So this is kind of a 3-am-feeling-sick musing, but I was thinking about what we talked about in class about modernism being the East and postmodernism the West and I was wondering if it would be possible to classify the characters into these 2 categories. Matt seems to prefer the East Coast, making him represent modernism, while Nick (and possibly Klara?) prefer the West, and therefore representing postmodernism. I don't know too much about the 2 (and wikipedia and my english major friend aren't helping, unfortunately) so I can't make real comparisons, but it does seem that Matt deals more with history and internal stuff (modernism) while Nick does embody the postmodern focus on language with his word obsessions. Ideas?
If this is so, which it may very well be, then why is Matt placed in New Mexico for a large portion of this book? What is the significance there? I'm not criticizing, I just realized I didn't know how all of that would tie into your theory.