Postmodernist Parallels

I'm sure that I'm not the only one who kept seeing parallel topics and ideas in the postmodernist books we've read this semester - Ragtime and Mumbo Jumbo and now the beginning of Slaughterhouse-Five.

Let me just start a basic list of parallels ideas/topics I've seen in at least two novels so far:

• Houdini (Rag +MJ)
• Slumming (Evelyn and Thor Wintergreen (MJ 89))
• Ragtime music (Rag+MJ 89)
• Minstrelsy (Rag+MJ 136)
• The idea of a Negro experience (Rag+MJ 117)
• Ford Motor Car Company (Rag+SF 23)

Obviously a lot of these parallels come from the fact that Ragtime and Mumbo Jumbo were written about the same time period so major events and historical people are the same in both books. But I wonder if there is some reflection of the time that the books were written in the authors' choice of events and characters.

For example, let's look at the issue of the Ford Motor Car Company and Henry Ford which are mentioned in Slaughterhouse-Five and carefully examined in Ragtime. Ford is an epitome of the hard-work-gets-you-somewhere philosophy and his cars are a prime example of American consumerism in the 20th century. Fast forward to the 1960s and 70s, when our postmodernist novels were written, and there is a growing movement that rejects both of those philosophies. Young people are just chilling, hanging out, listening to music. They may not have a career goal in mind, in fact "career goals" sound pretty ludicrous next to images of hippies and the youth of the counterculture. These young people also rejected consumerism to some degree, moving to communes or living off the land. If you watch a couple counterculture movies in World since 1945, you may also think they all ditched the general rules of personal hygiene!

So maybe one reason that Ford comes up in these postmodernist novels is that he and his car company stand in such stark contrast to some of the things that are going on as the novels are being written. The contrast helps the authors distinguish the 1910s and 1920s from the time of writing. Just as when a modern reader notices the strangeness of certain values in a historical novel about puritans, the 1970s reader (and others since then) would feel a certain distance from the mindset and values of the 1910s and 1920s as encapsulated in Henry Ford.

I could go on about some of the other parallels, like how the Negro experience concept is very reflective of the civil rights movement of the 1960s, but I hope the explanation of Ford gives you the idea. Plus, I know there are more parallels that I marked or noticed but can't find now that I am trying to write about them. If you notice any, let me know!