Postmodernism in Fantasy: A Correction

Brandon Sanderson, god love 'im, does a somewhat crappy job of defining postmodernism here. For one thing, "postmodernism" isn't some monolithic thing, so to describe it as he does, even within the more limited context of fantasy, is misleading. For another, some subjects do require a more complex treatment, so when you simplify them down, as Sanderson admits he is, you actually wind up losing the ability to convey any real information in what you are saying. What Sanderson says in his blog entry is largely meaningless.For an intro to postmodernism and some of its techniques, you could do worse than the wiki entry on the subject.I also am having a hard time defining Sanderson's work, in any of his books, as postmodern. His essential wordview is not postmodern, to my mind. This isn't a slam on Sanderson's fiction, just an observation that his blog post is less than useful, and in some ways misleading. This happens. It's not a crime.But it would also be a shame if certain elements of the post, and responses to it, lend more credence to a faux populist idea that postmodernism is elitist and somehow wrong or always experimental.The other idea about postmodernism is that it's always about breaking a fourth wall, or always about inserting the author into the text--this is, in fact, simply one approach, metafiction, which isn't even the most prevalent of the possible techniques.In actual fact, many postmodern techniques are very playful and and can be used to great and entertaining effect.Perhaps the most important point in all of this (and this now has nothing to do with anything Sanderson said in his post) is that writers don't choose the way they view the world--that's inherent in their psyche. When you view the world a certain way, you may gravitate toward certain approaches and techniques--with digressions because no one is all one thing--but it's not a cynical matter of deciding to be experimental or deciding to be postmodern rather than a modernist, for example.(Not related, but auto-posting today: my Way of Kings photo-shoot.)