Ron Butlin - Postmodern Writer (?)

Given the fact that Postmodernism has no clear-cut definition in literature (it started mainly as an Architectural trend), it is difficult to say anything valid about it. The most suitable description of the phenomenon – ‘more than Modernism’ – is rather vague and quite encrypted. The same idea was expressed when Realism took control over the Romanticism. Except maybe for one thing: Postmodernism doesn‘t deny anything! Realism wanted something different, something new, a more pragmatic approach towards life. – Postmodernism accepts all trends; it includes every single bit of literature that has ever been written.

That’s the reason for my saying Postmodernism doesn’t exist!

For when a thing is everything, you can’t say what it is: which means it is nothing. And Postmodernism tries to mix every form literature has taken from its beginning to nowadays into a chaotic medley meant only to impress the reader with the author’s large bunch of knowledge .

A literature aware of itself, always looking into the mirror, like Narciss into the lake, has no future – if we accept that it has a present, that is. This kind of literatur

To sum up, we come again and desperately keep on saying: There’s no Postmodernism! There’s only literature: good or bad, depending on the reader’s taste and established by it’s immutability throughout time. The rest is publicity, journalism, propaganda, or any of the other non-literary arts.

Another mistake Ron Butlin does as a ‘Postmodernist’ is to keep a straight narrative line, a coherence, a perfect chronological time-line.

The uncertainty derived from fear is another unconscious mania of his. Malcolm Watson, the boy from ‘Night Visits’, shares the same fear the husband from ‘What Colors Men’ feels since his wife has died.

e is meant to drawn itself – in a suicidal act – into the waters of the very same lake.

The bad habit of writing every inch of paper with words, syntagms, propositions or even phrases is, again, inconceivable for what he’s said to be.

It seems that Ron Butlin follows the same pattern all along. Which is a mistake a true Postmodernist wouldn’t make, for a true Postmodernist is a man afraid of evident repetitions (especially, the repetition of his/her own main themes), and if – God forbid! – that does happen, s/he would make sure they are ironical: stressed to the paroxysm or even declared as what they are, i.e. repetitions.

Some topics in this essay:
Ron Butlin, Colors Mean’, Butlin Postmodern, Colors Men’, Postmodernism There’s, Malcolm Watson, ron butlin, , postmodern writer, true postmodernist, ‘what colors, ‘perfect strangers’,