[dmreedy]

All I can think of is a quote from the McSweeney's article elsewhere on the front page right now.

"we are proud to bring the written word into the future with revolutionary technology that delivers the one thing readers are most passionate about: efficiency."

For me at least, postmodern literature isn't just about conveying a message or an idea. It's about conveying a vibe, a state of mind. And that kind of pseudo-telepathy might even require the meandering and the density and the apparent overcomplication to deliver you enough context to align your neurons into something approximating where the author's were at.

[dumpsterlid]

"And that kind of pseudo-telepathy might even require the meandering and the density and the apparent overcomplication to deliver you enough context to align your neurons into something approximating where the author's were at."

Absolutely, postmodern literature is an extension of modernism (i.e. To The Lighthouse or Ulysses) in that it is focused on describing the moment to moment experience of consciousness, except postmodern literature like Pynchon's work dials everything up until the replicated experience of consciousness is the experience of a psychedelic state.

This results in confounding literature where it is difficult to deduce what is real, what the point is, and to orient oneself. This is unavoidably a necessary part of inducing such an intense mental state in the reader.