Grizzled Patriarch posted:

One of the things about DFW that's always interested me is the fact that he didn't consider himself a postmodernist. He admits to being inspired by / drawn to the writing of postmodernists (as I recall, he specifically mentioned Pynchon, DeLillo, and Barthelme), but claimed that postmodernism had "run its course."

Because of this, I find it kind of difficult to categorize his writing in a way that's actually useful. His style definitely has postmodern elements and influences, but the actual content is pretty divergent. Where postmodernism is usually associated with irony and the reappraisal of traditional values, DFW isn't afraid to be sincere, to say that sometimes those pat AA posters are right.

Like, DFW says this about the irony:


Which, to me, feels at least partially like a critique of postmodernism itself. A lot of DFW's writing seems to share more in common with modernists than postmodernists, and then you have the whole issue of trying to pin down what, exactly, post-postmodernism even means, beyond "a response to postmodernism."

I'm curious to hear what others have to think about it.