The Purpose of Storytelling-- an Overview of my Experience of PoMo

My seventh grade English class, the teacher was trying to explain why people went to see Shakespeare if everyone already knew the stories. We weren't being a very attentive class, mostly saying stuff to keep him off-topic, so eventually he just goes "look, we don't read to see what happens, we read to pass time." That kind of stuck with me, and ever since I've made it my philosophy as an author-- books should be first and foremost entertainment.
So, overall, though I like the unique insights many of these books uncover, I take offence at how they seem to try and make it difficult for you to read them-- Mumbo Jumbo being the worst offender. It seems like one of the watchwords of PoMo is that if you aren't willing to divert extra time and energy into figuring out what the author can easily set in front of you, you aren't worthy of reading the book. And while sometimes it's diverting to read something especially challenging, there is a definite point where it stops being cool and starts being bullshit. If I am forced to handtranslate morse code, I am not being entertained and the book is not fulfilling it's prerogative.
Most of the literary traditions we've been given are there to make it easy to focus on the story part of the story without having to be pulled out of the story by things like trying to figure out what that badly spelled word is. Breaking them for a reason is interesting up to a point as long as I'm not translating morse. Breaking them to be interesting isn't a reason, it's a nuisance. And worse, it's pretentious. I demand better entertainment.

Being Pandered to as a Reader (From the Discussion May 7th, posted today)

It came up in discussion that Arch considered the Lee=Leon passage was redundant the second time around. He thought it was obvious the first time through that Leon was just Lee masquerading as Leon, and adding the second passage from Lee's point of view only confirmed what everyone already knew.
I think this is something authors have been struggling with forever. There is nothing more annoying as a reader than having the plot obviously dumbed down for you, but the second most annoying thing is incomprehensible gibberish-- what happens when the author overestimates intelligence. We are walking a balance rope with every reader, and honestly, no matter where you put it you're going to fall one way or the other for someone.
Personally, I was pretty sure Leon was Lee, but I wasn't going to be sure until confirmation and I'd spend the rest of the book wondering about it until confirmation was provided, so I didn't find the passage redundant, but others might. Delilo just can't win.

Skeevy Shit Continued (originally posted on April 13th)

1. I'm still talking about rape, avoid this post if you don't like talking about rape.
2. Okay, now we can start.

Depictions of rape in literature and how they're really totally skeevy (originally posted April 10th)

1. If you don't like this kind of discussion don't read this post it's discussing skeevy shit.
2. Okay, now we can begin.