Jason, I often often felt the same way that you do in regard to your feelings about modernism. However, the chart Hassan offerred seemed to help to clarify some of my questions. Hassan's dialectical chart on post-modernism and modernism was especially helpful, although I imagine the theoretical implications of outlining, categorizing, defining the term post modernism is problematic in itself. He even goes so far as to list the conceptual problems with the term postmodernism, making me assume that he doesn't know what to make of the whole genre. Death Words are just another expression of the body.
Writers talk alot to stay alive.
I find myself lost, however, with all of these said facts, especially the long list of names that I had no real experience with. There is an overlap in time, yet not in substance. I never found anything to latch on to. It seemed that, with every conclusion, there was a new question. I spent hours on the couch, with a pocket dictionary in one hand and a pencil in the other, and am as confused as I was when I started.