Don Delillo

“The emptiness, the sense of cosmic darkness. Mastercard, Visa, American Express.” (Ch.20)

Andy Warhol & ‘Pop Art’ (1960s)

Jess – “The Unentitled Graces” (1978)

Postmodern architecture:Ontario College of Art and Design, Toronto

Another example:Royal Ontario Museum (ROM)

“It is safest to grasp the concept of the postmodern as an attempt to think the present historically in an age that has forgotten how to think historically in the first place.” – Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, ix

Other Concepts of the Postmodern

Fredric Jameson• A new depthlessness• The waning of affect• Blank parody• Hysterical/camp sublime

Jean Baudrillard• Hyperreality• Simulacra and Simulation

Jean-François Lyotard• incredulity toward meta-

narratives• postmodern sublime

David Harvey• Time—space compression

Some Versions of Postmodern Sublime

Three Mile Island – Nuclear Meltdown 1979

Hyperreality

“They are taking pictures of taking pictures,” Murray said. (Ch. 3)

“Where’s the media?” she said.“There is no media in Iron City.”“They went through all that for nothing?”

(Ch. 18)

Simulation vs. Reality

• “It is worse than we’d ever imagined. They didn’t prepare us for this in the death simulator in Denver.” (Ch. 18)

• “But this evacuation isn’t simulated. It’s real.” (Ch. 21)

• “But there is no substitute for a planned simulation.” (Ch. 27)

Irony, Parody, & The Waning of Affect

• “I thought that when tradition becomes too flexible, irony enters the voice.” (Ch. 18)

• “Another postmodern sunset, rich in romantic imagery.” (Ch.30)

• “Does it mean you’ve turned your male attention to the individual in the motel?” (Ch. 35)

• “‘Are you saying the printout shows the first ambiguous signs of a barely perceptible condition deriving from minimal acceptable spillage exposure?’

Why was I speaking this way?” (Ch. 36)