The First Postmodernist Novel

[Sitaram]

http://angam.ang.univie.ac.at/sess2001/pr2gabriel1.htm

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne, in a way the first postmodernist novel because of its sheer playfulness in terms of perspectives used. The story begins with Tristram’s conception and keeps talking about his own birth and early childhood. In contrast, Slaughterhouse Five starts with a frame which does not stand in line with traditional frames, such as the one of Dietrich Knickerbocker in Washington Irving's Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon. A frame story usually serves to give credibility to a very unlikely story and to bridge the distance between the reader and the strange happenings related. This is generally the case in tall tales of the 19th century, where an urban, civilized character relates his experience made in the wilderness. He assumes for himself the position of a cultural mediator who even translates the vernacular or explains uncommon behavior. In the frame of Slaughterhouse Five we are given a rather precise temporal setting, which is early June 1968, by the reference to the deaths of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King. This precise timing of the frame is done by the means of a concept of time we are familiar with. This linear concept of time stands in contrast to the middle part, which seems random and follows the Tralfamadorian concept that all events are now. That concept seems unusual at a first glance, but in terms of consequences, the Tralfamadorian concept reflect simply our awareness of the events which is always one of now. In the course of the story, the Tralfamadorians prove more and more to be us, the readers, particularly in the scenes of sex and violence.

Time and place traditionally form a union, and one person therefore cannot be in two places at once. The setting is very important for a novel; Henry James, for instance, was extremely careful in placing his novel The Portrait of a Lady. Slaughterhouse Five introduces a different concept of place, and Billy Pilgrim travels between four stages of action which seem to exist simultaneously. These are the battlefield in Luxembourg, Dresden, Cape Cod, and Ilium (a reference to Ilium, the site of the Trojan war). Nevertheless, all references that are linked to the Second World War could also be linked to the Vietnam War. Discussing Dresden as a stage of action in more detail, we talked about Vonnegut's participation in the war and the particularity of Dresden. In fact, Dresden as the actual place of destruction is not so important; it could have been any other city that was destroyed in the war. Kurt Vonnegut just happened to be in Dresden as a prisoner of war when the city was destroyed. Now critics keep returning to his autobiography and wonder why he ended up behind the enemy lines, as sons of prominent families usually did not end up in a uniform at all, or if so, they were at least at a safe distance from enemy lines. It is worth mentioning that the Vonneguts' family fortune had been lost during the depression and that Kurt Vonnegut did not obtain such a good education as his brothers. So the question, if he had been foolish and did not know what the whole war was about, remains open.

http://www.chris-kutschera.com/A/Ahmet%20Altan.htm

"A Trace on Water" by Ahmet, is possibly the first Turkish postmodernist novel.

[Sitaram]

http://www.chris-kutschera.com/A/Ahmet%20Altan.htm

On this Saturday morning, as I wait for the coffee water to boil, I have "rediscovered" this thread because yesterday I "discovered" the wonders of clicking on the "Currently Active Users" link at the bottom of the main page of this forum (under What’s Going On), which shows what everyone else is looking at, including all the many guests. (Long live guests!) One of those guests happened at that very moment to be reading this thread.

I had never thought to click on that link, until yesterday. It is quite instructive to see what all the guests are reading. And, of course, it is deeply gratifying for me to see someone reading something which I worked long and hard on. I even saw someone E-mail one of my poems ,

http://online-literature.com/forums/...ead.php?t=3877

Ghost of Plato.


As far as I am concerned, there is not enough praise in the world to do justice to the quality and utility and robustness of this forum's software. Well, enough of sycophancy. On to the topic at hand.

I had started this thread because I was curious about what exactly Postmodernism is or might be.

I had never heard of Ahmet Altan until I did my google searches on "postmodern novels" (I forget now the exact search arguments and quoted sequences I used... they can make quite a difference in the results of the search).

I would like to examine a few things from the above link on Ahmet Altan for a very specific purpose, which I feel is literary in nature, rather than political.

I am thinking about Leo Strauss and his book "Persecution and the Art of Writing". Leo Strauss used come to St. John's, Annapolis, once or twice a year, to lecture, in the 1960's (when Jacob Kline was alive).

Strauss examined the various motives why an author might choose to "conceal" certain messages from certain groups of people, using certain "means" and "methods", and yet allow such meanings to be visible or accessible to other groups of people.

Now, avoiding prison and execution is an excellent motive for literary subterfuge.

We might even like our literary forum here to a small nation or empire. Stepping on powerful peoples toes by saying the wrong thing might result in a locked thread, which is the analogue of prison, or being banned, which is analogous to execution.

Someone once said that the power to tax is the power to destroy. Well, censorship is also a power to destroy. And yet we cannot live in this modern world without taxation of some form. Nor can we live in an orderly and peaceful society without some form of rules which might fall under the general rubric of censorship. Our constitutions guarantee us freedom of speech, yet we are not free to shout Fire in a crowded theater (unless of course there really is a fire) and "crying wolf" in such a fashion may land us in jail.

Now, at this point, some of you might be asking "what does any of this have to do with Ahmet Altan in particular or Postmodernism in general?"

Let's look at an excerpt from the above link:

http://www.chris-kutschera.com/A/Ahmet%20Altan.htm

Literature is the only art which can penetrate at the deepest in the feelings of human beings... I am interested by individuals, their feelings and reactions. I am interested by the way love develops amongst people of very different backgrounds, in people who have traveled in Europe, who visited France or England, or in people who never left Turkey. Love has something special in the Orient: women are not supposed to have pleasure, it is considered as shameful”...

all the Turkish dailies have stopped publishing his articles since he wrote in “Milliyet” a column titled “Atakurd” -- in which he wonders how the Turkish people would react if they were living in a country called “Kurdey”, ruled by the dogmas of a founding father called “Atakurd, which would prohibit the use of the Turkish language

We see Altan's plea that he is not an Historian but a novelist and an artist.

We also see a fairly obvious effort to talk about real historical figure of Kemul under the guise of a fictitious character, Atakurd.


But Sitaram, what does this have to do with postmodernist style?


I watched a movie on DVD recently, about undercover police and S.W.A.T. teams (I cannot honestly remember the title), but one of the characters said "sometimes part of the rules is knowing when to break them."

Well, one of the rules of Postmodernist style is breaking lots of rules of style.
Another aspect of Postmodernism is the notion of hyperlink text itself, the ability to jump about at the slights click of a mouse, which is a disruption of space and time, something similar to Vonnegut's Trafalmadorians.

There are scholars who speculate that various innovative novelists were striving towards hyperlinks long before the Internet and HTML (or even computers) were invented. A hyperlink is like that hole that the March Hare jumps into in Alice In Wonderland

Hooray! I just now clicked to see Who's Online (and what they are reading), and out of eighty guests (and one member, ME) there is one person reading what I am writing at this very moment (well, that is if they bother to click reload/refresh in their browser occasionally).

Speaking of hyperlinks and jumping about, take a transcendental leap over to this thread on "Understanding Point of View" and then come on back.

http://online-literature.com/forums/...ead.php?t=4536


Now, take a look at "The Question of Genre"

http://online-literature.com/forums/...ead.php?t=3843

The moderator of that writer's forum felt uneasy because I had written a short story (which is PROSE), but I had shoved a poem into the middle of it. The moderator demanded (in the nicest way) to know what genre that might be, which was really a way of pulling me to the side of the road and asking to see my driver's license and registration.

Now, there is one good reason I can see for censoring such hyperlink-infested texts as I write, and imprisoning or executing such writers as myself, because you see, I am just like that person who shouts "fire" in the crowded theater. If everyone starts reading this post, and clicking on all the links, then the level of hits on the forum server rises astronomically. The server heats up, and begins to smoke. In our little virtual empire, this is analogous to a plot to overthrow the government!

And next, before you know what’s happening, some infernal mind decides to devise a game, with posts, infested with links, which is the EASTER EGG hunt game, and everyone is supposed to visit all the links and find all the clue, and post them at some central thread, and the first one to gather all the clues..

Oh well, I see the very fabric of order and decency crumbling to hyperlink decadence as I write these very words.

Take a look at this link, and read through the various excerpts from "Look Homeward Angel", "The Bhagavad-Gita", Jorge Luis Borges "The Aleph"

http://toosmallforsupernova.org/page019.htm

Psychologist Alfred Adler would ask each patient for their “earliest memory.” Adler believed that the psyche “promotes” some early memory to the position of “first memory” and that the nature of that remembered experience is very revealing, setting the stage for the course of that individual’s development.

What we come to know as our self is a portrait which we have drawn over time. The brush strokes are a series of freewill choices.

Everyone experiences public events and incorporates them into a private, personal, secret interior world. Someone who writes seriously makes that secret world into a public event.

Life appears to us as an endless collection of unstructured images and events. We pick and choose and impose some narrative structure, theme and plot upon this cacophonous, kaleidoscopic confusion.

The self is a work in progress. As we construct our identity, we come to know our self through an emerging self awareness. Each of us is an author with respect to our autobiographical narrative sense of self. We define our selves.

The late Jacob Kline (Tutor at St. John's College in Annapolis in the 1960's) used to say “we become what we are.” He meant that a newborn infant is in no sense an adult as it lies there in its crib, helpless, and yet it is an adult inchoate in that it has the potential within it to develop into what we consider an adult.

In one sense, we become what we are. In a different sense, we are what we become.

If you are born with no fingers then you do not “have it in you” to become a pianist. If you were born with twenty fingers, then perhaps you could play the piano in a way that no other can play.

What I really want to write about, today, is my search for a new term to designate a phenomenon which I have seen several times.

The best term I can find so far is “spatio-temporal montage.”

[Sitaram]

I can sense that post #2 is approaching the 10,000 character limit, so I shall continue here and touch upon what Leo Strauss had to say.

[Jay]

When you're talking Turkish postmodernism... thought this guy was more like it.

[Sitaram]

Thanks, Jay. Interesting! I must learn more about Turkish writers. I have just found this

http://www.onderzoekinformatie.nl/en...ek/OND1258572/

which is a dissertation on Turkish Postmodernism, by A. Ettema, but it is a reference only, and I have yet to find the actual paper.


And here is an article on Orhan Pamuk


http://noggs.typepad.com/the_reading...han_pamuk.html

I found this excerpt interesting, from Jay's link in the previous post:

Orhan Pamuk's books are characterized by a confusion or loss of identity brought on in part by the conflict between European and Islamic values. They are often disturbing or unsettling, but include complex, intriguing plots and characters of great depth. His works are also redolent with discussion and fascination with the creative arts, such as literature and painting.

Pamuk has surely created in My Name is Red a compelling vision of medieval Istanbul (the depictions of the city itself, its narrow streets, its fragile buildings constantly threatened by fire, seem particularly authentic), although, in keeping with the novel's focus on the powers of the imagination and the intricacies of manuscript illumination, what emerges is less an historical recreation of the Ottoman Empire than a convincing aesthetic creation that allows both author and reader to meditate on the human need to create art in the first place, even in circumstances that put restrictions on the artist's ability to give full expression to that need and even in the midst of those mundane struggles and squabbles that afflict everyone, including the artist, in our efforts simply to find some sort of happiness in a world that constantly threatens to undermine it.

The prose itself is also quite vigorous, its capacity to continually provoke the reader's interest in and of itself established in the very first paragraphs of the very first section, "I Am a Corpse":


I am nothing but a corpse now, a body at the bottom of a well. Thought I drew my last breath long ago and my heart has stopped beating, no one, apart from that vile murderer, knows what's happened to me. As for that wretch, he felt for my pulse and listened for my breath to be sure I was dead, then kicked me in the midriff, carried me to the edge of the well, raised me up and dropped me below. As I fell, my head, which he'd smashed with a stone, broke apart, my face, my forehead and cheeks, were crushed, my bones shattered, and my mouth filled with blood.

For nearly four days I have been missing. My wife and children must be searching for me; my daughter, spent crying, must be staring fretfully at the courtyard gate. Yes, I know they're all at the window, hoping for my return.

http://www.lettre-ulysses-award.org/jury03/guersel.html

Nedim Gürsel

describes the 1453 conquest of Constantinople from the perspective of the conqueror and the conquered and takes a critical look at the 1980 military coup d'état. The Encyclopaedia Britannica characterizes this novel as one of the most outstanding postmodern Turkish novels.

This paper discusses Pamuk at some length:

http://lists.village.virginia.edu/li...holbrook.essay

[Jay]

Why the sudden interest in Turkish literature?

[blp]

Why the sudden interest in Turkish literature?

Seems to have come out of a curiosity about the beginnings of Postmodernist literature. What would constitute Postmodernity in literature (and how that might be distinguished from Modernism) remains unclear. One of Sitaram's links on the subject provided a chart outlining the differences between Postmodernism and Modernism. Key characteristics of Postmodernist culture included emphasis on performance and process rather than the completed artwork and on the relational rather than interpretation. Based on this, I'd put Burroughs (William S., not Edgar Rice) and Kerouac at the beginnings of Postmodernism in literature. Orhan Pamuk was born at the time they were writing, so, whatever his merits (I hear very good things), the chances of him having been the first Postmodernist novelist are slim.

[Sitaram]

I take an interest in many things. You were the one who chose to respond to this thread with the excellent point that there is a better choice for a Postmodernist Turkish novelist novel than the one I had mentioned. I had the choice to either ignore you, or attempt to be sociable and take you up on your point. I prefer to follow topics and stalk ideas, rather than stalk forum members.


I took an interest in your native Czech language, and asked you, in another thread, if you had read any of Milan Kundera's works in the original Czech. I greatly admire Kundera and am envious of anyone who could read the original, instead of the translation. But, you never responded.


My agenda is simply to learn new things and try to be sociable. Nothing terribly sinister other than to learn or say some new thing. What's your agenda?

Actually, to be honest, I did have a different agenda in this thread. I stumbled across the article about a Turkish author who is persecuted for his writings. I am very interested in the notion of "Persecution and the Art of Writing". Censorship plays an important role in shaping the course of literature and art. But the topic of censorship and persecution may easily be construed or misconstrued as a political topic, rather than an artistic one, which would conflict with forum rules. So I felt I should dress up the topic as one of Turkish Postmodernism, so that I would stay more on topic with the thread.


Perhaps it is good idea for all of us to open up and take a look at other cultures. I don't see much mention of modern Turkish or Arab writers in these threads. Or perhaps I have simply overlooked such threads.

I want to dig out my copy of Leo Strauss's "Persecution and the Art of Writing" and take a closer look at it. Strauss does a lot with the ancient writings of Xenophon. That is something I remember from years ago.

[Jay]

blp,
I wasn't implying he was the first postmodernist, just that if Sitaram wanted to talk about Turkish postmodernists, Orhan Pamuk might be far better example than Ahmet Altan.

Sitaram,
you sure could have ignored my post, I thought this being a public forum I could respond to any thread and you can ignore anything and anyone you like. I asked because I just wanted to know, didn't think you'd go all defensive about a simple question.

I guess I haven't noticed you asking about Kundera, (though I think I did reply) so if you still wanna know, no, I haven't read Kundera, Czech or English.

Me? An agenda? Not sure I understand but I guess you don't like being asked questions. And I'm a nosy gal and ask a lot of questions, quite often.

I'm pretty opened up, trust me on this one. It was the fact of not having mentions of Turkish or Arab writers in these threads that got me curious. Why especially Turkish? We're lacking mentions of Urdu or Indian writers as well, and as I said, I'm one curious gal. One lacking an agenda.

[Sitaram]

Here is one of my posts from long ago on women artists in Turkey, but no one seemed to take any interest.

http://online-literature.com/forums/...ead.php?t=4157

[Jay]

Meaning?

blahblah to make it longer for post filters

ouch, I did it again, I asked you a question.

[blp]

blp,
I wasn't implying he was the first postmodernist, just that if Sitaram wanted to talk about Turkish postmodernists, Orhan Pamuk might be far better example than Ahmet Altan.

I know. It wasn't intended as a dig at you at all. I was questioning the relevance of bringing in Turkish novelists to a thread about the first postmodernist novel.

[Sitaram]

I'm pretty opened up, trust me on this one. It was the fact of not having mentions of Turkish or Arab writers in these threads that got me curious. Why especially Turkish? We're lacking mentions of Urdu or Indian writers as well, and as I said, I'm one curious gal. One lacking an agenda.

Fear not! I did not neglect the Urdu writers.

Here is my post of one of my favorites, Ali Sardar Jaafri - Urdu poet


http://online-literature.com/forums/...ead.php?t=3928

and in post #31 of Chava's thread I quote from a short story by Rabindranath Tagore, who was an Indian writer.

http://online-literature.com/forums/...9&page=3&pp=15

Ouch, I did it again, I asked you a question.

You have only to ask Papayahed and you will learn that I am very open to questions. Papayahed asked me a number of questions about religions, which I answered at great length, and they grew into long threads in the Religious Text section.

And you are always welcome to ask me a question in PM. I will do my best to answer you.

In post # 8 of this thread, where I wrote:

Actually, to be honest, I did have a different agenda in this thread. I stumbled across the article about a Turkish author who is persecuted for his writings. I am very interested in the notion of "Persecution and the Art of Writing". Censorship plays an important role in shaping the course of literature and art. But the topic of censorship and persecution may easily be construed or misconstrued as a political topic, rather than an artistic one, which would conflict with forum rules. So I felt I should dress up the topic as one of Turkish Postmodernism, so that I would stay more on topic with the thread.

I was trying to acknowledge that your point is excellent in that Ahmet Altan is not the best example of a postmodernist Turkish writer. I freely admit that I wanted to steer the topic of the thread in the direction of persecution and censorship. But to be perfectly honest, as I wrote the very words, I had a vision of Jay objecting that I had veered away from the thread topic of postmodernism. So I thought I would be crafty, and seize upon the fact that the link describes Ahmet Altan as possibly the first postmodernist, which I sincerely doubt is true. I think that your choice, Jay, of Orhan Pamuk, is clearly more of a postmodernist Turkish author. But, you found me out! Caught in the very act, in flagrante delicto!

http://www.signandsight.com/intodays...etons/230.html

Turkish writer Ahmet Altan asks himself whether Orhan Pamuk will be receiving the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade for his literary qualities or for the courage he showed in speaking uncomfortable truths ......... "The impression Europe gives in its appraisal of writers living beyond its borders is that political courage weighs more than literary value. And it gets more applause.

http://web.mit.edu/cis/www/mitejmes/...h.htm#_ednref9

is the gender relations. The relative freedom of women, combined with the content of some sexually explicit scenes between a miniaturist and Sekure in My Name is Red and between Hikmète Bey and Mehparé Hanim in Comme une Blessure de Sabre, seem at odds with public restruictions for women to avoid men’s gazes. Thus, a parallel can be drawn between Sekure’s eavesdropping on her lover’s “manly” conversation with her father from the next room through a hole in the wall, on the one hand, and the evocation of the Islamic veil in Comme une Blessure de Sabre, on the other hand.



Alternatively, it could be argued that sensuality is produced as the result of an imagined contradiction between two frameworks of values: the necessity to stick to one versus the attraction toward the other, the unresolved opposition between the Islamic tradition and the temptation of Venice (in My name is Red) or Paris (in Comme une Blessure de Sabre). To evoke Baudelaire, and as George Bataille shows in Literature and Evil[8], the conscience of (real or imagined) evil – hence the necessity of social boundaries[9] to define its domain – is a condition of art / sensuality.



Both My Name is Red and Comme une Blessure de Sabre provide an subtle insight into a country whose perception is still blurred by the refusal to follow clear-cut orientations between a simultaneously Western identity and an undeniably Eastern heritage. Beyond this informative background, the two books are very skilfully-crafted novels, and amateurs of fiction will undoubtedly be seduced by the fascinating writing of two major authors of today’s Turkey.

Footnotes:

[8] George Bataille, Literature and Evil, Calder and Boyars, 1973.


[9] An analysis of the consequences of the absence of boundaries within Western societies as perceived today in traditional societies was provided by Akbar S. Ahmed’s Postmodernism and Islam – Predicament and Promise published by Routledge in 1992.

[Sitaram]

I was questioning the relevance of bringing in Turkish novelists to a thread about the first postmodernist novel.

This is a very interesting observation you make, blp because, what you are saying, in essence is that there is a certain logical, thematic structure that ought to be imposed upon any thread, or writing (and you are perfectly right, in one sense). Your observation also lends support to my decision to speak in terms of the latest postmodernist Turkish novelist, in order to escape this very sort of valid criticism, and steer the topic in the direction those writers who are censored by their society.


But the fascinating thing about the Postmodernist writing style of, say, Pynchon, is that it is disobedient and rebellious and breaks free from the censorship of tried and true genres. Hence, in that spirit, theoretically, it should be very appropriate if I write about postmodernism in a rebellious style which struggles defiantly against the censorship of normative posting style.

It has occurred to me that there is a curious symbiotic relationship between postmodernism and censorship.

Whenever anyone challenges or objects to the subject matter which we express or the style in which we choose to express ourselves, then that constitutes a form of censorship.

Another hallmark, I suspect, of Postmodern style, is that often it becomes self-referencing, gazing in a mirror in the very act of writing, and commenting upon what it sees.

True freedom of expression invites the censorship of society, and conversely, the pressure of censorship drives the creative energy of expression deeper into the underground, into the implicit and connotative, into a forest of symbols and metaphors.

[blp]

Whenever anyone challenges or objects to the subject matter which we express or the style in which we choose to express ourselves, then that constitutes a form of censorship.

Um, do you really believe this? Censorship is the act of actually banning something from public circulation. What you're talking about isn't censorship, it's criticism. The freedom to criticise is one of the things censorship regularly tries to curtail.