Comments on: Why I Am Not Postmodern

By: Rory Harper

Rory Harper — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 15:54:17 +0000

This is one of those posts here that may not get a lot of comments because it’s so perfectly and completely what it is.

One part that leaped out at me personally was this: ‘Look at the edges, the limits, and that’s where you can catch the assumptions, the shapes of the ways we make meaning.’

That’s always been the most interesting part of anything in life for me. The boundaries and edges and limits are where things start to break down and where you can find out what’s really going on — it’s where the sharp truth emerges.

And it’s where great art constantly lives.

By: Maureen McQ

Maureen McQ — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 15:16:45 +0000

Steve, THE THINGS THEY CARRIED has become a high school staple. My son read it in English class. it’s interesting, isn’t it, what becomes ‘literature for young people.’ It’s got to be better than A TALE OF TWO CITIES, which mostly puts kids to sleep.

By: Steven Gould

Steven Gould — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 23:44:49 +0000

Maureen, I’m doing volunteer work in Noble Girl’s high school. Every week I sit down with six kids for “lit circle.” This is where we read the same thing and then talk about it.

Right now it’s THE THINGS THEY CARRIED.

By: Madeleine Robins

Madeleine Robins — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 21:43:20 +0000

Maureen, sometimes I swear we are the same person. Sometimes not (I only have one dog, and rather than Catholic school I went to a lefty-liberal Greenwich Village school where I always knew I wasn’t as cool or politically out there as I ought to be), but sometimes completely. I really want to be post-modern, but it doesn’t sit convincingly on me, no matter how hard I try.

Why, I wonder, do I want to be post-modern so badly?