Good fiction unites us as humans, because it gives us empathy

[nirinia]

A friend once joked that when I am drunk, I slip headlong into literary theory. Perhaps she is right? I certainly theorise enough, even when I have only had water for days. I do not believe that postmodernism existed before the internet. Postmodernism is what goes on in hypertexts, what happens on twitter as people write together. Digital reading,

Comments

[silviarambles]

I wrote my thesis on the correlation between space, art and psyche in Shakespeare, Poe and Greenaway (it was a film), and still managed to land a job. I have to say I totally admire your dedication to literary theory and postmodernism because, to this day, I still dislike it with a passion (and wish I didn't).

[nirinia]

That sounds incredibly interesting! But perhaps not the most, er, marketable of theses. I would go after the postmodernism thing, but I intend to sell it to a law firm in the end. And narratology and law makes for better marketability, I find. I've almost tempted a few attorneys with it.

Thank you! Do you have any idea why you find it so dreadful? I admit, I nearly threw my theory anthology out the window earlier. Roman Jakobson takes all the fun out of life. Well, so does bad criticism in general. I think part of the reason I find it fascinating is because I find much of it so completely bizarre, and so wrong I want to sit the writer down and inform him he's an idiot.

[silviarambles]

I never thought I'd do anything with my thesis, but perhaps it's because it was an MA one? I just picked what I liked and that's it, after all a comparative literature degree isn't that marketable anyway xD

i think most theory makes no sense. You can't take a written text and read it from a theoretic perspective that often comes AFTER the text itself. That is a little bit different with postmodernism because well, we are in it. I don't like it that much because I think some authors haven't really drawn a line between 'clever' and 'utterly ridiculous', and sometimes it seems the latter is the most widespread case. So yeah, I don't like it for the reason you find it fascinating!

[nirinia]

Only noticed your icon now. That. Is. Brilliant!