What kind of literature do you expect for future?

[blazeofglory]

Today we are so much intrigued by social media and a plethora of websites and we cannot afford to read books the way we used to do just a couple of decades ago. It has been long since I have not completed even a single novel and what is more I am connected to several forums and posting and responding to the posts engage me almost everyday.

I just wonder what will be the plight of literature ten years down the strait of time.

Today few read classics and fewer still read epics like Milton's Paradise. We do not like to read Shakespeare except for textbooks.

Maybe today we need literature that has the contents of what we come across on the internet as well.

[jmnixon95]

I have a weird feeling that there won't be as much "sci-fi" because, within the next century or two, a lot of "sci-fi" concepts may actually become "science."

As far as a decade from now, I'm not quite as sure; probably more liberal when it comes to subject choice. That's all that I can confidently predict.

[chrissponias]

I believe that literature has to overcome the general preference for non-fiction that prevails today. There are many ways it could attract many readers. However, literary authors are not paid unless they are recognized, while anyone can write a simple ebook online and be considered an ‘author’, and even make a lot of money without having any real knowledge.

Commerce is simply killing art and philosophy in our historical time. We need a new mindset.

[IceM]

I've noticed amongst the budding intellectuals in my AP courses, and in discussions with random people during my travels, that self-discovery is an important, and difficult to achieve, ideal in Life. Perhaps the Bildungsroman makes a comeback. Protagonists either struggle against society and discover humanistic freedom or coexist under such a world and discover a hidden disenchantment.

My conversations with teachers and individuals in the middle-aged bracket gravitated towards Miller's notion in "Death of a Salesman" about the realization of what the self may have been in contrast to what it is. The underlying fear that one's life has been unsatisfied in outcome is a sympathizable, and perhaps common, fear in life. This and the bildungsroman seem likely.

[Vautrin]

In the future robots will replace human writers and all the books will center around the fear that one day humans will become intelligent enough to neutralize all the robots and take over the earth.

Beware of books that incorporate Twitter and/or Facebook into their plots. These are actually written by robots (probably from the future) with the clear intention of getting us all accustomed to the new world order of robot domination. They've already started ridding the world of our beloved paper books, replacing them with those iniquitous "e-readers." Soon we'll all be reading Moby Dick on our eyelids while "they" pump in subliminal commands into our subconscious.

...before it's too late!

[JCamilo]

You know, there is probally more people reading Milton now, than when he was alive. There is certainly much more people reading Shakespeare now than when he was alive. After all, Hamlet wasnt meant to be published at all.

And Science fiction rarely turns into science. Often, it reflects the science already being projected. We do not have genetic manipulation turning man back to animals, invisible people, aliens coming to earth, dead coming back to life, etc. It is just fantasy.

Poe is long dead but he already said people liked to read fragments and not full novels or epic. And he talked it when there was no tv,internet and a minority was able to read.

[Magga]

Maybe today we need literature that has the contents of what we come across on the internet as well.

You mean like pornography, gaming, gambling, trolling, gore, unappropriate humor, racism, general stupidity, and much, much more trashy content?

Perhaps --

-- just perhaps --

internet isn't the solution.

[Ecurb]

You mean like pornography, gaming, gambling, trolling, gore, unappropriate humor, racism, general stupidity, and much, much more trashy content?

Perhaps --

-- just perhaps --

internet isn't the solution.

Pornography (Lolita, Ulysses), gambling (The Gambler), trolling (Lord of the Rings), gore (The Iliad), inappropriate humor (Huck Finn), and general stupidity (Candide) hold an ancient and honored place in literature.

[Magga]

Pornography (Lolita, Ulysses), gambling (The Gambler), trolling (Lord of the Rings), gore (The Iliad), inappropriate humor (Huck Finn), and general stupidity (Candide) hold an ancient and honored place in literature.

I'm so sorry, I totally forgot that 4chan produces good reading material.

In fact, I think I will write a book Why so Puddy? about how to please yourself with pudding while gambling over pudding, but at the same time watching pudding porn with elements of pudding gore, not to mention the genius pudding humor included in various pudding games found in the same unappropriate pudding material.

And yes, I will sign it Moot.

[Lover]

I think quality literature will continue to be written, preserved, and read by the minority who enjoy it (and they have always been in the minority) and that lower quality literature will continue to be churned out for, eaten up, then forgotten by the masses.

I think there may be a few new ideas and techniques introduced, but overall the subjects that have always haunted man will continue to do so. The human condition will persist so long as humans do.

I think that format will change eventually to where there will be implants in the brain that stimulate various areas to conjure up images, words, and sensation directly. I sincerely hope that, that or something similar wont happen in my life time.

[JBI]

Just a shift away from fiction is most likely - the world is being fought over people who are normal, and people who wish not to be normal - and in the middle are a billion self-help books, and gimmick books, as well as a culture built around filling up 24 hours a day with whatever you can find. Reading will be replaced eventually by reading how to write, the same way writing about books was replaced by writing books about how to read books.

[Lynne50]

I believe that literature has to overcome the general preference for non-fiction that prevails today.

.

I do agree with that statement. One only has to look at the New York Times Book Review and see how many fiction selections vs. non-fiction are reviewed each week. It's amazing. Last week, 4 fiction titles were reviewed vs. 11 non-fiction. This is just not a fluke.. It happens almost every week. Not sure what their rational is.

[Scoggy]

I agree that commercialism will continue to play a large part in the development of literature in the future. Intellectualism is becoming synonymous with arrogance, and individual ego plays part in this as well. What was once valued as literary genius has been sacrificed for the all-American greenback.

Whatever sells will be the literature of the future. That is all.

[conartist]

Today few read classics and fewer still read epics like Milton's Paradise. We do not like to read Shakespeare except for textbooks.

I love reading Shakespeare and there are endless others of whom the same could be said. He's still the most staged dramatist in the world. There has never been a majority reading the classics at any time, in any culture.

I'm not sure how literature could meld with the internet because I've never come across anything on the internet to do with text that couldn't already be found in books - aside from complete strangers constantly imperviously abusing one another.

[AxCryd]

I believe that literature has to overcome the general preference for non-fiction that prevails today. There are many ways it could attract many readers. However, literary authors are not paid unless they are recognized, while anyone can write a simple ebook online and be considered an ‘author’, and even make a lot of money without having any real knowledge.

Commerce is simply killing art and philosophy in our historical time. We need a new mindset.

I do agree with the commerce part. Everything is just so fast, there is just no way to simply read books and write books without endangering your chances for life. Even those novelists that made themselves known internationally had also gone through a rough time, and their recognition, is most often than not, a chance, a mere probability, or a strategy.

We do know that literary works, inevitably, is produced out of a community, of a mindset, which it appeals to or rides against. And right now, most of the cultural productions we have today, in a postmodern perspective, are mere replications of mini-narratives and historical images which the cultural industry draws on to create the illusion of multiplicity and accessibility of experiences. (This is Jean Baudrillard's thought, right?)

It is pretty hard to conceive of a new form of literature right away, as long as we have this reductive economic system. If this economic system remains, the only literature we have of ten years from now are those praised by various communities, the "low" pop culture and the "high" elitist/minoritized cultures.

If we assume then that there will be a new break of thinking ten years from now, I do think that literature will take a new form. The construction of narratives are still the same, but the most creative and motivated literatures would probably do a new twist on experiences.

Video games, for example, are now taking a new twist, involving body work in its gameplay. Some of it too have very intrinsic narrative and plotting structures. Hence, literature can now be constructed out of space and even time, at least as how language constructs it.

Other than interactive narratives, 10 years from now new experiences may proliferate on the written word. The acceptance of other genders, the tolerance on other experiences. And other things.

Okay, so I might not really answer the question at all. The only issue is that, since we don't have the resources to know how communities will change 10 years from now, we can't really delineate what new literature will emerge. Even the dominance of other cultures are still relative to the perspectives of its "others".

The only thing I expect are the following: recycled narratives, a jump from the traditional human narratives, and that written works will now become passe and a rare practice that small communities seek to preserve, just like indigenous cultures.