What is Modernism?

In reading Gertrude Stein's Tender Buttons and A.R. Ammons' Easter Morning, I've concluded that modernistic literature is a kind of house of mirrors where things are not always what they initially appear to be. Modernism takes the very familiar and mundane and turns it into something quite different and complicated. It examines the most insignificant aspects of life and makes them of greater importance than originally thought.

For me, modernism represents free writing where the author continually writes anything and everything that comes to mind. In modernistic literature, nothing is truly absolute and nearly everything is symbolic of something else. Everything holds greater meaning that what is visible on the surface. Mistrust and illustion are deeply imbedded in modernism.

When reading this type of literature, I am reminded of some artwork I recently had the opportunity to see. The artist built crooked tables and chairs, and made furniture and household accessories with human and animal faces. For instance, a lamp was in the shape of a human woman and the lamp shade was made to look like her hat. Modernism forces the reader to expect the unexpected. Modernism can be very confusing and it places everything is a new context.