Academic

Ranking The Postmodernists? The Best Postmodern Fiction Ever!

By Dan Filler

The LA Times, in what can only be called a sophisticated form of humor, has just published its Best of Postmodernist Literature list.  It doesn't quite call it that, of course.  But the paper's list of 61 essential works of postmodern fiction is certainly close enough.  I'm not sure the humor is more in the existence of the list itself, or the author's catholic conception of what constitutes postmodernism.  William Faulkner, Philip K. Dick, and William Shakespeare, for example, might not have placed themselves in this camp.  But the list is fun, and it includes a bunch of great reads - whatever their classification.  Particular favorites of mine: Art Spiegelman's Maus I & II and Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried.  Readers will forgive me for having missed Infinite Jest (1088 pages and a shipping weight of 2.6 pounds in paperback, per Amazon.)  I'm waiting for the Cliff Notes.

Image: Peter Eisenman's postmodern Arnoff Center at the University of Cincinnati.

Full post as published by The Faculty Lounge on July 16, 2009 (boomark / email).