What makes a postmodern novel

Courtesy The Rumpus, I found a link to an entry on the LA Times books blog listing 61 "essential" postmodern novels. I was more amused by the alleged common attributes of a postmodern novel, as defined by the author -- LA Times books columnist and reviewer Carolyn Kellogg -- than by the list itself (of which I have read 12 of the 61 books). The list of common attributes:

• author is a character
• self-contradicting plot
• disrupts/plays with form
• comments on its own bookishness
• plays with language
• includes fictional artifacts, such as letters
• blurs reality and fiction
• includes historical falsehoods
• overtly references other fictional works
• more than 1000 pages
• less than 200 pages
• postmodern progenitor

To that list of attributes, I would add "refers to pop culture ironically, i.e. in such a way as to both embrace it and distance itself from it."

technorati: books, postmodernism