::: Memory and Dream (de Lint)

*sigh*  His books always leave me conflicted.  I'm at once immensely satisfied (because like all his books it's such a deeply right story) and immensely discontented (because I can't go live in Newford and have these people for my friends).  I am also equal parts inspired (I want to write stories like this!!) and depressed (I can't write stories like this!!).  Perhaps a good way to go into SSIAW?

Post-modernism -- feh!!

Interesting article here about what makes a good story and why modern literary fiction is such utter shit, and another in the same vein here. I don't understand the whole post-modernist movement. On the whole it strikes me as a very lazy approach: claiming that there are no absolutes and that everything is relative releases one from any obligation to produce something of quality, or even to make sense. They rabbit on about how nothing can be known for sure and yet they live their lives every day depending on knowing quite a lot of things -- that their eyes do not deceive them when they see that 18-wheeler heading towards them at 90mph, for example, or that stepping in dog poo will make you stinky. It's just pretentious nonsense, so far as I can tell.