neither postmodernism nor ragtime makes any sense

 Now here you may be thinking, what on earth is postmodernism, and normally I would sit here and answer your question. However, I'm quite certain now one on earth knows what postmodernism actually is. Including, most likely, the people who created it. 

Because, you see, postmodernism is somehow entirely hypocritical. If you're completely lost here, postmodernism in essentiality refers to the possession of thought considered the be occurring post, or after the thought system that is modernism. Except, you see, with the contrived beliefs of postmodernism comes the issue that it makes no sense for postmodernism to occur after anything. Because, dear friends, time is subjective. If you wish to give your brain as few neural seizures as possible, I suggest you follow the general agenda that postmodernism refers to the train of thought that followed modernist belief. Because if there's anything a postmodernist hates more than societal conventions, it's a modernist. 

Postmodernism, quite conveniently, refers to concepts that break aware from a modernist theorum of progress. Art doesn't have to fit standards to be quality, anything is anything you can make of it. History is told always through the lense of bias. Fiction and History intertwine a lot more than most people would want to admit. Oh, and of course, the key issue. Because everything is subjective, that makes it so that Postmodernism can not be an objective state of thought. Which makes everything way more complicated than it ever needs to to function in society on a daily basis. Trust no one, only postmodernism- I don't know about you but this seems like a cult to me. 

So postmodernism: everything is subjective and therefore "objectivity"- or "truth", is irrelevant. Got it. 

And now we should officially turn gears towards Ragtime, written in the year 1976-ish by some guy named E.L. Doctorow. You see, quite fortunately I hate Ragtime. I have quite possibly thrown my copy of the text across the room many many times in an attempt to sooth my overwhelming hatred for this book. I'm only half exaggerating here. Ragtime, however, is in itself a very postmodernist book. I have no idea if it was meant to be a postmodernist book- but it really does share a lot of its conventions. 

To start with, the entire book seems to be a very opinionated textbook written through elaborate stories. If you are a postmodernist who follows the postmodernist belief where facts are subjective to the writer- you will quite possibly like this telling of the story. I have said postmodern way too many times in this post for it to be standard. Regardless. Each and every chapter the perspective changes- at least slightly. We have a range of characters, such as Mother and Little Girl and Tateh and Evelyn Nesbit and Harry Houdini- of all people. Each chapter the story follows their perspective- and as pertains the bias of the story switches to reflect the inner workings of . However, Evelyn Nesbit does not get this luxury. She doesn't get the option of getting her thoughts written into history through this story. If she does get bias, it is misogynist comments pertaining to how she thought she somehow deserved the rape and abuse from her partners. Along with the mildly pedophellic themes with the Little Girl's character, the outright misogyny, and the lesbian fetishization of chapter 8, this certainly does not make me like this book. If you wish me to elaborate on the pedophellic- see where Evelyn bathes the Little Girl. E.L. Doctorow did not need to describe washing a child's genitalia all the while as he writes Evelyn and imprints a creepy, perverse obsession of her with the girl into the story. 

There's probably a link between Stanford White's architecture and postmodernist vs modern architecture, but if there is I don't care enough to look into it. I do not like Stanford White's character, plus he's both dead in the book and in real life- so basically irrelevant. 

Regardless of my hatred towards the book, it does employ many postmodernist ideas. The book itself it written many, many years later. In a section of the book, it breaks its past-tense grammar to speak in present tense. It describes events occuring 50 years after Houdini's death. This would indeed suggest that Ragtime's canonical time period is in fact the period from when it was written, instead of the 1906 time when the story actually takes place. A true history textbook, Doctorow writing about historical events through the lense of fictional characters and actual people to which he has decided to play god. Much postmodernist, much wow. 

So remember friends. Nothing is real. Nothing is fake. Everything is subjective. And Ragtime sucks (objectively true).