Religion and Evolution

Dedicated to everyone who has ever tried to save my soul.

Introduction

When I was about five years old, in Sunday School the week before Easter at my family's Congregational Protestant church, the teachers were playing for us a cartoon video about the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I remember, quite clearly, seeing the cartoon image of the white man nailed to the wooden cross, and I called over one of my teachers: I had a question.

"How do we know this happened?" I asked, expecting a genuine factual answer.

"Because it is written in the Bible," responded the teacher, glad to see my interest in my assigned religion.

"So how do we know the Bible is right?" I asked, looking for something a little more substantial than that.

"Because it was written by God," responded the teacher, happy to help me find my way to the Lord.

"Well how do we know that God wrote it?" I asked, beginning to get confused.

At this, the teacher smiled broadly, put her hand on my shoulder, and said, "because we just have faith."

I looked around the room and saw the other young students, happy to know that God was watching over them and Jesus was their friend, not a doubt in their mind that any of this might be untrue, and it dawned on me that I was the only person in that room who saw any problem whatsoever with simply accepting these ideas with absolutely no evidence of their truth. The Bible said so, God wrote the Bible, and we just have faith. Asking for a rational argument made me the odd one out.

Over the years I have grown very interested in human religion. It is clearly not the result of gullibility or ignorance (as I thought when I was young and foolish), as even the most intelligent people are usually religious, believing in a higher power even if they do not subscribe to a particular religion. Even those who question authority at every turn, for every situation, never for a moment question the existence of God. A person like me, who finds the existence of such a figure unlikely and unnecessary, is rare.

Theory of Religion and Evolution

Most people would say that the reason the majority of humans believe in a higher power is because one exists, plain and simple; but after years of studying religion, psychology, biology, natural science, and whatever other subjects I found interesting, I have come up with an alternate theory which I think deserves consideration.

Humans share 99% of their DNA with chimpanzees, and though they can communicate with sign language and make and use tools, the apes have never developed cars or computers or coal power production plants. One thing that every religion I have studied has in common is the idea that human beings are special, and in some way superior to other animals, explaining this phenomenon of human advancement. It seems to me, however, that the main differences between humans and apes are small and few: we have opposable thumbs, and absurdly large brains. The thumbs make more complicated tool use possible, but are useless without the capacity to develop such tools. The brain size, on the other hand, has far more interesting consequences.

Human brains are so large that babies must be born before their brains are fully grown. While we retain a few basic instincts, they are not nearly enough to survive, and so our distant ancestors evolved a different way of surviving over time: a compulsion to ask questions, and find answers for them.

This drive to gather information led to an accumulation of human knowledge. Its beginnings were surely simple: is this berry good to eat? Experimentation added more and more information to the pool, eventually leading up to complicated hunting and farming techniques, crafting skills, and over time things like biology, astronomy, chemistry, and mathematics. The use of language, and eventually writing, aided the species in keeping track of more information than could be stored in a single brain.

But not every question could be answered at first. Until fairly recently in human history, something like rain was a great mystery which could not be solved; but the drive to find an answer would not go away, and would torture a human until it could be satisfied. This is how religion was born: to answer all of the questions which could not be answered with experimentation. The rain is the tears of a higher being; it is controlled by that goddess; it is a sign that this god is pleased, or angry. Mythology was built up with stories to explain the origin of each phenomenon which could not be otherwise understood. Ancient religions held by groups such as the Druids, the Greeks, the Romans, and indigenous groups across the globe, are full of such stories.

Over time, experimentation, which came to be known as science, found answers to many of these questions, alleviating the need for religious answers to them. This was often problematic, and a scientist who contradicted the teachings of a religion would be punished for heresy. Now and then a new religion would take over, dismissing the mythology of the old one and replacing some answers with scientific ones, and other answers with new religious ones. Nowadays, most people in the Western world laugh at the beliefs of their ancient ancestors, because they accept the scientific explanations of things - and yet they still cling to their religion.

The fact of the matter is, religion can never be done away with completely so long as humans exist, because there are two questions which can never be answered by experimentation: why are we here, and what happens when we die.

Because we can never find scientific answers for these questions, there will always be a drive to find an answer for them in some other way. Without a purpose and an assurance that such a purpose will be continued even after death, humans would no longer have a reason to continue their lives. Our chimpanzee relatives do not need religion because instinct prompts them to keep going; the human instinct for survival is only enough if reinforced by a purpose in life. The prevalence of suicide in those who do not believe in an ultimate purpose for life is strong evidence of this. Humans need religion in order to continue their existence.

This is problematic for those, such as myself, who are not religious: the drive to find an answer is still there, but the answer is unacceptable, and a better one is unattainable. This often leads to insomnia, anxiety-related issues, severe depression, and sometimes suicide. Personally, I find that the only way I can keep going is to keep myself busy enough that I don't have time to think about it; I envy my cat, sleeping at my feet, who does not have this unfulfillable need.

The Consequences of Religion

Though I fully believe that religion is an invention, not a revelation of truth, I do not condemn or look down on those who are religious; that would be absurd, as religion is a necessary part of the lives of humans in general. I do, however, find it disturbing how many ways modern religion negatively impacts the lives of so many people in the world. Despite some potentially harmful superstitions, religion as a whole was not a major problem until monotheism came into existence. When a religion accepts the idea of multiple deities, it is not difficult to embrace the deities of another group should the two come in contact. These are the gods here, those are the gods there, and that is that. When first a group of humans decided that there is only one god, however, things began to get messy. If there is only one god, then those who believe in other gods are wrong. Depending on the style of the monotheistic religion, they must be corrected and converted to save their souls, or even slaughtered for their heresy.

Monotheism has continued to cause problems in modern Western society. Judeo-Christian morals have strongly influenced the social code of morals and ethics, and even laws which are often justified simply as "God's will." Monotheistic religion has been used to justify wars, racial intolerance, religious intolerance, and gender inequality. Notably in current events, there is a battle between those who see gender variance and homosexual behavior as wrong based on their religion, and those who see no harm in it or accept it as natural. The lives of a large percentage of people are determined by laws which allow or disallow same-sex marriage, adoption for same-sex couples, gender reassignment surgery and hormone therapy, and a plethora of related issues. Historically in many polytheistic cultures this problem never existed; such variances were accepted as normal or natural, and were common and unstigmatized. Even today, in areas where Christian influence is rejected or minimized, many indigenous cultures still practice the traditional acceptance of these variances.

It is clear that human religion is not about to disappear. One hopes, however, that its power will be used in the future to promote tolerance and acceptance rather than hate, violence, and bigotry.

Why I'm Not a Vegetarian

So many people have attempted to convert me to vegetarianism that I decided to write down all of my reasons for refusing.

There are many different arguments against vegetarianism. One of them is health issues, as it is incredibly difficult to be a healthy vegetarian; humans are designed to be omnivores and require a great deal of nutrients which are found in meat. To stop eating meat and continue to be healthy, you must know all of the nutrients which most people get from meat and how to obtain them from plants (although most nutrients obtained from plants are much more difficult to absorb by the body than the same nutrients obtained from meat). On top of this, you must be able to afford the supplements, usually in pill form, which must be taken in order to provide these nutrients. This ties in with sustainability: such supplements are generally imported from areas in which the plants they are made from are easily grown. The use of fossil fuels in shipping them to your local pharmacy uses a great deal more energy than it would take to raise local beef, poultry, and fish and sell them at your neighborhood market, not to mention the degradation of the soil and use of fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides which is caused by the agricultural techniques made use of in growing those plants.

But many vegetarians are not concerned with sustainability, only animal rights. (This is unfortunate, as the two issues are inextricably intertwined.) I have often heard the argument that animals do not deserve to be farmed as a commodity for human consumption, and they have the right to live free in the wild. This argument comes from misunderstandings and misinformation. Groups who beleive they are fighting for animal rights regularly release animals who were raised in captivity into the wild, where they are quickly devoured, or starve to death. The fact of the matter is that almost all of the meat we consume comes from animals which were domesticated thousands of years ago, and have evolved over the millenia during which they have been completely cared for by humans. Without the need to feed and care for themselves or evade predators, their brains have gotten smaller and they have become slower. Many of the instincts which their distant ancestors would have used to survive have long since disappeared. They are no longer capable of taking care of themselves, and if released into the wild, they would quickly perish. They do not know how to find food and water or even identify, let alone evade, predators. They would freeze to death in cold climates or die of heat stroke in hot ones. It would be intolerably cruel to impose that life on an animal incapable of dealing with it.

And even if domesticated animals were capable of caring for themselves in the wild, their lives would not be as free and happy as the activists would have you believe. As anyone who has ever watched Animal Planet can tell you, the life of a wild herbivore is difficult and dangerous. The struggle to find food and water is constant, infant mortality rates are often 75% or higher, and death is slow and brutal.

I am not advocating feedlots and overcrowded chicken farms. I agree that it is cruel, not to mention unnecessary, to raise animals in such conditions as they are too often raised. I am a proud supporter of those farms which allow their animals to roam, and especially those which allow them to graze on grass rather than troughs full of corn. But on the better farms, the ones where the animals are well cared for and allowed to move, I see the quality of life as being a thousand times better than that of a typical wild animal.

But many vegetarians are not concerned with the life of the animal so much as the fact that we kill it. Such people would say that it is cruel to end an animal's life in this way, and it is wrong, even disgusting, to consume their flesh once they are already dead. Many would go so far as to suggest that even if an animal were to die of natural causes, it would be wrong to eat it because it is still an animal.

First off, I have to think that if the cow were given the choice between barely scraping by for its entire life and then facing the possibility of death by starvation, dehydration, or being killed and torn apart by a carnivore which would begin to eat it while it was still alive, versus being raised on a farm where it would remain well fed and cared for (and for much longer than it would be expected to survive in the wild) and then killed as quickly as possible (even the cruel farmers would tell you it's inefficient to drag the death out for too long), it would go straight for the farm. Wouldn't you?

As for the consumption of the meat once the animal is dead, however it was killed, I have only this to say: that flesh is not an animal. That flesh is meat.

Meat is not alive. It is carbon. It is protein and vitamins and minerals and nothing more. It cannot think. It cannot feel. Even those people who are very religious will likely agree that it does not have a soul, because that soul has already departed.

And most importantly, it will be eaten. If not by a human, than by another animal, or by insects, or by bacteria. In the end, everything is eaten. I will be eaten, and so will you. As time passes, the very same atoms and molecules which made up the animal, and which make up that meat, will go back into the soil after being consumed and processed by some living organism. That soil will eventually become part of a plant which grows there. Carbon will always be recycled, as it always has been since the birth of this planet.

Your vegetables are made out of the very animals you refuse to eat.

Your vegetables are made of meat.

Postmodern Literature's Use for Exploring Violent and Emotional Issues

My final research paper for the comparative literature course, "Literature of 9/11."

Literature often attempts to address violent and emotional topics which are difficult to deal with verbally. Postmodern literature is a genre which has a unique way of approaching such topics. It questions and often defies literary convention in order to attempt to convey information which cannot ordinarily be expressed by words, such as complex emotional states. In this paper I will demonstrate how two novels, Kathy Acker’s Empire of the Senseless and Frédéric Beigbeder’s Windows on the World, use postmodern techniques to deal with violent and emotional issues, and then compare their techniques to determine which, if either, is more effective in doing this.

Postmodern literature can be difficult to deal with analytically, primarily because the only characteristic of the genre about which there is a general agreement is that there exists no single definition for it. In fact, during the course of my research I was unable to find even a single definition for postmodern literature; even Hawthorn's Glossary of Contemporary Literary Theory lists postmodern literature only in terms of a vague comparison to modern literature, specifically pointing to the fact that it is used differently by different authors and scholars and is therefore indefinable (152).

As an alternative to attempting to form a precise definition of this literary phenomenon, many authors attempt to qualify it by referring to some of the common characteristics found in postmodern literature. Ihab Hassan does this in his essay "Toward a Concept of Postmodernism," listing and explaining the qualities he finds as being particular to postmodernism. The two primary characteristics on which he focuses are indeterminacy and immanence; indeterminacy referring to a resistance to order, form, design, and boundaries, and immanence referring to a focus on the present moment, participation in the narrative, informality of the finished text, and the process of and involvement with the writing itself (Hassan, Postmodern Turn 91-93). These characteristics tend to push literature past its past preconceived boundaries, allowing for a degree of freedom of expression previously thought impossible.

This new genre of literature has its critics, and in fact its very existence is not agreed upon by scholars, despite the fact that it is suggested to have come into existence by breaking away from modernism over half a century ago. Barry Chabot critiques Hassan’s definition in particular, pointing to its ambiguity as proof that postmodernism does not qualify as its own genre (2). Hassan responds to this criticism by proposing that it is too broad a phenomenon to be given a concrete definition, and just because on does not exist, this does not mean that it does not exist as an artistic and cultural phenomenon on which a consensus can be found, nor does it mean that it is not useful to analyze it in the way that he has (“On the Problem of Postmodernism” 1).

Many scholars suggest that postmodernism is simply an avant-garde offshoot of modernism, not sufficiently qualified to be defined as a new genre or literary or cultural movement (Hawthorn 151; Kellner 639). While it is true that postmodernism is based on modernism, and shares several qualities with its predecessor, there is sufficient difference to distinguish the two. Postmodernism takes many qualities of modernism to an extreme, including urbanism, technologism, dehumanization, primitivism, eroticism, antinomianism, and experimentalism (Hassan 91-92); if this extreme were the only difference between the two genres, then the critics of postmodernism might be justified in suggesting that it does not qualify as a new literary movement. There are, however, a few key differences which make the two incompatible. One is that modernism eschews advancements in science and technology, while postmodernism embraces them. Another is modernism’s belief in ultimate truth and knowledge; although it may be impossible to fully reach, modernism has faith that it is there, while postmodernism denies its existence completely. Finally, while both modernism and postmodernism recognize a fragmentation of reality and inability for human beings to ever achieve social unity, modernism laments this idea, while postmodernism embraces it (Hawthorn 152-153).

Kathy Acker’s Empire of the Senseless is strongly postmodern, displaying the qualities of indeterminacy and immanence in many ways. Unlike novels written in previous styles, including modern, there is no clear-cut plot or narrative. The point of view is constantly changing, jumping between characters and through time without any particular order. The writing style is very stream-of-consciousness. Acker disregards literary convention, ignoring rules of grammar, inserting images and Arabic script and writing run-on sentences. She also builds much of the novel on previous literary works, and in fact Acker herself claims to have never written anything original (“A Few Notes” 5). She is also strongly interested in the act of writing itself rather than the finished product, and refers to the immediate present as “the truth” and suggests that it is not possible to truly imagine things being different than they are: “One must be where one is,” she says (“A Few Notes” 6).

Acker talks at length about the importance of immanence in “A Few Notes on Two of My Books.” She refers to the fact that postmodern work (although she does not use the term specifically, the literature she describes is, in fact, now considered postmodern) is largely unaccepted by scholars, and asserts that this criticism is unfounded. Her explanation for the large resistance to it is that “our society, through the voice of its literary society, cannot bear immediacy, the truth, especially the political truth” (1). This claim is consistent with Hassan’s explanation of scholars’ resistance to postmodernism, and he suggests that “we resist the new under the guise of judgment” (Postmodern Turn 27). This statement refers to the tendency of human beings to resist change, and he points to judgment and dismissal as justifications for this resistance.

Though his writing style is very different, Beigbeder’s Windows on the World is also very postmodern. The novel itself does contain a conventional plot and narrative, but it is constantly interrupted by the author’s own thoughts as he is writing. Even this inclusion of two different storylines is not consistent; there is one point where the two narrators speak to each other from their respective chapters, arguing about the reason why people jump when trapped in a burning building. Beigbeder suggests that they are rational people who have decided to take control of their mode of death and seize their freedom, to which Carthew responds with “Bullshit, my dear Beigbeder ... You don’t jump 1,300 feet because you’re a free man. You jump because you’re a hunted animal” (149). Beigbeder responds to this by admitting that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about because was not there. There is also discontinuity within the primary narrative of Carthew, who, in stream-of-consciousness fashion, occasionally makes reference to things that he could not possibly know, such as that he’ll be dead in two hours (5).

All of these factors defy previous literary convention. And, in fact, this has caused the novel to be poorly received in France, where the intelligentsia dismiss his unconventional style as not even qualifying as literature at all.

Despite the different styles in which these novels are written, they share some common themes which aid them in addressing their respective topics, both relating to violence and difficult emotions. Acker creates a fictional future built on top of other literature which she has read, and primarily addressing violence based on sex (both in terms of gender and of intercourse) and race. Beigbeder’s novel specifically addresses the tragedy of September 11, 2001, and also looks at sex and race as factors in violence.

The fractured narrative in both novels reflects the violent nature of their subject matter. The emotions associated with violence are not easy to experience, and neither is the text. This reflects back on the postmodern trait of immanence; if the novels were smoothly written and easy to follow, as literary convention requires them to be, they would betray the tone of their subject matter. Because they are not, both authors bring the reader directly into the storyline, rather than looking at it from an emotional distance.

One specific example of this, found in both novels, is the constantly shifting point of view of the narrator. At all times it is first person, but there are different speakers at different points in each novel. This in itself would not be particularly significant if it weren’t for the fact that the reader is not always informed of the change in narrator. There are times when it is not at all clear who is speaking, which is confusing to the reader. This fact reflects the confusion of the characters themselves in a way that simple prose could not.

Another postmodern element found in these novels is the violation of typical literary boundaries. Historically, the term “novel” would be applied only to books written in prose. While illustrations are permissible, the text is the focus of the novel. Postmodernism, however, attacks the notion of prose as an effective way of conveying everything that the author is trying to convey. It is fitting for simply telling a story, but not for the communication of complex emotional and mental issues.

Prose is simple text, written in paragraph form, complete sentences, left to right. For much of Empire of the Senseless and Windows on the World, this is the style used, but there are several instances where it is broken. Kathy Acker, for example, interrupts the left to right English prose with Arabic script in some places. At first, it seems as though she is going to translate these lines, as it can be fairly assumed that most English speakers cannot read Arabic. Some of the lines she does translate (although whether the translations are accurate or not is unknown to most readers), but most of them simply sit there on the page, right to left, in an alphabet unable to be understood by the majority of the people who are exposed to it. Furthermore, there is no reason given for most of these interruptions. The narrator does not refer to all of them or explain what they are and why they are there.

These random tidbits of Arabic, likely to be entirely foreign to the reader, convey a sense of alienation which, though it could be described, could not be truly characterized by mere descriptive prose. Acker thus causes the reader to feel this alienation, rather than simply reading about it.

Acker and Beigbeder both use occasional pictures in their novels, although they use them somewhat differently. Acker’s illustrations are not referred to in the text itself. Like the Arabic script, they stand alone without explanation or introduction; they are not illustrations. Unlike the Arabic script, they are not entirely unintelligible to the typical reader. They resemble tattoos, and appear to be highly symbolic; what they are symbolic of, however, is unknown. The reader is left to speculate. While each reader is likely to come up with his or own interpretation of the images, there is a general cultural significance to them. They are gothic, and resemble biker tattoos, which carry connotations of darkness, death, strength, and power; a somewhat unsettling combination of qualities, but all of which are found together in this novel.

Beigbeder uses images differently. The three which he includes in his novel are inserted in the prose and described by the author; essentially, they are illustrations. The abnormality of this is that they, again, do not illustrate the narrative of the man in the North Tower, but rather in the stream-of-consciousness narrative of Beigbeder as he writes the novel. Furthermore, this particular portion of the narrative is unrelated to the World Trade Center. The first two images appear as he is describing the neighborhood of Montparnasse, one of a nearby cemetary (113), and one of the Tour Montparnasse in which he has been writing (114). The second, of a statue in the UN sculpture garden, appears as he is talking about the failure of the United Nations to bring justice and peace to the world (246).

Images, particularly when they are used so sparingly, call the reader’s attention to the portion of text where they appear. The result, then, of Beigbeder’s choice of images and their locations reflects the intended focus of the novel. It is not truly about the fictional story of Carthew, but rather it is about the process of dealing with the tragedy which the author is going through, and which he desires to share with the reader.

Near the end of Windows on the World, Beigbeder writes an entire chapter with the text in two columns signifying the towers of the World Trade Center, and the title of the chapter (the minute which is being described) is written vertically, to give the impression of the spire which rose out of one of the towers (301-302). Nowhere in this chapter does Beigbeder refer to this abnormality; it is simply there, glaring at the reader. This chapter is not about Carthew and his sons, but the author as he wanders through New York City, reflecting on his feelings of uselessness and futility and then realizing that he can find happiness if only he thinks about the things which bring him joy in the present rather than obsessing over the past or future.

But if this chapter is ultimately about moving on and letting go of preoccupations with the past and future, why does it take the shape of the towers? If the author were making a statement about letting go of the past, why memorialize it with the very text in which he claims to be freeing himself of it? Earlier in the novel he goes into great detail about how text outlives reality, and this image is not a coincidence. Again, there is a meaning here which cannot be conveyed by simple prose alone. The words, simple statements made in text, announce the objective truth which many of us have come to at some point in our lives; that the past cannot be changed, the future cannot be predicted, and the only way to live happily is to enjoy the present and not worry about other times. The shape of the text, on the other hand, delivers the realistic truth: that there will always be memories, images, in our minds which, as mere human beings, of which we are incapable of ever completely letting go.

Interestingly, despite these abundant violations of literary convention and standard prose, each author insists that their work is, in fact, a novel; the titles of both books are followed with the words, “A Novel.”

Both of these authors write not for the sake of the finished novel, but for the sake of the process of writing; Acker says that she writes because she enjoys it (“A Few Notes” 3), while Beigbeder refers to the act of writing the novel within the text itself, explaining near the beginning that it is impossible for him to write about anything else, because there is no other topic that touches him in the way that the World Trade Center attack does (8). He often refers to his inability to write this novel properly because he has not experienced what he is writing about, and yet this is precisely what he is attempting to do; this is, of course, an impossible goal. He cannot change the past, and he even refers to his book as useless, “like all books. The writer is like the cavalry, always arriving too late” (26). He explains to the reader that he wants to do something to change the outcome of the plot, but he is unable to get his warning to Carthew, who lives in the past and is now already dead.

There is more to this focus on process than the author’s fulfillment. While it is true that the plot is fragmented or even non-existent, the novels are both still very immersive. The difference between these postmodern works and more conventional literature is that the immersion is not in the storyline, but in the mental process of experiencing it. Acker is directing the reader’s attention to the emotional experience of writing. Even when her sentences are grammatically incorrect or even logically meaningless, there is an emotional sense conveyed by the words which could not be expressed in the same way in a conventional literary format.

Beigbeder’s focus is on dealing with the events of September 11. He could simply have written the fictional account of Carthew and his boys dying in the attack, leaving out his own personal thoughts and experiences, but that would change the purpose and effect of the novel. He is not simply making up a story, but attempting to deal with the psychological implications of the attack by writing about it. The effect once the book is published is to force the reader to consider his or her own reaction to the event, and to think about the question which Beigbeder has asked himself: how does one deal with an event such as this? His instinct is that he must first understand it, which he attempts to do by writing about it, but this proves impossible, because in the end this is only fiction. The greater question then becomes, how does one deal with something one cannot understand? Perhaps the answer is that one cannot, and certainly Beigbeder seems no closer at the end of his novel than he was at the start.
Clearly, Empire of the Senseless and Windows on the World both make good use of postmodern literary techniques to explore complex violent and emotional issues, but which does a better job of it? The answer, it seems, is as subjective as the content of the novels. While the subjects being addressed are of a similar nature, they are different in scope. Acker’s focus is very broad, including a wide range of issues, all of which are interconnected. Her purpose for writing this novel is to explore these issues, and to write, because that is what she enjoys; there is no ultimate conclusion or solution, and there is no ultimate purpose for the novel aside from this exploration. While the ending of Empire of the Senseless directly suggests hope for the future, while the situation in which this statement is made, the general context of the novel, points to the impossibility of such an eventuality given the truth of human nature.

Beigbeder’s subject matter is far more specific. He is attempting to deal with one specific issue: the September 11 terrorist attacks. As such, his focus is narrower, and while all of the topics which Acker addresses in full make an appearance in the novel (the sex scene which was removed from the English version, the waitress’s defensive position about her race (101), and the argument between the Jew and Muslim over Islamic terrorism (141), to name a few examples), and a clear connection is shown between them, Beigbeder is primarily concerned with, even obsessed with, the matter of understanding and dealing with this event. Like Acker, he eventually confirms that his original goal is impossible, indirectly showing that the only way to deal with the situation is to put it out of your mind (something that human beings are not capable of fully doing). The ending to his novel, as explored earlier, overtly suggests the possibility of hope, while subtly pointing at its ultimate impossibility. The purpose of this novel, in the end, is the same as Acker’s: to explore violence and emotion, particularly in the context of this one event and his personal experience in attempting to deal with it.

And so the conclusion is, typical of postmodernism, somewhat inconclusive. With such a high degree of subjectivity present in these texts, judgments about which is better or more effective can not be entirely objective. What is clear is that postmodern literary style, by bending and, when necessary, breaking previously conceived rules of the novel, prose, and literature as a whole, manages to explore certain subjects in a way that could never be done with simple narrative text. The final question, then, is why the great resistance to this newer form of writing? Why the criticism and disdain? The answer, it seems, can be found in Acker’s assertion that modern society is not eager to face the raw truths expressed by postmodern literature. It is indeed human nature to cling to and rationalize the familiar in any way possible, out of a natural fear of change and the unknown. Postmodernism is so effective at exposing these emotional issues that they become difficult and even painful to face. This is reflected in the media’s portrayal of events such as the September 11 attacks: as Beigbeder points out, the American media decided not to show the most brutal and violent images; despite the fact that they regularly display images of violence and gore taken in other countries, it was simply considered too horrible to show these types of images for an event that hit so close to home. “This carnage of human flesh is disgusting?” he asks. “It’s reality that is disgusting – and refusing to look at it, more so” (262).

And herein, I think, lies a vital point. Acker and Beigbeder have written novels that expose the truth in ways previously unheard of, and their style of writing has been heavily criticized as insensitive, marginal, or inconsequential pop art. Perhaps it is not these authors who should be criticized for breaking the rules, but the critics for defending the rules out of discomfort and fear.

Works Cited

Acker, Kathy. Empire of the Senseless. New York: Grove Press, 1988.

Acker, Kathy. “A Few Notes on Two of My Books.” Review of Contemporary Fiction, Fall 1999, Vol. 19 Issue 3, p. 117.

Beigbeder, Frédéric. Trans. Frank Wynne. Windows on the World. New York: Hyperion, 2004.

Chabot, Barry C. "The Problem of the Postmodern." New Literary History, Vol. 20, No. 1, Critical Reconsiderations. Autumn, 1988, pp. 1-20.

De Villo, Sloan. "The Decline of American Postmodernism" SubStance, Vol. 16, No. 3, Issue 54. 1987, pp. 29-43.

Hassan, Ihab. The Postmodern Turn: Essays in Postmodern Theory and Culture. Ohio State University Press, 1987.

Hawthorn, Jeremy. A Glossary of Contemporary Literary Theory. London: Edward Arnold, 1992.

Hassan, Ihab. "On The Problem Of The Postmodern." New Literary History, Vol. 20, No. 1, Critical Reconsiderations. Autumn 1998, pp 21-22.

Kellner, Douglas. "Review: Theorizing the Present Moment: Debates between Modern and Postmodern Theory" Theory and Society, Vol. 28, No. 4. Aug., 1999, pp. 639-656.