Saying Good-Bye to 'Once Upon a Time,' or Implementing Postmodernism in Creative Nonfiction"

"But simple stories are for demagogues and their followers. The rest of us need reality, which is that no one has a monopoly on the truth." --Amy Wexler, page 32 in Writing Creative Nonfiction

I really like the idea of postmodernism, although until now, I didn't really know quite what "postmodern" meant. I knew it had to do with fragmentation of reality and process in creating art, but Wexler made it much clearer in the context of writing. One of the best aspects of contemporary writing is how much more accurately it represents life. People (and society) are starting to get sick of the bullshit and fluff that older art forms made extensive use of. We want to be able to relate to art, we want art to really imitate life. Life is not like a fairy tell, as Wexler reiterated, so we shouldn't present it that way. And telling a true story from just one perspective does not tell the complete story. Every story has an infinite number of possibilities for how it could be interpreted and presented. We are way too advanced in this day and age for simple, linear, cliche stories any more.