"The Literature of Replenishment--Postmodernist Fiction"

by John Barth
Jerry Liang
Nov. 19, 1998
There is no clear definition for the term "postmodernism" and for the characteristics of
"postmodernist fiction" in this era, and some scholars claim that postmodernism is the extension or
the opposition of modernism in a way. In this essay, John Barth show his disagreement with this
notion, and at the same time he also point out his liking of some qualities of literature of the last
century. However, he does not really wants to get rid of all elements of modernism in
postmodernist fiction, and he does not want to trace back to the ancient traditions completely
either. Synthesis is the ideal way for postmodernist writer and fiction. @

General views about
postmodernism &
postmodernist fiction
modernism
Barth's
disagreement with
modernism
Barth's view of
postmodernism &
postmodernist fiction
Two Examples Questions
I. Some general ideas of postmodernism and postmodernist fiction
A. General speaking, the term postmodernism clearly suggests that any discussion of it must
therefore either. . .
1. presume that modernism in its turn, at this hour of the world, needs no definition.
2. or define, or redefine, that predominant aesthetic of Western literature in the first half
of this century.
B. Professor Robert Alter:
Over the past two decades, as the high tide of modernism ebbed and its master died off. .
. But there is no proceeding definition of the ensuing low tide, postmodernism.
C. Professor Ihab Hassan:
1. He suggests that postmodernist fiction is both rightly proceed from the premise that
the programme is in some respect an extension of the programme of modernism and in
other respects a reaction against it. Similar to the two above, he also has no clear
definition of postmodernist fiction.
2. For Alter, Hassan and other postmodernist, postmodernist fiction merely emphasis
the 'performing' self-consciousness and self-reflexiveness of modernism, in a spirit of
cultural and anarchy. It is more and more about itself and its process, less about
objective reality and life.
D. Professor Gerald Graff:
1. He makes a quick review of conventions of literary modernism before discussing the
mode of fiction "departs not only from realistic conventions but from modernist ones as
well." But still he does not make a clear definition of postmodernism.
2. For Graff, postmodernist fiction is also anti-rationalist, anti-realist, and anti-bourgeois
programme. But the difference is he gets rid of certain postmodernist satire as
managing to be vitalized by the same kitschy society that is its target.
I. Some general ideas of postmodernism http://www.eng.fju.edu.tw/Literary_Criticism/postmodernism/replenishme...
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II. The characteristics of modernism:
Through out the definition of postmodernism above, we see that there are indeed every close
relationship between modernism and postmodernism (since some suggests postmodernism
is the extension or opposition of modernism). In this article Barth tries to reexamine the
characteristics of modernism.
A. Graffs check list of modernism: This checklist in some way is the criticism of the 19th
century bourgeois social order and its world view.
.. Its artistic strategy was the self-conscious overturning of the conventions of bourgeois
realism by such devices as the substitution of mythical for a realistic method and the
manipulation of conscious parallels between contemporaneity and antiquity
.. the radical disruption of the linear flow of narrative
.. the frustration of conventional expectation concerning unity and coherence of plot and
character and the cause-and-effect development thereof
.. the development of ironic and ambiguous juxtapositions to call into question the moral and
philosophical meaning of literary action
.. the adoption of a tone of epistemological self-mockery aimed at the naive pretensions of
bourgeois rationality
.. the opposition of inward consciousness to rational, public, objective discourse
.. an inclination to subjective distortion to point up the temporariness of the objective social
world of the 19th bourgeoisie
B. Barth himself adds some characteristics of modernism
.. modernists insistence on the special, usually alienated role of artist in his society, or
outside of it. e.g. Joyce, Mann, Kafka
.. the modernists foregrounding of language and technique as opposed to straightforward
traditional content e.g. Mann, Flaubert, and Barhes sum
.. James Joyce & Co. set very high standards of artistry, no doubt implicit in their
preoccupation with the special remove of the artist from his society
.. Difficulty of access (high standards of craftsmanship): anti-linearity, aversion to
conventional characterization and cause-and-effect dramaturgy, their celebration of private,
subjective experience over public experience, their general inclination to metaphoric as
against metonymic means.--it leads to the result of unpopularity. e.g. guide-book needed
for understanding the allusion; distant from our world.
III. John Barth's disagreement with modernism
A. First we see Barth borrows the words of Roland Barthes: ". . . the whole of literature, from
Flaubert to the present day, became the problematics of language." That is, one major
preoccupation of the modernists was the problematics, not simply of language, but of the
medium of literature. Here my assumption is that the focus of modernist literature is not
I. Some general ideas of postmodernism http://www.eng.fju.edu.tw/Literary_Criticism/postmodernism/replenishme...
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merely the content, the form or the appearance of a piece of artistic or literary work will
become the media between authors and readers. It is not the essence of literature.
B. Barth approves the value of 19th century literature. He suggests that suggests we should
agree with the commonplace that the rigidities and other limitation of the 19th prompted the
great adversary reaction called modernist art. But it (modernist art) belongs to the first half of
the century. In this passage we see Barths aversion of modernist art and his liking of the
19th century.
C. However, Barth does not agree the total repudiation of the enterprise of modernism as if
the period never happened. The chart below will help to understand the values of different
characteristics of different periods:

19th Century @ Post/Modern
linearity @ disjunction
rationality @ irrationality
consciousness @ self-reflexiveness
cause and effect @ simultaneity
naive illusionism @ anti-illusionism
transparent language @ medium-as-message
innocent anecdote @ political oliympianism
middle-class moral convention @ moral pluralism/entropy
not the whole story @ not the whole story

Barth thinks that postmodernism is neither extension of modernism, nor on the contrary the
wholesale subversion of either modernism or postmodernism, or traditional bourgeois
realism. Only combining the ideas together can help to get the whole story. This is where his
idea of synthesis is from.
IV. Barth's view to postmodernism and postmodernist fiction
A. When observing the ideas of other postmodernists, Barth thinks that the so-called is
indeed a kind of pallid, last-ditch decadence, of no more than minor symptomatic. There is
no want of actual texts illustrative of this view of the postmodernist breakthrough. Like
those modernists who only have the posture but no understanding. A worthy programme for
postmodernist fiction is the synthesis and transcendence of these antitheses (pre and
modernist writing).
B. The ideal postmodernist writer neither repudiates nor merely imitate either his 19th and
20th parents. Without falling into moral or artistic simplism, shoddy craftsmanship, or either
false or real naivety, he nevertheless aspires to a fiction more democratic in its appeal than
such late-modernist marvels. He may not hope to reach and move the devotees of James
Michener and Irving Wallace--not to mention the lobotomized mass-media illiterature. But he
should hope to reach and delight beyond the circle of what Mann used to call Early
Christians: professional devotees of high art.
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C. Novel is a genre whose historical roots are famously and honorably in middle-class
popular culture. The ideal postmodernist novel will rise above the quarrel between realism
and irrealism, formalism and 'contentism,' pure and committed literature, coterie and junk
literature. It may nor needs so much teaching as Joyce's or Pynchon's books. Barth's
analogy--listening to jazz.
V. Two examples Barth provides
A. Calvino's Cosmicomics as the example of the synthesis
.. enormously appealing space-age fable
.. the materials are as modern as the new cosmology and as ancient as folktales
.. the themes are love and loss, change and permanence, illusion and reality, including a
good deal of specially Italian reality
.. As a true postmodernist, Calvino keeps one foot always in the narrative past--
characteristically the Italian narrative past of Boccaccio, Marco Polo, or Italian fair tales--and
one foot in the Parisian structuralist present; one foot in fantasy, one in objective reality
B. Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude, a great novel not only in the second half of this
century, but also would be great in any century.
.. synthesis of straitforwardness and artifice, realism and magic and myth, political passion
and nonpolitical artistry, characterization and caricature, humor and terror, not only
artistically admirable, but also humanly wise, lovable, literally marvelous. People had almost
forgotten that new fiction could be so wonderful as well as so merely important.
QUESTIONS:
1. Is Barth's synthesis a kind of simultaneity or moral pluralism/entropy?
2. When Barth mentions that some modernist work is removed from real world, does he think
realism or his synthesis can present the reality?
3. Is it too optimistic if we merely synthesize the quality of realism and modernism to
represent a postmodern world in postmodern fiction?
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