|
|
Prof.
Bill Sherman
from NJ, USA is Ph.D. in English & American
literature. He has taught at the University of
Hull and The University College of Wales. He is
the author of Tahitian Journals: In Search Of
Taata Mata, published in London by Hearing Eye
Press and Editor of Branch Redd Review. Eric
Mottram says, "A certain wry self-knowledge
surfaces in William Sherman's letters, and its
humour and obsession articulates his
writing."
These
letters by Bill Sherman deal with Postmodernism,
one of the most vital issues in contemporary
aesthetics.
Letter
# 1
Dear
Dr. Kumar,
TMR#3
arrived today.
As always, your publications are
beautifully produced.
It was a bit of a shock (albeit a good one)
to see my gall-filled peevish (hard not to be
peevish in "the belly of the beast" as
Che had put it) Letters in print, but perhaps they
will take a reader or two to some of the work and
issues involved, alluded to...Even though I am now
getting up in years, I still hope that I might
return to India someday before biting the dust,
and if you ever want to set up any
lectures/readings/seminars, please don't hesitate
to get in touch.....Thank you again for your care,
especially in the proof-reading and properly
printed phraseologies/spellings of the Letters,
and in the Notes section, where you make me appear
rather distinguished.
As they say on Rapa Nui (Easter Island):
We
Are Nothing, I Salute You!
Letter
# 2
.your question as to postmodernism, there are so
many descriptions and definitions, the best of
which DISCLOSE rather than "describe"
and you would have to elaborate further for me to
comment on your saying it is a "disturbance
from within"....I have found Jean-Francois
Lyotard's text, THE POSTMODERN CONDITION useful,
as well as an anthology first published in
the 1960's and titled THE STRUCTURALIST
CONTROVERSY.
Charles Olson, an American poet and
historian, believed that the postmodern would come
to mean a fullness rather than a fragmentation,
but he would be in the minority in this respect.
Personally, I believe that which we have
called Modernism began to come to a conclusion
with the death of Yeats (1939), the beginning of
World War 2, the extermination camps, the use of
nuclear weapons; but it is all a continuum, is it
not? And
one cannot view it as a linear development from
modernism, since, in poetry, the work of Fernando
Pessoa is
quintessentially postmodern, and he died in 1935.
Paul Celan would also serve as an example
of a postmodern poet....Someone once said: The
Postmodern? Can't
we find a better word than that!
Are we still stuck in the 19th century with
impressionist/post-impressionist?
Letter
# 3
I
don't know the book to which you refer (Charles
Jencks) but yes, it makes a kind of sense.
As Lyotard in The Postmodern Condition: A
Report On Knowledge, writes: the postmodern
"denies itself the solace of good forms, the
consensus of a taste which would make it possible
to share collectively the nostalgia for the
unattainable...it searches for new presentations
not in order to enjoy them but in order to impart
a stronger sense of the unpresentable."
re: Shakespeare, all great artists
transcend categorization.
Postmodern is a convenient label to be used
if helpful.
|
