definition

 i think anyone who reads and sincerely appreciates The Waves by Virginia Woolf gets something about creative writing and literature that not everyone gets. 

I remember, years ago, before I'd really studied literature, starting a Patrick White novel, because I had enjoyed at least one (can't remember if more) of his novels, and it (the new one I was reading) just read like nonsense...it didn't make sense at all. I wasn't sure what to make of it, except to think that it must just be too difficult for me. but years later, when I was studying literature and I read The Waves I got it, not that this is something you really get /// it's more like something you just absorb and it plays in your mind...it's very playful - that's what it is - so it's not really about being difficult. to a great extent, reading a book like that is about suspending all the usual ways of making sense of a text and just listening. As readers, we're used to playing our part in the construction of meaning, so we tend to just do it automatically. After reading The Waves, I remembered my experience being bewildered at the start of Patrick White's novel and I thought, maybe that's what he was doing - that thing that Virginia Woolf does in The Waves. 

So, it;s not about being difficult\\\\ although in some ways it is. like, think of James Joyce's Ulysses. I think most people, even academics and writers, would say Ulysses is difficult. It's a similar style to The Waves....that style associated with modernism. I've never liked the term 'stream of consciousness' which is how a lot of people describe that style, because I don't think it's an accurate description of what these writers are actually doing. stream of consciousness sounds too laid back, as if the writer is lacking in agency and they're just pouring forth what comes from their subconscious rather than crafting a work of literary art. 

but then there's E M Forster, who is recognised as a modernist but his novels are understandable in that traditional sense - they basically follow the traditional conventions of the novel. I actually read A Passage to India for a course on modernism, but yes - it didn't strike me as being particularly modernist in the sense that we were discussing in the course, but then modernism is not just about breaking the rules in the way that Woolf and Joyce did. It's about certain ideas, preoccupations and ways of representing things. But I think the way that E M Forster's novels are more like traditional novels and not as wildly experimental, is why I liked his novels so much. After reading A Passage to India, I went on to read all of his other novels, except Maurice. 

what is modernism, then, if it encompasses these two very different styles? Something interesting I find, when I research modernism and post-modernism is the way that a lot of people talk about modernism beginning with the scientific revolution and the enlightenment, and being characterised by a search for truth through reason, and then post-modernism, which developed in the 1960's was a challenge to that. There's some validity to that (the challenge to the idea of objective truth is very post-modern) but it clashes with another valid and widely accepted definition of modernism, which locates modernism in the early 20th century. What we call modernist literature, art, architecture, or any other creative product is about that modernism - like the works of Woolf, Joyce and Foster. Also, it was a very different movement from that of the scientific revolution and enlightenment. There are some overlaps but there are some important differences. 

I'm reading The Dialectic Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School & the Institute of Social Research, 1923-50 by Martin Jay to try and better understand the movement from modernism to post-modernism, because I have a sense of what modernism was, and I have a sense of what post-modernism is, but I think my idea of how post-modernism emerged out of modernism is over-simplistic. In some ways that's good because it can be an incredibly complex subject, but I don't trust it....it's too much of a reduction. Anyway, as I said, I have quite a good sense of what modernism was - the kind of modernism we're talking about in the early 20th century. 

Modernism was about asking how else things could be done. Like, for example, a chair. Traditionally chairs had been made with 4 legs, a seat and a back rest. But modernists would think about how else a chair could be made...maybe it could be mounted on a pedestal, maybe it could be made without a backrest, etc. And my over-simplistic understanding of the movement to post-modernism has been that it is the logical conclusion of questioning everything. If everything is questionable, nothing is certain, and that's basically the post-modern position. I think there's something too that, it's just too simplistic. 

I've found a couple of good books to read to explore this subject (besides the one I already mentioned). The first one is Beginning Theory by Peter Barry, which, unlike many other overviews of literary theory, has a whole chapter just on post-modernism. It also has really good lists of books in each chapter, so I've found some other books about post-modernism I might read. The other one is Literary Theory: The Complete Guide by Mary Klages, which was published fairly recently (in 2017). A couple of interesting things I've already found in this book are - it talks about the relationship between post-structuralism and post-modernism, which gives me another way in to the subject because I already know some things about structuralism and post-structuralism....the other thing is that, as I suspected, it;s not that simple. Klages writes: 

It's not clear when postmodernism begins, because it's not clear exactly what postmodernism is.

I like to think of it as being like Romanticism - a subject I find endlessly fascinating because there is no final word on it and there is always more to learn and engage with. It's the engagement that matters really, not the output of a set of definitive principles. Questions are more interesting than answers.