David Antin’s essay ‘The Theory and Practice of Post Modernism: A Manifesto,” is an interesting choice to pair with Jonathan Kern’s essay, “Writing for Broadcast,” because the effect of the former’s form depends upon the text format and the reading process it demands (more on that below). The line breaks and spaces isolating certain groupings of words of Antin’s essay could be represented with varying degrees of pausing if one were to attempt to translate that text to audio, but this would not convey 100% of the information. On the other hand, if we look past the imposition of form, the style of Antin’s essay tells the story slowly, and is colloquial and personable, something Kern recommends to radio news writers.

Consider how Antin’s essay opens::

about two years ago ellie and I decided we needed a new mattress     or maybe ellie decided it     because i didn’t pay much attention to the problem

we had an old mattress we’d had it for years and the salesman we bought it from had assured us it would last a lifetime     and it was getting older and lumpy or lumpy in some places and hollowed out in others     i just assumed it was part of a normal process of aging     it was getting older we were getting older and we’d get used to it” (113).

 

The lede of a news article on the same subject, might read, “A wife wanted to replace a lumpy mattress, despite the salesman assuring lifetime usability. The husband assumed they would acclimate to the deterioration.” This packs the information into a single sentence which would probably be hard to digest if heard out of a radio speaker. Kern writes on page 30, “Remember, expressing your thoughts in short, declarative sentences doesn’t require you to eliminate any of your ideas – just to ration them out. You aren’t sacrificing by writing less convoluted prose.”

Notice also near the end of the passage the repetition of the word “get.” The speaker is highlighting a process that occurs over a stretch of time, something the verb “get” implies. This reflects everyday speech, where this repetition where is often pared with modulation of volume and increased “attack,” an accentuation of the beginning of the sound. On page 29, Kern writes, “We add force to what we’re saying by speaking in short repetitive sentences.”

Consider next the passage from when Antin and his wife are picking out a mattress, with instances of the progressive present form of the verb “to be” bolded; “meanwhile workmen are bringing in more mattresses and people are walking around looking and feeling mattresses and looking at us because we’re a little less uptight about lying around in public.” On page 31, Kern gives the go ahead to use this form “to be,” something shied from in textual news writing, in favor of more flavorful verbs. Kern writes, “We use ‘to be’ all the time as an auxiliary verb when we are describing events…[try writing the same way you would talk] to an imaginary person on the phone.” In these two respects, forceful repetition and the use of “to be” in the present progressive, Antin’s essay is written in a colloquial style mimicking everyday speech characteristics. It would make for good radio news writing, if not for the experimental form, which would be difficult to read on air.

‘The Theory and Practice of Post Modernism: A Manifesto,” has a straightforward title, and is an appropriate manifesto for postmodernism, a late-20th century artistic movement which brought criticism to traditional literary forms, and coincided with America’s growing self-awareness of just how saturated with consumerism it was. Often then, this consumerism was a popular subject in postmodernist writing. Therefore, the form, content, and synergy between the two in Antin’s essay make it an appropriate manifesto.

One could argue that the form is self-reflexive given how blatantly it departs from most text form, either essay, literary, or academic. It ignores standardized grammar choices; rarely are letters capitalized, no punctuation concludes any sentences, and most “different,” there are unusual line breaks and spaces between words, something that has a visual effect, but also interrupts the reading process.

The decryption key for the form and much of the subject lies in the early passage where the speaker describes how his body unconsciously navigates the high-points and low-points, the hills and pitfalls of his mattress (113). When we look at the page from a visual stand point, we see the manifestation of this passage.

The speaker believes that in the consumerist landscape of America, the consumer has to get used to the defects. On the last page he writes, “If you are lost in a forest and you have no idea which way to go, go for it straight ahead, because its not likely to be any worse than anything else.” On the other hand, his wife Eleanor has a very different ideology, where she constantly considers the different consumerist options, dead set is she on making the right purchase. The difference between the two ideologies creates a tension. Metaphorically, this is also represented in the hills and valleys, the high points and low points of the mattress, which the husband concedes to replace for the sake of the relationship. He accepts his wife, despite her being different then him. Ergo, the form of the essay refers the navigation of the speaker’s marriage. Because the couple falls in line with gender stereotypes given definition by consumerist ideologies, we can consider their marriage representational of the postmodern marriage.

Yet, I argue that the reader traverses between the ideological dichotomy in yet another way, as induced by the postmodern form: the reading process itself.

To get over the hills of sentences connected together and unbroken, and through the pitfalls of abrupt spacing of line breaks, the reader can try to adopt the straightforward and somewhat dogged strategy of the speaker. Yet, this is difficult, especially because these interruptions do not appear systematically, and because the style is otherwise so colloquial and readable. Sometimes there is a pivot on a clause, something that is not only easy to take in stride, but enhances the capacity of the text to mirror the pauses in everyday speech patterns. Other times, the idiosyncrasies are more interruptive of syntax. Furthermore, the isolation of sentence segments visually grants them self-contained meaning, something hard to avoid. The segments are alternately complementary and in conflict with the narrative. The reading process is akin to driving at night and seeing highway signs flashing with illumination when hit by headlights; it is hard not to pay attention to and read them. Sometimes the signs are labeled correctly. Sometimes they are not, and when this happens, the reader momentarily wonders where they are in the narrative sequence.

Additionally, we can wonder if the author is hiding meaning, like a poem, where individuals lines can have independent meaning, and create subsequent meaning because of a relationship with nearby content, and the content of the piece as a whole. We are inclined to want to turn back, scrutinize, second guess, and reconsider, therefore placing us closer to Eleanor’s ideology. The form ensures that the reading process itself is a navigation of postmodern subjectivity, between the two poles of gender. As a postmodern media object, the essay is appropriate for an essay on the topic.