for people to know and understand." If you try to climb up to the meta-narrative, I AM trying to push this narrative because it will favor myself, because I am a straightforward and logical person, and therefore disseminating truth and objectivity, and increasing people's trust in truth and objectivity, helps make society better for everyone. People knowing true things is generally good for society, and I am part of society, therefore people knowing true things is generally good for me. It doesn't have to be a zero sum game, me benefiting from telling you a thing does not need to come at your expense. (And also I get a small ego boost from being right and explaining ideas to people, because it makes me seem smart, but that's predicated on them being true).

And if you go up another level, just reread the previous paragraph. I'm telling you that this narrative is self-recursively stable because it's true, and you knowing it to be true helps society (and gives me a small ego boost). Ad infinitum.

To be clear, I certainly understand that people can have dishonest motivations and biases making their narratives differ from the truth. But this is not the only possibility. Because objective truths exist, honesty can exist, and stable narratives can exist that become more coherent under self-reflection rather than devolving into infinitely complex recursions. Infinite sequences can converge.

It strikes me as an example of "Every accusation is a confession." Perhaps this sort of thing hits better if the reader is a dissembling, delusional jackass.

In fairness, I have read none of these books, but in fairness, they mostly sound just dreadful.

I thought I had read Catch-22, but checking the wiki article, I now suspect that was a segment of a couple chapters in some English class, rather than the full book. Or I've just forgotten 90% of it over the last 20 years.

I've read three of the items on OP's list. I loved Slaughterhouse-Five, though as I said elsewhere in this thread I question its categorisation as postmodern literature. I also remember really enjoying Catch-22, but it's probably twenty years since I read it and I've been meaning to read it again. Of the three that I've read, White Noise strikes me as the closest to the platonic Ideal of what most people think of when they hear the word "postmodern", and I hated it.

It makes sense when you consider the context of the times: Is communism the inevitable future or a plot by satan? Was the westward expansion glorious civilization being brought to the wilderness or a standard nationalistic project of consolidation and extermination? Was the cause lost?

This is the time period where you could grow up learning all that shit, go from stick and hoop to moon landing in one life. Makes you question your received wisdom, and if wisdom can be received at all.

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