How do you think that Neil Gaiman embodies the ideals of the post modernists?

Welcome to the board. Is this a homework question?Because a bit more context might be helpful. As I understand it post modernists reject idealism so they can't have ideals anyway.

What do you understand the ideals of post-modernists to be?

highly experimental, a break from realism, based on the post war value system, involves politics, nihilism, spiritual voidness and search for identity, and fatalism to name a few

quote:

Originally posted by If_only_to_live_in_Stormhold:
highly experimental, a break from realism, based on the post war value system, involves politics, nihilism, spiritual voidness and search for identity, and fatalism to name a few

Sorry, I don't want to be a theory snob, but I think it'd help you to clarify your ideas. The above is more of a list of catchphrases that needn't be applied to PoMo only:

- Highly experimental: you get that in Joyce's modernist novels or in T.S. Eliot
- Break from realism: check out Gulliver's Travels or Lord of the Rings, as neither is exactly realist fiction
- post-war value system - so what are these post-war values?
- involves politics: you get that in George Eliot too, or in Shakespeare
- search for identity: check out Dickens

There's a whole number of different types of postmodernism; the postmodernism of a Don DeLillo is different from that of a Salman Rushdie, is different from that of a Donald Barthelme or Thomas Pynchon. Some of the theoretical ideas of postmodernism are biased - take the nihilism/spiritual voidness bits, for instance. These are based more on a neo-Marxist dislike for what they think PoMo does, yet there's critics who would very much (and sometimes very convincingly) disagree with them.

So, again, I'd say that in order to be able to give a useful answer to you, I'd need you to be clearer on which postmodernism you mean and what you mean by the concepts you mention. Look up a number of definitions and see which one applies best.

one frequent theme of PM is the lack of faith in the grand narrative (eg, God, Communism, one grand explanation of how the world works - which, btw, doesn't imply nihilism, though that's a frequent charge), so in one sense, The Sandman completely rejects postmodernist thought, because it constructs more or less the grandest of narratives.

however, in others it doesn't. It suggests perspective is actuality, it uses the cut and paste sampling method of storytelling very effectively, and also suggests that even the mightiest are not masters, and not only do they not know everything, they can't possibly know everything, since one type of knowledge precludes another.

other than that, yes, a glib list gives little for us to work with, I'm afraid.

quote:

Originally posted by Murphy (is resolutely unimpressed):
one frequent theme of PM is the lack of faith in the grand narrative (eg, God, Communism, one grand explanation of how the world works - which, btw, doesn't imply nihilism, though that's a frequent charge), so in one sense, The Sandman completely rejects postmodernist thought, because it constructs more or less the grandest of narratives.

I basically agree, but then again, some postmodernists like using conspiracy theories which could be seen as totalising explanatory narratives. Perhaps the difference between these grand narratives and the ones you've mentioned (God etc.) is that they tend to be less monolithical or so über-monolithical that they become parodies of themselves.

fair enough.

in this context "everything you know is wrong" could be said to be a PM trait, but of course, most of these traits are presnt in modernist literature as well. It's very very difficult to find any traits exclusive to post modernism.

i've kinda concluded we need more time and space between us and 'it' before we can paint it.

quote:

Originally posted by Murphy (is resolutely unimpressed):
in this context "everything you know is wrong" could be said to be a PM trait, but of course, most of these traits are presnt in modernist literature as well. It's very very difficult to find any traits exclusive to post modernism.

True, that. The one thing perhaps that makes it different is its attitude regarding these traits - modernism also tends to doubt everything that came before it, but it's so darn angsty about it. Postmodernism by and large seems to have so much more fun doubting everything, going "Nyah nyah, I don't believe in you! Bphphlphphththth!"

I agree. that's sort of what I meant when I said I did n't understand postmodernism as having ideals. I think modernism toppled ideals/idealogies such as God, superstition, dialectical materialism, theories of human nature and then went all whiney about it -'But what do we do now?'
Whereas the postmodernists are n't bothered and in some cases celebrate the idea of contradicting explanations(possibly Foucault).

This is all very helpful and this is for a homework assignment.
I chose Neil as a person who embodies postmodern thought, but it is really difficult to find an exact definition of what postmodern thought is.

Only thing that I know for sure is that it breaks free of the constrictions of writing that modernists used. Such as the stream of conscious thought.

Would it be right to say that postmodern writing tends to deal more directly with the issues that the country is facing, rather than hiding behind it?
In Neil's short story "Changes" he writes about sex change and homosexuals.... is that something that would have been written in modern lit?

thanks!!

quote:

Originally posted by If_only_to_live_in_Stormhold:
This is all very helpful and this is for a homework assignment.

Can I ask - is this for a BA course? If you're at that level, I'd very much suggest that you read, at least diagonally, an introduction to one of the general books on postmodernism. As I said earlier, there's not just one single postmodernism, there are many postmodernisms, and if you try to generalise what is common to them all, you'll probably end up with something rather vague and woolly. Especially if you're interested in postmodernist thought, I'd go either for Linda Hutcheon's The Politics of Postmodernism or Fredric Jameson's Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. There's a longish extract of the latter here.

quote:

Would it be right to say that postmodern writing tends to deal more directly with the issues that the country is facing, rather than hiding behind it?
In Neil's short story "Changes" he writes about sex change and homosexuals.... is that something that would have been written in modern lit?

Not all postmodernist writing is clearly, explicitly and primarily political. Arguably, Paul Auster's New York Trilogy or Robert Coover's short stories are more about playing with notions of fictionality and reality than about politics (in the more common sense, i.e. pertaining to current politics, the Vietnam War, Civil Rights etc.).

Your point of dealing directly with issues vs. hiding behind them doesn't really pertain to postmodernism, I'd say. If you want writing dealing directly with issues, you'll find that in journalism rather than in postmodernist writing. Modernism vs. postmodernism is a vast field, but the openness with which issues are brought up doesn't really come into the distinction.

As I said earlier, I don't know what sort or level of homework this is. If you have to do this for university, then you need to get a clearer idea of what sort of postmodernism you want to write about. If you read Hutcheon (or Patricia Waugh or even Brian McHale), you'll definitely get some theoretical concepts that you can see applied in Neil's work. I'm sure you could even do something on Neil and Fredric Jameson. But you need to do some foundation work first, as far as I'm concerned.

If anything, Gaiman's work is certainly anti-postmodernist. There is an underlying governing system in all of Gaiman's novels, and none of the characters -- none of the protagonists at least -- reject the system, they embrace it. Most of the characters have some sense of morality, in the least they are goal oriented (for instance, those two fellas in Neverwhere couldn't be described as having a governing sense of Morality, but they are certainly working towards some achievable goal, and doing it with due diligence).

Like one person mentioned earlier, the Sandman is an almost complete rejection of post-modernism, and I would add American Gods to that as well.

It would seem more like you *want* Gaiman to be a post-modernist, for some horrible reason, and you're looking for reasons. Best idea is to find somebody who could be more readily described as a post-modernist and then work from there. Gaiman, by any fair account, does not write post-modernist novels.

Of course, your assignment was probably due months ago... so who's to say.

And as Thiris/The guy above me said, post-modernism is terribly difficult to totalize, which is probably why it's vaguely referred to as postmodernism. If this is for some sort of High School/non-college course, I'm sure that you could convince a willing teacher that Gaiman is a post-modernist, but if this is for any course that is worth its own weight in books, then Gaiman would be quite a stretch... even by the most open standards.