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PARTISAN REVIEW
to itself. In fact, one reason why fiction retrogressed after Joyce was
that no one was able to conceive of taking the next step, as one always
can in painting, for instance, where a next step is implicit in every move.
In its purest form, the sensibility of the avant-garde, which is based
on plasticity and gesture, really derives from the more formal arts. And
to transfer it to fiction , which resists dehumanization, means to treat
ideas as forms. In this respect, Kafka is the paradigm of avant-garde
fiction, particularly in his use of theme, mood , event, and idea as if they
were abstract configurations. Of course, the more accepted view of fiction
as a panorama of experience still persists, but it is hard to tell at this
point how much is in the medium and how much comes from the
conventions of reading and writing. In any case, we seem to be in a
time of transition, when no one style or direction has taken hold; but
there is no reason why, as in the past, the scale of innovative fiction can't
be enlarged, or the traditional novel transformed, through the work of
the more original writers today.
w.
P.
NEW SCENE OLD SCEN E
Has our history changed decisively? Have we entered upon
a new epoch, with its own contours and tendencies, its own laws? Must
we seek new categories to apprehend new realities? So we are told, by
those who designate our culture as postmodern, our society as postin–
dustrial, our very characters as post-Freudian. I hesitate to call our
interlocutors prophets, since I suspect that many of them are aspiring
priests, anxious to fill votive functions in a society which knows only
the foreshortened moment.
I t would be absurd to deny that profound historical changes have
occurred. Once the work of the avant-garde, the modern movement in
art suffuses much of our culture. Our society is surely not postindustrial
in the sense that it has dispensed with technology, but the administra–
tive and productive process has altered. Our psychic responses (and our
symptoms) have changed - often to the perplexity of professional stu–
dents and healers of the soul.
These developments, however, do not signify a new era. They
reflect trends visible in the nineteenth century. There is a futurological
bias which consists of hasty projections of a reified present. The evi–
dence adduced by those who insist that our situation is new may well
show that it is, alas, all too old. Our history still has continuity and
unity, its own dreadful immanence.
Cultural modernism alternates dizzily between expressionism and
estheticism. That the modern movement has served as a school for
educating life itself to scandal is dubious. Life would have become
scandalous in any event. Life has not imitated art, but art has anticipat–
ed life. The breaking of boundaries, the eradication of distinctions,
