) Talking It Over has also been adapted for the stage, appearing in Chicago and Slovenia; a stage version of Arthur & George recently closed at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre.
Criticism:
Barnes' work has often been criticized for its abstract formal nature, in which essays, lexical material, chronology, encyclopedia entries, and other nominally non-fictional genres are brought to bear as support for a central story. These auxiliary techniques are sometimes dismissed as "contrivances" of postmodern literature that render his books outside the novelistic realm:
"Barnes writes books which look like novels and get shelved as novels but which, when you open them up, are something else altogether. Flaubert's Parrot was for the most part a set of studies of Flaubert and his parrot. His new book, A History of the World in 10-1/2 Chapters, is even odder. The 10 chapters contain 10 quite different stories, some factual, some not. They are related only by image and theme" (David Sexton, Sunday Telegraph, 11 June 1989; quoted in Moseley 8-9).
While this criticism may have some relevance in a purely classical novelistic context, Barnes and his fans are not interested in the question of whether the books are "novels" or not. He considers himself simply an artist working in an extended fictional form, aligning himself with Milan Kundera and other modern experimentalists as well as with predecessors like Rabelais. In any case, U.S. (and French) critics have been more forgiving of the postmodern formal pastiche than their British counterparts.
Quotations:
"I don't believe in God, but I miss Him. That's what I say when the question is put." (Nothing To Be Frightened Of)
"As a journalist, I deal in checkable fact,...
Postmodern Literature Final In terms of the use of experimental techniques in the assigned readings this semester, I think I would judge Vonnegut to be the best and Ishmael Reed to be the worst. The simple criterion here is accessibility. There is no reason why experimental writing should be difficult or a chore to read. The constant emphasis on a surface level of linguistic novelty in Ishmael Reed makes the actual
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" (Hendricks) Truth and culture are therefore seen to be created and destroyed by others for their own ends. In conclusion, the three literary works discussed above are in many respects very different but also indicate certain continuities of intention and discourse between romanticism, modernism and postmodernism. What links them all is the search for reality and truth that exists beneath the facade of everyday life and reality. As we progress
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