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Gee, I sure write a lot about Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, don't I?

Also! This is a very bad premise for an essay! It is terrible. That's why I abandoned it. Note the suggestive ellipses, for example. But I liked the ending, and I am genuinely confused by the standards of postmodern classification (it seems as though they only let you in the club if you conform to their conventions on purpose, which looks like it would be exactly the opposite of what would make sense), so I thought: Why not?

∴ ∴ ∴ ∴ ∴

I don't find postmodernism (as a philosophy) particularly interesting or valid, because it isn't very useful. The tic douloureux by which a postmodernist work is diagnosed are inadequately descriptive. For example, my head nearly rolled off a few months ago when I saw the narrative of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell being Wikily characterized as a “pastiche” of the voices of famous 19th century authors. Which is not to say that Strange & Norrell isn't a pastiche of 19th century literature, of course — but rather, let's take the opportunity to point out that all narratives are pastiches of everything. And language is a pastiche of meaningful sounds. “Pastiche,” in the way postmodernism uses it, is a worthless designation. (Especially in this context.) All definable objects are constructs, even and particularly the self-awareness upon which the condition of being human is based.

[…]

Andy Warhol is often credited as The Fairy Godfather of Domestic Postmodernism because he successfully abstracted the horrifying democracy of American consumer culture into a series of eye-pleasing symbols. But, by that yardstick, it's really Norman Rockwell who ought to stand at the forefront of the movement. He actually devised many of the simulacra which Warhol used in his performances and instillations. Rockwell created legitimately counterfeit images; he used the symbols he absorbed as an American consumer in new, bizarre, imaginary, and profit-oriented ways. Today, we dismissively characterize certain aspects of the Americana of the 1950s and 60s as "Rockwellian," and complain that the socially-conservative 'critics' who publicly yearn for them are unwanted heirlooms of an antique, all-white, patriarchal age (and they are) — but Rockwell's oeuvre is fundamentally fictional, staged from beginning to end and photographed with paint. It has nothing to do with anything real, including and especially the culture it describes. What these easily-annoyed, frightened nostalgia fanatics want the world can't give them; it can only draw them a picture. Like unicorns, perfectly religious, delighted family dinners attended by even numbers of white and blue-eyed midwestern nabobs are only real in two dimensions. But Rockwell made that. Not just the paintings, or the dissemination of them as advertisements for a world that never existed; he had some hand in the creation of a populist need for a reference to put behind the symbol. In time and with consistent exposure, lots of people actually, seriously began to replace the remnants of the historical record with images of his paintings. Of what other modern visual artist could that ever be said?

Warhol never got that far, because nobody actually likes him very much. He just distilled those sorts of imitative, commercial, Rockwell-style creations into moonshine. I don't really think that counts.

[…]

Modernism was famously characterized by Eliot as the “heap of broken images,” but after reading miles of crap like this (and that) (and this one) (the corridor stretches out forever, and extends into eternity) I have honestly begun to admire Eliot for taking the time to shatter the mirror. I congratulate his destructive impulse. At least it resulted in the occurrence of an event! Postmodernism hasn't been so lucky. It's wasted most of its time crouching in the dust, trying to fabricate exciting, foreign-looking names for the senseless, scattered reflections.