This comment is probably so late you forgot posting it... I did but thanks to the wayback machine (the internet!) I can re-read what I wrote and comment back!
I think the move to try to make things "timeless" is probably also in reaction to the trend for commercial and bestselling fic to drop brand names liek woah.
It's a shame that people wouldn't include those details just the same. You can tell a lot about a person based on the brands they wear, and you don't necessarily have to know of a brand to understand, in context, what that brand says about the person using it. Dropping shoe names means you probably spent $100s on those shoes. Saying you know the minutest detail about a gun/bullet means you're probably an expert. As always, the little things are better at communicating than the elaborate and explicit things.
There's also a lot of cultural value in seeing how those branding efforts change with time. My favorite example (I think you might have told me this?) is American Psycho, where the book reads (today) like a rich narcissist rattling off fashionable clothes where a person who actually knew anything about the clothes of the time would recognize how ridiculous the ensembles were put together as they are in the book. From making fun of the narrator, the text as it is perceived by an audience generally removed from the period turns into something else. (I'd even say that our media-drenched attitude these days gives the 1980s a run for its money. In which case Patrick Bateman might be a role model, emphasis on model. Which is really, really creepy.)
But you're right, it's not all about time capsules of a period. The general purpose of a novel is to tell lies about the truth. The best way to do that is to not disguise the time and place of the novel but to embrace it.
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I did but thanks to the wayback machine (the internet!) I can re-read what I wrote and comment back!
I think the move to try to make things "timeless" is probably also in reaction to the trend for commercial and bestselling fic to drop brand names liek woah.
It's a shame that people wouldn't include those details just the same. You can tell a lot about a person based on the brands they wear, and you don't necessarily have to know of a brand to understand, in context, what that brand says about the person using it. Dropping shoe names means you probably spent $100s on those shoes. Saying you know the minutest detail about a gun/bullet means you're probably an expert. As always, the little things are better at communicating than the elaborate and explicit things.
There's also a lot of cultural value in seeing how those branding efforts change with time. My favorite example (I think you might have told me this?) is American Psycho, where the book reads (today) like a rich narcissist rattling off fashionable clothes where a person who actually knew anything about the clothes of the time would recognize how ridiculous the ensembles were put together as they are in the book. From making fun of the narrator, the text as it is perceived by an audience generally removed from the period turns into something else. (I'd even say that our media-drenched attitude these days gives the 1980s a run for its money. In which case Patrick Bateman might be a role model, emphasis on model. Which is really, really creepy.)
But you're right, it's not all about time capsules of a period. The general purpose of a novel is to tell lies about the truth. The best way to do that is to not disguise the time and place of the novel but to embrace it.