Perhaps I’m a bit hyper-sensitive, but it really irks me when people sling the words “modernism” and “post-modernism” around without understanding the meanings of each literary period. Sorry to break it to you, but Virginia Woolf and James Joyce belong to the modernist period. In fact, they helped shape the modernist period. Thus, when you tell me that they belong to the post-modernist period, my left eye will start to twitch and I will suddenly lunge at your throat.
For your reference, other writers who belong to the modernist period are as follows: D.H. Lawrence, Ezra Pound, T.S. Elliot, H.D., William Butler Yeats, Gertrude Stein, Joseph Conrad, W.H. Auden, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Djuna Barnes, and so on.
Post-modern writers include, but are not limited to: Donald Barthelme, Paul Beatty, William Burroughs, All Beat Poets, Raymond Carver, Ursula K. LeGuin, Toni Morrison, Joyce Carol Oates, and so on.
In the future, please make sure that you know what you’re talking about when you refer to someone as a modernist or post-modernist writer. Not only does it make you look really stupid when you refer to Joyce or Woolf (or any other modernist) as post-modernist, but it also incurs my wrath.
2 Responses to Modernism/Post-Modernism Rant
December Reads
Amen, sistah!
Glad to see that you seem to be settled in finally. You'll have to invite me over so I can "ooh" and "ahh" at the beauty of your new pad.
I have a friend who claims that he can get his hands on a bbq and bring it over, so if that works out we'll be having "House Warming II; the Beanie Babies Are Gone."