I haven’t read his third book, though. Have to pick that up…

Cheers,
Adam

Adam, I have indeed read the McHale. A formative influence that I keep quoting, especially POSTcyberMODERNpunkISM. I think my views on postmodernism (and on cyberpunk) have changed somewhat since I first read it, but it is still so useful.

I liked this, of course:
“There is, to my mind, no such thing as a pure example of genre. Throughout the history of literature, writers have plundered modes, approaches, styles, forms, genres, in exactly the way that contributors to this volume ascribe to interstitial. Thomas More’s Utopia is a combination of themes taken from the writings of Christopher Columbus and Amerigo Vespucci and structure taken from works of philosophy such as The Education of a Christian Prince by Erasmus. Five hundred years later, China Miéville’s The City and the City is a combination of approach taken from any number of crime novels and theme taken from Foucault’s notion of the Heterotopia. In between, practically every work of fiction you can name has borrowed liberally from history, biography, science, travel, philosophy, other fictions, and so on (and conversely, every work of history, biography, philosophy and such has borrowed liberally from other fictions and the rest). In other words, if interstitial fiction exists, then it is indistinguishable from fiction as a whole.”

And this:
“I have consistently argued that genre is a relative thing, indefinable precisely because it is constantly reinventing itself, because it has no set limits.”

I haven’t seen Paul’s comments on Interfictions 2. Where is it?

Your comments on the INTERFICTIONS 2 anthology match my own. I keep kicking myself that I didn’t submit something to it, though.

Ooh, I see you wrote something about DHALGREN…

…Regarding that idea of ULYSSES being both Modernist and Postmodernist, have you see Brian McHale’s analyses of the book in CONSTRUCTING POSTMODERNISM? I mention it mainly because McHale’s writing is on my mind these days.

Cheers,
Adam

Best regards,
Adam