ABLE: Of course it is. We can make THE PROGRAMME anything we want it to be.
CHARLIE: Then we can also stop ignoring him--and a good thing to do, too. He is a part of us, after all.
BAKER: He wants his poems in THE PROGRAMME. He raises two issues for us. First, is there merit to them? Second, do they contribute to the postmodern inquiry?
ABLE: We really can't put ourselves in the position of making a literary judgment. He is in if he has something to say about the postmodern sensibility. He is out if he does not. We should be very cautious about this.
CHARLIE: Why be cautious? Look at birthdates. E. L. Doctorow, 1931. Jasper Johns, 1930. Thomas Pynchon, 1937. Andy Warhol, circa 1930. Robert Venturi, 1925. All on the batting roster of the Postmodern Panthers. We are talking here about generational sensibility in America, not about philosophy or artistic merit. Bodgers, 1931. Give 'im a break. This was the first cohort to become consciously something beyond the modern.
ABLE: A generational argument sounds suspiciously deterministic. Are we to say that anyone who scribbled anything at a particular time and place is evidence of what made him and all of his contemporaries tick?
BAKER: That need not be our answer. But it might be our question. Propinquity counts for something.
CHARLIE: Ah--our good man Gene Miller, when we were students would say that in romance, propinquity is nearly everything.
BAKER: Can we let him in so that we can think about his poems as a possible partial answer?
CHARLIE: Good. Foucault picked up the linguistic fragments of European culture as if they were pieces of the broken ideals of the enlightenment that failed to enlighten. He looked at them as an archaeologist looks at sherds of a buried civilization, fragments that might give a hint of what was. We can look for the shape and significance of the postmodern sensibility that way--with the attitude of the archaeologist.
ABLE: We might cautiously put Bodgers's poems--well, a few of them--out on display in THE PROGRAMME as if they were under glass. Here is something found in the postmodern dig. On the tel. Feel its heft. Note its pigmentation. We know the date. Does this artifact say something about the way they felt? Does it show signs of the myth beyond reason that they had to accept as children and then find lacking as they grew up? We could always withdraw the display if feedback says it has too little worth, or none at all. This begins to sound minimally acceptable as a working strategy, as long as we can change it.
BAKER: Chronologically, we can't deny Bodgers his place. Doubtless what he has written will smack of origins as well as experience in the high postmodern. He is dated, after all.
CHARLIE: So are we all! It's decided! Let Bodgers in!
5 December 1995; updated 19 December 1996
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