I'd been looking at literary movements and charting their progressions over time and across genres in order to conceptualize their distinct, central influences and tenets. Romanticism led to Realism and Idealism, and onward to Impressionism and Surrealism, Dadaism, and further on to Modernism and Postmodernism. Here we are where now?

I was casting about for a predictive model to get a sense of where the next literary movement might spring from and what shape its conventions might take. Doing so is important to me on several fronts: getting there first-est and fullest and most-est and best-est, of course, if possible; encompassing a model in a way that I can scrutinize contemporary stories to see if a new literary movement is, in fact, in an infancy phase, which strikes me as likely, what with the explosive diaspora of literary crossovers and out-of-category trends taking place in all literature categories since at least the dawn of the Information Age; and how such a literary movement might take shape, and how one might inform my writing voice.

I came close to grabbing the edges of what I was pursuing several times, only to feel it slip away. I did a critical analysis of the central tenets of Modernism and Postmodernism. The idea I was tracing remained at the edge of perception. I went back to the tenets of Romanticism, Realism, and Idealism and traced them up through to Postmodernism and, violà, I got a thumb under the edge and held on to the idea. In the central tenets of Romanticism, Modernism, and Postmodernism I unraveled the core concepts of those movements that explore humankind's relationships to the cosmos. A central tenet of all those movements revolves around the ages old debate between predestination, free will, and humanity's capacity and need to reorder chaos into a desirable equilibrium.

Romanticism, then, orients on a capacity to change external circumstances to a favorable state. Modernism for its self-enlightenment-driven extistentialist core orients on acknowledging the immutable nature of reality and developing mechanisms for coping with reality's trials. Postmodernism for its self-aware neoextistentialism calls into question absolutes of reality and authority and explores mechanisms for coping with absolutes and nonabsolutes and uncovering the differences.

So Romanticism allows for change to the external world. Modernism acknowledges that reality is immutable and allows for change to the interior world. Postmodernism allows for the possibility that absolutes are subject to interpretation and allows change to cope with the internal and external outcomes of questioning absolutes. My question then became what avenue of change might a new literary movement reflect of the current and near future state of humanity's interactions with the cosmos.

I adapted a life-stage analogy to compare with and conceptualize what I was pursuing. Not to say that any literary movement is less hierarachally advanced or more or less mature or past its prime or more deprecated or out of fashion than any other. For modeling purposes, this analogy suited my needs and produced results.

An infant goes through an initiation into toddlerhood from mother-me/not me to me/not me awareness due to cognitive growth, which in some ways reflects a significant fraction of pre-Romanticism's teaching literature. Romanticism represents a life-stage initiation from toddler to childhood. When a child becomes aware that the external world can be altered to suit needs and desires, he/she becomes capable of deliberately reordering his or her limited reality.

In no small way, Realism is a reaction to Romanticism in that Realism attempts to portray the cosmos as it really is, yet from being able to perceive reality for what it really is, it's possible to reorder it to suit. Idealism is a reaction to Realism out of a desire to return to the purity of Romanticism's ideological possibilities. Dadaism attempts to reject all reality and denies many conventions of other literary movements, an iconoclastic movement at least. Dadaism, Impressionism, and Surrealism stand in a class all their own.

Modernism is a natural outgrowth of Cartesian existentialism, Cogito, ergo sum, and Romanticism, Realism, and Idealism movements. Modernism's self-enlightenment approach to absolutes parallels existentialist philosophies. I locate Modernism in the life-stages analogy as initiation into the teenage self-conscious ages of exercising free will and coping with the dictates of absolutes.

It should be apparent where I'm headed with the analogy by now. Postmodernism for it's questioning of absolutes then is the postadolescent young adult rebellious coming of age life-stage initiation into early adulthood. I no longer wonder what incited the middle Twentieth Century rebellion against the Establishment. Postmodernism in large part is both a contributor to and a symptom of the era. Neoexistentialist philosophy at its core says, I think; therefore, I have a right if not a responsibility to question absolutes in exercising free will.

On another front, I considered if there might be an existing name for the next life-stage initiation that represents what literary movement might come next. The life-stage age analogy is, of course, the age for initiating realization of full adulthood's responsibilities and obligations and consequences of actions, and privileges. More so, developing the capacity to consciously, critically, effectively think for oneself, for good or ill, oftentimes through trial and error. And logically, such a movement would evolve from what's come before. As it is before; so it is forward.

I found incomplete answers for a name in Hypermodernism, hypermodernity, and hyperreality topics, which take a questioning approach toward technology's influences similarly to Postmodernism's questioning absolutes approach, but don't fully answer my pursuit. In hyperreality and hypermodernity, though, I found clues for the next leap. Hypermodernism is a parallel concept with hypermodernity, the central tenet of which is that all things new are valuable and noteworthy, and all things old are worthless and beneath notice. Hypermodernity holds little regard for what came before that shaped the now of existence.

Hyperreality though, whoa, that's a ticket to a carnival ride. A central tenet of hyperreality is experiencing reality by proxy. In the present era, we are bombarded by proxy reality spectacles, simulations and virtual realities, and set stages of faked reality that override and replace our perceptions of the real physical cosmos. Visual arts, remote electronic interactions, circumstances contrived to subliminally manipulate our perceptions and actions and reactions, and on and on. What's really real anymore is no longer readily distinguishable from genuine fakery and thus what's really real is wide open to a broad range of interpretations.

How real is fiction, for example? As real as we allow ourselves to make believe it is. To me, what makes fiction real is my want for make believe appealing to my inner eternal child. Served by willing suspension of disbelief, participation mystique, and secondary world engagement, encompassed in one stone thrown, that's make believe.

In the early '70s during the heydays of Postmodernism, philosophy curriculums fostered an atmosphere for questioning what is real. Naturally, with a synchronicity of philosophy, art, and literary movements. The prompt is to define reality as concisely as possible without using negative modifiers; not, for example; or using conjunctions. My answer then was, Reality is all that which once I stop thinking about it continues to exist. Philip K. Dick's widely known "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." is another one. From Dick, Philip. "How to Build a Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later." (1978) A nonfiction op-ed commentary. http://deoxy.org/pkd_how2build.htm. I've a new definition of reality: Reality is all that has meaning for me.

Armed on a variety of fronts, I had enough ammunition to lay siege to the problem, formulate a hypothesis, derive useful results, and draw conclusions.
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If changing reality to suit is Romanticism, accommodating to immutable reality is Modernism, and questioning reality is Postmodernism, a follow-on literary movement might attempt valid answers as well as tasking meaningfully formulated questions about how reality and humanity best interact. Complications might then be perceptual and sensory processing failures of the interface between the internal and external cosmos, real and hyperreal.

Bringing it all to bear, make believe, changing reality to suit, accommodating reality, questioning reality, mechanisms for coping with immutable reality and hyperreality, an inherent desire to establish a favorable equilibrium, critical, conscious, responsible thinking for oneself's best interests as well as others', sensory and processing failures, call it Polymodernism. Multifaceted Postmodernism from reality by proxy existentialism. I experience reality by proxy; therefore, reality is peripheral to meaningful existence. Reality by proxy, that's the buzz words for Polymodernism.

In other words, Polymodernism is coping with or penetrating the proxy realities that life in this hyperreality era has become or suffering the failings and trials thereof. The basic tenet of Polymodernism then might be self-realization, or self-actualization, as a consequent of self-enlightenment and self-awareness, self-realizing or actualizing the self's influences and impacts on the external cosmos and how the external cosmos influences and impacts the self's proxy life; and therefrom, forging a life-defining transformation of the self.
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In Polymodernism, virtue might not necessarily be rewarded or approved of, vice not necessarily punished or condemned, there's little real poetic justice anyway, as in the vein of Realism's conventions and in reality and in predestination's tenets. Questioning why to bother seeking further enlightenment and finding valid answers, any means to an end or the ends don't justify the means, resisting or yielding to temptation; insuperable internal struggles of the conscience seem at the core of Polymodernism. Favorable outcome's might then be fulfilling basic, physical, emotional, mental, and/or spiritual needs by self-realizing one's full potential in spite of antogonisms caused by proxy reality.

No and yes, is the answer I found to whether Polymodernism is in its infancy. In some ways Polymodernism retrospectively reinvents conventions of early undefined literary movements. Although, now that I've defined what I'm looking for, I see traces of it all over. Nothing close yet fully on point, maybe one novel I know of that reaches but doesn't realize. That doesn't mean that I can't still get there first-est, fullest, most-est, and best-est.

Lots to think about here. I hope to come back and comment after it's had time to simmer in my brain a bit.

Voice just is. When you overthink it, you get in the way of your voice.

Voice is what emerges at the unconscious level.

Voice is that subtle quality or qualities that make one writer different from any other writer.

So the Romantic chicken crossed the road because the other side seemed a better place to go.

The Modern chicken crossed the road because that might be a better place for that chicken to be.

The Postmodern chicken crossed the road to find out if the road is even there. (Or to somehow prove that it isn't there.)

Pyre Dynasty, those chicken joke analogies are pure gold, and noteably astute.

Has it ever occurred to you that treatises like the one above make you appear entirely too pedantic?

For the moment, as far as what you've talked about with voice, extrinsic, what you've mentioned on other threads too about trying to find yours...as you know, I feel many many people on Hatrack are vastly to concerned with various "rules" of writing, with avoiding supposed "cliches" and all that sort of thing. You don't seem to buy into most of that, at least not in the same way. But as I see it, I think maybe your a bit too fixated on terminology, on various different literary movements, where everything fits, how stories are structured, what model or movement or set of tenets this or that fits into. You seem to need to put a name, term, structure, framework, format, movement name, mode, hierachy, analogy or whatever on to everything and based on what relatively little information I have, it seems to me that may be part of why you're having trouble "finding your voice."

Now don't get me wrong...I enjoy all those things, and try to understand the meanings of things, how they work and why, as well. But as Brad says, i think maybe you concetrate to strongly on a pedantic approach too it. You want to label and catagorize and structure everything to the nth degree, but some things require also a dose of intuition, gut feeling, that sort of thing...and the realization that not everything can be put into a box. Theres a lot of bleed over, a lot of crossover between them. You can't put a single name to everything, and trying to define the exact specific differences between genres, literary movements and whatever once taken to a certain level ceases to be interesting or useful and becomes an exercise in futility.

Edit: I want to make it clear I find nothing wrong with the way you approach things...all I am basically saying is it might not hurt to broaden your approach horizons a little bit, and not come at everything as if your preparing to write a thesis about it. Academic, scholarly approaches are great and useful, but still just one point of view.

I don't think you're sharing. I think you're showing off.

Perhaps I am too insulting too often.

But you're a pedant and it's annoying as hell.

</mini-rant>

It was the ever upward pursuit of personal accomplishments. An equivalent would be called social climbing, but it was more than that.

I look at the philosophical progressions personified as a person's development as a form of Thrust. It's like walking up a mountain that is infinitely high. For a person involved in more literary works, I do think your analysis has applicability to voice and the approach of the MC to whatever conflict they define. The philosophy goes a long way towards defining the kind of conflict.

For many readers, however, they read to get off of the Thrust trail. What these philosophies do not assume and what brings many to deflate the intellectual exercise is cynicism. In your analogy to the growing stage of a human being, such cynicism fights the every-increasing level of introspection or naval-gazing of those contemplating the next jump inward.

The aspect of throwing off the shackles of philosophies was the most appealing aspect of Vance. In his typical formula, he generally transformed his hero from a Romantic to one who fought against the status quo and developed a cynicism which allowed him to fight against, what the hero felt, was rigid ideology.

I believe that there are elements in the real world that fracture and then crumble the edges of the philosophical progression so that as adherents age, they fall off the precipice into a more reasoned cynicism.

That cynicism however presented deserves a voice as well and needs a place to stand among it's sister 'isms'.

Note: I do not think you are showing off and, indeed, am challenged by your thoughts. I appreciate your bringing up this topic. If a Hatracker doesn't like what you say, they merely need not comment. It is a rule that I follow and, I think, has served me well.

Pyre Dynasty, if I might suggest an alternative Polymodern chicken crossing the road joke. The Polymodern chicken imagined it crossed the road, and it was so as far as its reality is concerned.

I don't think you do yourself or your points any favors by consistently "talking above" the crowd.

This is a lay audience you're addressing, not a college classroom. If too many of us have to make too many trips to the dictionary in your first paragraph or two, it's quite vexing. And I consider myself to be a rather astute fellow, so I know if you're making me zone out, probably 80% or better of the other readers are zoning out too.

You seem either unaware of this fact, or you simply don't care.

I suspect the latter. But I could be wrong.

Again, pedantism is not a positive quality.

Yes, i used movies. Sue me.

edit: under Polymodernism, check also Avatar. Didn't see it, but the concept of existence by proxy kinda is laid out from the synopsis.

Then again, i might not have understood nothing ;((

From those that I respect the most on the topic of "voice".

1. Should always strive for clarity, writing is a form of communication.

2. Write a lot and do number 1, and in time your natural voice will appear.

3. Deliberate design/crafting of voice is something best left until all of the other aspects of storytelling are mastered.

In other words those who've gone before me suggest not worrying too much about voice until the advanced stages of learning the craft of fiction.

Those are just opinions of people I respect.

I didn't follow the connection from voice to the various literary movements. Style tends to change over time so different styles probably predominate different literary movements (sometimes nearly defining them, e.g., Hemingway) as time goes on.

But I've always associated voice with either the traits in diction and style that often tend to characterize a given writer's body of work, or the diction and style choices crafted to reflect a character in first person or close third person narrative voices.

But to make snide remarks or accuse someone of talking down to others (and you refer to pedantry, which I don't think is anything to do with extrinsic's post here - to borrow from Inigo Montoya, I do not think that word means what you think it means) is frankly unhelpful, to put it mildly.

Voice is a complicated attribute that connects and resonates with other attributes. It has many meanings and different meanings between any given group of readers, writers, and literature students. Literary movements came with conventional voices, or the way I see it, the movements were outgrowths of distinctive voices.

Cynicism as a narrative voice, for example. Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions is narrated in an implied author-narrator's cynical voice. I keep coming back to Breakfast for its cynical voice that questions absolutes, noteably, and I find this most remarkarble, questioning the conventional wisdoms of writing principles approach Vonnegut took with the novel and in the message of think for yourself that the novel conveys. Strong traces of Polymodernism in that novel.

Unfairly rude or not, sometimes I just have to roll my eyes and shout out a big, giant WTF. If we'd all been sitting in a room together and he gave this big spiel for the group in-person I'd still be standing up and saying WTF.

For years, whenever I have come across these kinds of pieces -- and not just by him, I mean by lots of different people on-line and elsewhere -- I always ask myself the same question: is the underlying purpose of the article to convey information coherently and understandably to the readership, or is the underlying purpose to impress the readership with the author's vasty intellect and storehouse of retreivable knowledge?

Mind you, I have a severe brevity deficit myself, so there is the possibility of this kettle calling that pot black. However, I like to think I am at least aware of my own density factor, whereas extrinsic... Seems happily oblivious.

And no, I never told him to go away or that he couldn't post. Nor did I say nobody should appreciate his posts, if in fact they do appreciate them. I never said anything of the sort. I simply asked him if he realized how he seems when he does this.

I also asked for Cliff's Notes. Since the original piece by extrinsic reads not just a little like the (in)famous "Transgressing the Boundaries" paper by Alan Sokal. Ergo, so chock-full of academic language as to be rendered meaningless or incomprehensible, even to people who ought to be able to parse it.

I suppose this makes me an uncouth ape of a writer. Oh well.

I think most of us who write have passed through the Misunderstood Misfit stage. And yes, all of us seek little nooks and crannies in the world where this lingering Misunderstood Misfitness can be 'safe' from the cruelty of the outside.

If Hatrack has been that 'safe' zone for you, then no wonder you're giving me a big WTF for me giving you a big WTF.

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I always ask myself the same question: is the underlying purpose of the article to convey information coherently and understandably to the readership, or is the underlying purpose to impress the readership with the author's vasty intellect and storehouse of retreivable knowledge

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Brad, I put it to you that there's a third option you're not considering, and in not considering it you risk alienating more than just a particular contributor.

What if the underlying purpose of a post is for a person to work out for themselves what they think about the topic at hand? That in posting it they are saying "there, this is what I believe", without expecting to impress and/or inform anybody? That in posting it they have also made it available to a wider audience, so that should that communication be valuable to anyone, some feedback and a wider discussion may ensue?

We are all stage performers here, though many of us don't realise it. While an American Idol hopeful stands before a panel of judges and stands directly in the heat of their critical fire, we put our creations before our audience (on this forum, our peers) and open them to scrutiny, but the apparent impersonality of the process is an illusion: When our audience reads our work they hear our voice, and when they respond to it they respond to us. Thus it is that, like a stage performer who is drunk on the applause of their fans, some of us also strive for positive feedback from our audience as a heady relief to the isolated, delayed feedback loop of our chosen medium.

But for those to whom global attention isn't a motivating factor, who stand on one of many stages in a pavilion full of performers, many much more popular, but are nevertheless satisfied with just that one audience member who stands before them in rapture - are they not justified in being offended at the criticism or catcalls of passersby who don't appreciate their performance, especially if everyone present has entered the pavilion on the understanding that here - if nowhere else - it's okay to be yourself?

Personally, I don't follow half of what extrinsic posts, but occasionally I'll take the time to read it closely and pull something new out of it. But that's just me - I'm walking past the stages and finding the performance that speaks to me. I don't see any reason to jump up and down in front of him and try and convince him to change his act - he's free to choose his audience.

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- to borrow from Inigo Montoya, I do not think that word means what you think it means.

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LOL, Tchern, but that was actually El Guapo speaking to Jefe in ¡Three Amigos!--concerning a plethora of piñatas. Great line, though.

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- to borrow from Inigo Montoya, I do not think that word means what you think it means.
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LOL, Tchern, but that was actually El Guapo speaking to Jefe in ¡Three Amigos!--concerning a plethora of piñatas. great line, too.

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Extrinsic, fabulous post. I think it gives insight about what kind of reader you are. However, I question whether a literary movement "led" to another. There is a breakdown in the evolutionary model in that while one happened after the other, there isn't a very good causal link. People wrote. Other people classified. Which group do you want to belong to?

Brad, Extrinsic does have a pedantic voice. Lump it. When I read an author whose voice I dislike, I return the book to the library and look for something else.

Well, first of all, thank you, extrinsic, for sharing that. I love stuff like that.

While literary movements may not exactly "lead" to subsequent literary movements, those subsequent movements are very likely to have been responses in one way or another to the previous movements.

Second, I'm tempted to offer an alternate to Pyre Dynasty's Romantic Chicken, in that perhaps it crossed the road because it believed that it could?

Third, and maybe this should have been first, while no one is required to agree with anything anyone else says here on the Hatrack River Writers Workshop forum, everyone is required to be polite.

I am sorry to see less than polite behavior from someone I would have expected to be more professional.

If there is a next stage, and it is not Romanticism or Polymodernism, then I shall call it Anteinevitablism. Because, it seems in all things the inevitable is never reached only viewed from a distance, perhaps only ever coming as close as God does to Adam.

Neither can I agree with your hypothesis that virtual reality and reality are separate.

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A central tenet of hyperreality is experiencing reality by proxy. In the present era, we are bombarded by proxy reality spectacles, simulations and virtual realities, and set stages of faked reality that override and replace our perceptions of the real physical cosmos.

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Whether we post in forums, chat over the internet, text via cellular phones, or dive into computer games, these are still things which Man has created. They are as real as the written word on a piece of paper, and the visual image on film.

However, those reality points are valid out of many possible alternative viewpoints. Assuming a meaning for hyperreality as real by any one definition is fodder for fiction as is assuming any meaning of hyperreality as not real is fodder for fiction, and probably all points on that multidimensional manifold are fodder for fiction.

I want to think about the other points for awhile.

First of all, you seem to show the progress through different isms as an inevitable flow, rather than authors reflecting on their own views of the world. Why do you think there is a change between isms? Is it authors have new insights into the human condition that, once exposed, help everyone else see things in new light? Or is it simply that they write according to their own time, and just happen to touch on enough important themes that we find their work relevant later?

And aren't these labels applied after the fact? I doubt any author has sat down and said "I'm going to make a new literary age," even if they have grandiose visions of their own work. Since these labels are applied later by those who can purport whatever they want, isn't it really just a way of labeling the literary style at the time? As far as the writing craft goes, it has evolved and changed as much as any other discipline, such as engineering or architecture. I've read works from different time periods that were considered classics, and have always found the power comes from their story and worldview, not any particular method of writing...

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Bringing it all to bear, make believe, changing reality to suit, accommodating reality, questioning reality, mechanisms for coping with immutable reality and hyperreality, an inherent desire to establish a favorable equilibrium, critical, conscious, responsible thinking for oneself's best interests as well as others', sensory and processing failures, call it Polymodernism. Multifaceted Postmodernism from reality by proxy existentialism. I experience reality by proxy; therefore, reality is peripheral to meaningful existence. Reality by proxy, that's the buzz words for Polymodernism.

In other words, Polymodernism is coping with or penetrating the proxy realities that life in this hyperreality era has become or suffering the failings and trials thereof. The basic tenet of Polymodernism then might be self-realization, or self-actualization, as a consequent of self-enlightenment and self-awareness, self-realizing or actualizing the self's influences and impacts on the external cosmos and how the external cosmos influences and impacts the self's proxy life; and therefrom, forging a life-defining transformation of the self.

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I find these two paragraphs, as definitions of a philosophy called Polymodernism, to be somewhat contradictory. What led me to this is the following: Romanticism, Realism, Postmodernism, Idealism all seem to be explorations about certain extremes of existence, each following different dimensions (to borrow from mathematics). You could probably put hyperrealism in there, by your definition, but I do not sufficiently understand Dadaism, Impressionism, and Surrealism to place them in such a category. For the exploration of such ideas, you could think of the analogy of doing the edge pieces of a jigsaw.

From the first paragraph above, it would seem that you are defining it as a philosophy that develops and explores spaces between the extremes, filling out the space between the edges of the jigsaw. However, by your definition in the second paragraph above, it would seem to be more of an exploration of the Postmodern end of hyperrealism. In particular, the self-centric nature of the exploration tends to define the exploration into a relatively small space along such a dimension. So, which do you understand your definition to be?

Once a movement is qualified by secondary discourse (response to literature literature), emulators crop up who replicate in their own unique voices the various attributes of any given movement, form, author, or story by conforming to a carefully chosen range of definitions inherent to a defined category. Or strike out on their own from inpsirations incited by a movement's conventions.

Whether or not any author determined a course to break new ground is not as open to interpretation, but still wide open. Like inventors seeking innovations so they stand out from the mob, emerging writers like myself frequently seek out innovations through reimagining what's come before. I believe the explosive diaspora of crossover literary conventions in the last half century amply illustrates that.

A good example of a deliberate innovation is the evolution of Free Indirect Discourse, which in today's literature is all but preeminent. Gustav Flaubert is credited with introducing the method in Madame Bovary, 1856. Jane Austen refined the method in her works. Who fully realized it is open to intrepretation, if it matters, but I favor Hemingway in The Old Man and the Sea. Then there's Shelley's Frankenstein and H.G. Wells Time Machine motif innovations that resonate down through time.

It's worth noting introduction of the Free Indirect Discourse method coincided with the rise of Realism, a polar opposite of Romanticism, and coincided with declining church censorship. Some other coincidences going on then too, Transcendentalism, early origins of Formalism and Structuralism, to name a few.

The emergence of a literary movement's naming and qualifications does generally follow hand-in-hand from a secondary discourse movement's assignment of conventions, but not necessarily exclusively so. Beat Generation literature arose initially in an absence of definition, I believe, because it wasn't readily defineable and because it was initially considered beneath notice. That changed in a big way once it was taken seriously.

As in writing, there are no wrong or right answers in literature response, only credible, supportable intrepretations. The basic paradigm of literature response is, Take a stand, make a credible point, and support it, which parallels a basic need for a story to take a position toward a theme. A point doesn't have to be proven, only credible and supported.

Comparing a literary movement to a worldview is self-reflexive examination. What came first, the world that influenced the movement or the movement that influenced the world? The answer goes both ways. Eighteenth Century critics named Romanticism. As it was then, it arose as a rebellion against the social and political norms of an entrenched aristocracy and scientific and cultural authority spawned by the first Age of Enlightenment. Yet Romanticism has clear and substantial roots in folklore culture going back as far as history does. Who began it or when did it begin? Romanticism's true origins is like the invention of fire, not yet defined.

Why we find literature from the past relevant today is because of a shared universe of experience. Historicism looks at the assorted perspectives of the time of a story's writing, the era it depicts, the responses to it when it was published, and the context of how it's perceived now. Many of the children's novels I enjoyed in my youth disappeared from public school and library stacks because they're deemed politically insensitive today.

Predicting a next direction is all but impossible, although it's been done. Melville shaped Modern American literature by introducing a uniquely American voice. I believe finding that voice was deliberate from how his voice improving over time demonstrates his struggle to find it. He resolutely refused to conform to established conventions. He sought his own road.

My purpose isn't to redefine literature through a new movement, nor spawn a new age. My intent is to find a fresh and original approach to my writing by encompassing what's come before and reinventing it.

What I've wound up doing is uncovering something that's been simmering just below the collective writing consciousness, if not the cultural opus' consciousness in response to technology. Polymodernism isn't as new as I'd like to think. It has antecedents that indicate to me writers have been reaching for something like it, not fully realizing the implications, and consequently, not fully realizing the import tracing through their stories.

One of the ways I draw inspiration is by asking what's going on now, what's going on in the next two years, about how long a novel takes to make its way through the publishing pipeline, and so on. In emulation of what I perceive was H.G. Wells inspiration for The Time Machine, I look back to see the future. Looking back, I see that literature adapts to the times. I'm struggling to adapt to the times far enough ahead so that I can stay abreast, if I ever can catch up.

The literary movements you speak of, I presume are parallel to the same movements in art. These movements, regardless of when they were named, reflected the philosophies and social and political movements of their times. Much of this came about in a much smaller world where the groups involved were somewhat more isolated and these movements could actually maintain a distinct style. And yes, in my mind some of these movements evolved out of each other and some developed in radical reaction to each other.

As we move forward in time and the world started getting smaller in terms of access to different ideas there started to be more overlapping of movements. There were more influences from a larger variety of directions and the movements themselves became less isolated.

But now we have the present and the near future. Your concept of Polymodernism is interesting. We live in a world where we have access to images and words from all over the world with just a few keystrokes. The fact that one could absorb themselves in a nearly complete virtual world certainly exists. And some people do.

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insuperable internal struggles of the conscience seem at the core of Polymodernism. Favorable outcome's might then be fulfilling basic, physical, emotional, mental, and/or spiritual needs by self-realizing one's full potential in spite of antogonisms caused by proxy reality.

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I agree with this. I think the people who stand to succeed on a personal level in this Polymodern world are the ones who can define themselves outside of the virtual realms and understand how to use the current plethora of access and technology to improve their lives rather than getting lost in it.

But I also believe that this Polymodernism will give rise to a certain rebellious faction, a counter movement, that will ultimately choose to disconnect. I don't mean a complete disconnect, like the Amish (Of course, I believe they're using cell phones now too). The people of this counter movement will still use cell phones and the internet but the focus will be on real experiences rather than virtual ones. The thing is, in the Polymodern world there will be room for everyone. So, in a way, even the rebellious sorts will simply be another faction within the world they are rebelling against. Honestly, I see this as already happening.

So I don't know if there is going to be a new voice, a new movement or if there is going to be an absorption of all schools of thought. And that every time a new movement starts it will simply become part of a greater whole. Will this create a new, over-arcing voice or will it simply continue to fragment? I'm not sure but I think I've said way too much so I'm going to stop here.

These are my thoughts. Hope they contribute something worthwhile.

Noteably, rebellious reaction to Polymodernsim. That's a reaction inherent in some technological dystopias, like Orwell's Nineteen Eight-four, Big Brother and all that. A possibility that rebellion is a contributing part of a whole is an intriguing insight. One immediate implication that comes up from that is the opposite of Orwell's. A story might take a position that rebellion against technology is morally wrong, or vice versa, of course. Maybe even a position that rebellion is recognized as a part of the process that strengthens the whole and is therefore fostered.