We Need A Revolution In Literature!

[WolfLarsen]

We Need a Revolution in Literature!
An Essay by Wolf Larsen

The best literature is the kind without a price tag. The goal of writing should not be to sell books, but to write the most innovative and exciting literature imaginable.

Look at all the endless varieties of music! It almost seems that there are as many kinds of music as there are drops of water in the ocean!

What a different story when you go to the bookstore! In the literature section of the bookstore you will find only novels, short stories, and poetry. That’s it! Why only novels, short stories, and poetry? Why is literature so limited? Why shouldn’t there be as many different kinds of literature as there are different kinds of music? Why must writers limit themselves only to novels, plays, short stories, and poetry? Why shouldn’t writers invent endless kinds of literature besides just novels, short stories, and poetry? It’s fine to write novels, short stories, and poetry – but why not invent new forms of literature as well?

One of the reasons literature is so limited is that it is still shackled to the major publishing conglomerates and the universities. Literature will not be free until it has unshackled itself from the crass commercial interests of the publishing conglomerates and the conservative influences of the universities.

Publishing houses have one and only one purpose: to make money. They are hostile to innovation in literature, because publishing innovative literature involves risk. And they certainly don’t want to risk their money! The publishing conglomerates want to continue pouring potential best sellers (particularly airport novels) unto the market. And to the publishing houses that’s all literature is – a market.

I am not against the publishing conglomerates. Their books provide popular entertainment to the masses. Their backlist includes many good works of literature from the past, (because they make money from them). But while I am not against the publishing conglomerates I don’t like lies – like the misrepresentation of these huge corporations that own an endless array of imprints as being anything other than money-hungry corporations. Contemporary literature of quality needs a home – and that home is not and cannot be the publishing conglomerates – because today’s publishing conglomerates are only concerned with money.

I am also not against those who work in publishing conglomerates either. For most employees of publishing conglomerates the work is hard, the pay is low, and as the publishing conglomerates have increasingly focused solely on making money the personal rewards for many editors (like getting a favorite manuscript into print) are dwindling. Today an editor in a publishing house cannot push a book for publication just because he loves it – more and more he has to work with books based on their economic potential.

Academia may claim to be interested in quality in contemporary literature, and academia may also be less interested in money. But academia is primarily interested in promoting the “great” writers and poets of the past and those who today imitate them. (Of course there are exceptions to this – there’s exceptions to everything.) Anyway, after learning in a university about the “greats” of the past what is the writer/poet to do? Should he imitate the “greats” of the past in his writing, or should he seek to create his own innovative literature?

By a young age Picasso had assimilated the “masters” of the past – and he went on to create new brazen works of art – he departed from the past – and created wonderful CONTEMPORARY masterpieces. Mozart also mastered traditional styles of classical music – and he went on to create music that at his time was INNOVATIVE.

Hence, the truly great masters of the recent past – in music (Stravinsky, Mahler), painting (Dali, etc.), sculpture (Rodin) – produced great works that were INNOVATIVE and hence FRESH and EXCITING. In contrast, those that worship the past tend to produce works that are stale and flat. Sure, there are adequate writers, painters, sculptors, and composers who can blindly copy the “greats” of the past – but by copying what’s already been done they are contributing nothing to the arts and literature.

There are those that argue that first you must learn tradition to be a great writer. By all means I agree you should read as much “great” literature as possible – both traditional and contemporary. But then some of these same people will go on to say “learn the rules before you break them.”

Forget learning the rules unless you plan to write a conventional essay or a guide to used car repair. In creative literature go ahead and unshackle yourself from all rules! SMASH any and all rules with a sledgehammer, a wrecking ball, or better yet with a pen or a paintbrush! Works of literature, music, painting, etc, should obey no conventional rules whatsoever. If you feel the urge to have rules invent your own! Look at Schoenberg’s 12 tone scale! Wow!

Let’s take grammar for example. Obeying the rules of grammar is fine if you’re writing a conventional essay or a manual about car repair. However, when you’re writing creative literature you should write as freely as possible – without rules.

There are those that argue that if the writer does not obey the rules of grammar his work will be incomprehensible. That depends. It depends on the writer and his style and it also depends on the reader. In some cases, the writer may be creating for a more limited audience – like those who are familiar with modern and postmodern developments in the arts and literature, for instance – and that would explain why many readers might find a given work incomprehensible. In other cases, the writer may simply be incompetent. However, at times when a work seems incomprehensible it might be the reader’s fault. For example, if the reader hates a work of literature for no other reason than that it is different (i.e. more creative than more conventional works) than it’s the reader’s fault that the work seems incomprehensible. Certainly, if the reader is lazy, ignorant, or simply close-minded he may choose not to apply himself to any literature that is different than what he is used to. Such a person may be more comfortable reading an airport novel or one of the works of the past “greats”. At times, such a person may have an advanced degree and consider themselves highly cultured and learned, but all those years reading literature that is conventional can make it harder for that person’s brain to concentrate on and grasp anything that’s written in a new and innovative manner. The fact that their brain may have a hard time grasping anything that’s written differently than what they’re used to is not the fault of the writer, it is the fault of that particular reader.

There are people who look at a Jackson Pollock canvas and say, “My five year old can do a better job than that.” Of course, such people are ignorant of art. Instead of studying art (which they don’t) they take their prejudices (which are pro-representational and pro-realism) and from a position of ignorance and prejudice they proclaim everything that doesn’t conform to their ignorant and prejudiced misconceptions of art to be bad. In the world of literature it is even worse. Those who are ignorant, prejudiced, and close-minded stand in judgment of what is “good literature”.

Should the writer create works of “literature” easily accessible to even the most ignorant and close-minded of readers? Sure, if he wants to make money or be accepted by the conservative world of academia.

But let us suppose the writer is either not employed by academia or is employed in academia but could care less what some of his “colleagues” in the English department think – in other words he has a decent day job and thus doesn’t give a damn about making money from his writing. Such a writer may be influenced by such innovators as Baudelaire, Rilke, Octavio Paz, Anne Sexton, etc. and less influenced by the “greats” of the publishing conglomerates (the best-sellers) and the “greats” of the academic world (people who have been dead a very long time).

Frankly, I am rather disappointed with English literature and have ironically found greater inspiration for my writing outside of literature in the other arts (painting, sculpture, architecture, music, modern dance, postmodern theater, etc.). Many of the past “greats” that are in the canon of English literature are not so “great” at all.

Many of the “great works” of English literature in the canon were written by “gentleman” with disposable income (that they didn’t have to work for) and lots of free time, as well as the high social connections to insure that their work was published. Not all of them were talented or had much to say. Is a writer/poet’s work “great” just because it’s included in the Norton Anthology and the professor taught it in your literature 101 class?

Of course, some “great” works of the past are better than others. Some of these gentleman of leisure in the canon had talent – in addition to the work ethic necessary to produce great literature – but not all of them.

Literature has not even begun to reach its potential. In fact, literature will not even begin to reach its potential until all of humanity has ample food in its stomach and plenty of free time.

The seed of talent falls where it may. Most of those who have disposable income without having to work for it and thus have plenty of free time to write are inborn, have little or no work ethic, and are of mediocre abilities – like the president of my country George Bush. Besides, the outlook of the leisure class is often conservative, so it would not occur to them to write literature that is innovative.

Most people are so engaged in the struggle for survival that they do not have the time to create innovative literature. When humanity is freed from its bondage to an economic system that benefits only a privileged few than a shorter workweek for all will make it possible for more people to create great works of literature, painting, sculpture, etc.

Hence, the greatest most innovative period of literature does not lie in the past – but in the future.
In a different kind of economy huge amounts of money will not be wasted on maintaining a class of worthless bourgeois bums – and huge amounts of money will also not be wasted on gigantic bloated militaries.

With more money available culture, literature, and the arts would flourish more than ever – because we could improve the quality of education – including teaching more art in the schools – and offering free higher education to all. In such a society, we could also give a modest living stipend to writers and artists. And since more diverse parts of humanity would be free to create great literature – instead of just a small privileged leisure class – literature will have more variety and innovation than ever.

Thus freed from their chains to market forces and academia writers would be free to create a new innovative literature. A general population with a reduced workweek would have more time to read a new revolutionary literature that’s constantly changing and evolving. If the world of painting can constantly evolve and change – why not literature? If classical music can constantly evolve and change than certainly literature can also evolve and change.

The defenders of tradition look to the past because they cannot imagine a future any different than the status quo.
But in fact, civilization is constantly changing. The world is different than it was a hundred years ago – and extremely different than it was just three hundred years ago.

Human civilization has existed thousands of years – imagine the human race thousands of years from now! We as a species (homo sapiens) have existed 150,000 years – imagine the human race 150,000 years from now!

If the human race is not extinct in a thousand years – and with constant war and the nuclear bomb that’s a big if – but if the human race is here a thousand years from now it is certain that capitalism will be a distant memory as feudalism is today. So far the human race has gone from hunter gathering to ancient city states to empires like the Roman to feudalism than national monarchies to capitalist “democracy” for the rich.

Hence, human civilization is constantly evolving, and as civilization evolves so will literature. And just as human civilization has not even begun to reach its full potential, so the same is true for literature and the other arts.

The best contemporary writers of creative literature – those who write today and will be read a hundred two hundred a thousand years from now – will not be those who copy the past but instead those who CONTRIBUTE to the DEVELOPMENT of literature. The writers who will be read a thousand years from now will be those who helped literature to advance.

I don’t care whether you like my own literature or not – for the purposes of this essay it is irrelevant. If every writer wrote completely different from each other – and completely different from the “greats” of the past – then there would be more reason to pick up a book – because god knows what’s in between the covers of that book! And if you don’t like that author’s writing you can pick up another author’s book knowing that that book will be completely different than the one you just glanced through.

Hence, THERE IS NO CORRECT WAY TO WRITE. In fact, the more we depart from the idea that there’s a correct way to write the more variety we offer to our readers. We thus begin to offer readers an exciting universe of literature where every author is completely different than another – how exciting!

Traditionalists will argue that it is preferable and natural that literature remain the most backward and conservative medium of the art world. (Compare literature’s snail-like advancement to the great innovations in painting, sculpture, and the other arts since the beginning of modernism in the late 19th Century.) However, there is nothing positive about literature’s relative backwardness compared to the other arts. Even classical music in the past 120 years has left the literary world behind in innovation, boldness, and creativity! How pathetic!

Look – the reason that literature is so backward compared to the other arts can be explained by several simple reasons. The first is money. For a writer to make enough money to support himself comfortably he has to sell A LOT of books. A painter, on the other hand, needs only a few appreciative buyers to support himself. Thus, it is easier (not completely easy – but easier) for the painter to paint whatever he wants. The painter may have to deal with galleries – but he doesn’t have to deal with publishing corporations. The painter doesn’t have to consider entertaining a large reading audience primarily looking for cheap entertainment like the writer does. Hence, partly or mainly for monetary reasons painting has left behind the literary world in boldness, innovation, and quality.

The writer enjoys little independence. He is dependent on publishing corporations to help him reach a large audience seeking cheap entertainment. Hence, in order to make a living from his craft the writer often has no choice but to write mediocre and non-innovative “literature” that will be acceptable to conservative publishing conglomerates. In addition, since “success” is defined by how many copies are sold, the emphasis is on producing cheap mass entertainment.

So writing remains the most conservative, mediocre, and backward medium of the art world partly or mostly because of money.

Another conservatising influence (yes I probably just made up a word – good! We writers should make up words more often) – another conservatising influence on the literary world is the whole prestige game. You get your work in certain prestigious “literary” magazines, get nominated for certain prestigious “literary” awards, etc. – and suddenly you’re considered a “great” writer/poet.

The pages of many (not all) of the most prestigious literary magazines are filled with excrement masquerading as great literature that doesn’t even qualify as mediocre – it’s just plain bad, conservative, and bland.

The same is true for many “literary” awards. An “avant-garde” poet received a very large monetary award recently. I won’t name him here – but his work was so conservative, so dull, so devoid of innovation, so much like a zillion other poems you see everywhere that I don’t see how his poetry could be considered “avant-garde”. I guess for the people giving out the prestigious awards and the money anything that doesn’t rhyme is considered “avant-garde”.

The contemporary writer/poet who wants literature to advance forward instead of being stuck in backwardness is inherently outside the literary world. He views the official literary world with contempt. He understands that the publishing conglomerates, academia, prestigious literary magazines, and award givers are mostly hostile to innovative literature. The contemporary writer/poet who wants literature to advance understands that the literary world is an obstacle to wonderful innovative literature and therefore must be SMASHED TO PIECES. Literature is great – but the literary world is not.

It would be a great day for literature if all writers and poets started using the pages of the prestigious literary magazines as toilet paper. We don’t need the editors of the prestigious “literary” magazines to showcase great literature because they don’t even know what literature is – let alone great literature. The same can be said of those who give out prestigious “literary” awards – but maybe I shouldn’t say that – sometimes they actually give money to people who write good poetry!

The great literature of our time is rarely found in prestigious “literary” magazines – it’s rarely found in the Sunday books section of the New York Times – and you would be lucky to find the great literature of our time in the bookstore.

The great literature of our time can sometimes be discovered in the less famous literary magazines. The great literature of our time can sometimes be discovered on posting boards.

The poetry stacks of the nation’s public libraries are filled with poets who were famous and prestigious in their times but who have since been forgotten. You open the book and begin reading and you often encounter mediocrity. These formerly famous poets were usually able enough – but their work lacked vision – their work appealed to the popular tastes of their day – but their lack of boldness and originality doomed their work to obscurity over time. The literary establishment has rarely been right in judging who are the great poets and writers of their day, because the tastes of the literary establishment are so conservative and backward.

As writers most of us – with the exception of the airport novelists – have nothing to gain from the literary world. The traditional literary world is an obstacle to great contemporary literature. The literary world as we know it is an obstacle – an unnecessary middleman – between the writer and the reader. The literary world limits the reader’s choice to an array of airport novels and boring banal “literary” novels that help people fall asleep at night.

Why should big publishing conglomerates decide which books are available to the general public? After all, there is no positive reason for the publishing conglomerates to exist anymore – except for their backlists.

With the new technology print-on-demand a reader purchases a book and a copy is printed up especially for him or her. How nice! And the price is almost the same as a traditionally published book – and further advancements in technology will only bring the costs down more. The reader no longer needs to be satisfied with merely choosing amongst the thrillers, romances, and “literary” novels at the bookstore. With the Internet and print-on-demand the reader’s choices are no longer restricted by the dictates of the publishing industry – the reader’s choices are endless!

Of course, the traditionalists and people employed in the traditional publishing conglomerates may argue that many of the books available via print-on-demand are not masterpieces. But the same is true of the books sold by the traditional publishing industry. In fact, if the book is published by the traditional publishing industry you can bet that the book was published primarily because of its commercial potential.

With the technology print-on-demand books that are not commercial can now be made available to the general public. For the first time ever the general public can purchase and read all kinds of works of literature that were never available before.

Another great innovation that makes more possible than ever is the Internet.
The Internet weakens the traditional prestigious “literary” magazines vis-à-vis the less famous literary magazines that are more likely to publish innovative literature. Before, the more traditional literary magazines could use their prestigious names to receive greater distribution in the bookstores, and it was more difficult to get hold of the less famous literary magazines. But now, with the Internet, the less famous literary magazines that publish more innovative literature are only a click away.

Of course, traditionalists will argue that not all innovative literature is good. However, most literature written in a traditional style is not good either. In fact, contemporary literature written in a traditional style is more likely to be stale – which is what often happens when one copies from the “masters” of the past. I am not saying that all contemporary literature written in a conventional style is stale. However, most contemporary poetry and prose written in a traditional style seems to be stale.

Also with the Internet comes the posting boards. I’ve heard other writers/poets complain that many literary posting boards are no more than cliques hostile to outsiders, and other posting boards engage in all kinds of censorship, and still other posting boards are presided over by control freaks who ban everybody who they disagree with, and on some boards there’s intolerance towards writers/poets who feel shy about commenting on the works of others.

I can understand why writers and poets would find the above problems very irritating. However, I still feel that posting boards are a positive – or can be a positive influence in the world of literature. In addition, posting boards have a great potential to transform the literary world.

Posting boards make it possible for writers/poets to view each other’s work. In addition, the general public can enjoy a greater variety of literary voices than ever before.

In addition, another extremely important innovation is the word processor. The word processor, by freeing the writer from the typewriter, has made it possible for the writer to experiment more than ever! A writer can try out zillions of new styles of writing on his processor and go back and change anything he wants easier than ever!

With the word processor the writer is freer than ever to experiment. The writer may ravage the page at will! The writer is free to change, improve, evolve, invent new words, etc!

Other technologies like print-on-demand make it easier than ever for the writer to bypass the publishing conglomeracy. You are now free! You don’t have to write some crass commercial novel to get published – you don’t have to write within the “literary” novel’s limitations on creativity – you can write anything any way you want to and the general public will be able to read your book.

Of course, traditionalists will argue that a self published print-on-demand book stands little chance of being “successful”. But the traditionalists seem to define a book’s “success” more by its sales, and less by its quality or innovation.

To this I respond that a traditionally published book stands little chance of commercial “success” either. The vast majority of traditionally published books fail commercially.

Each publishing conglomerate works on much the same premise as a tree. A tree you ask? Yes, a tree – a tree throws out endless seeds every spring – and as you know only a small number of those seeds ultimately become trees.

The same is true of traditionally published books. Each publishing conglomerate throws out lots and lots of books every year – and the few that make it and generate high sales sustain the publishing conglomerate’s profits.

And just as a tree throwing out seeds does nothing to nurture its offspring publishing conglomerates nurture very few of their books with adequate publicity.

The system works for the publishing conglomerates and the few airport novelists whose books become best sellers – but the losers are the vast majority of authors whose books never generate good sales and whose books are out-of-print within a few years.

The other loser is the member of the general public who walks into a bookstore wanting to read something different than the same fare of romances, action-thrillers, and “literary” fiction.

But now, with the advent of the Internet and posting boards and print-on-demand and the endless choices on Amazon.com and other online retailers the man or woman who wants something different than romances, thrillers, “literary” fiction and the like can now find an endless variety of literature on posting boards, in obscure e-zines that publish “out there” literature, and on author’s web-sites.

Hence, now both the writer and the reader are free from the restraint of choices found in traditionally published books.

The posting boards have a very important role to play. Over time, some posting boards may acquire a reputation for having more daring writing and will draw more interest from the general public. The public will be able to purchase on Amazon.com via print-on-demand whatever author they choose. Old outmoded institutions like the traditional publishing industry and the New York Times Book Review will play no role in any of this at all.

Hence, the posting boards, (or at least some of them), will provide the general public with a venue to read all kinds of exciting innovative literature like they’re never read before, and the posting boards will thus help the writer of innovative literature to receive exposure and thus help writers to become increasingly independent of the big publishing conglomerates.

Of course, not all writers want to be independent of the big publishing conglomerates. Many writers want to make big royalties, and the only way to do that is to write commercial airport novels. Of course, after the aspiring would-be airport novelist has actually written the commercial work he has to somehow get the attention of a literary agent, which is nearly impossible. If after writing the commercial work the writer is lucky enough to get a literary agent and then (hopefully) a publisher the would-be airport novelist is still not on easy street yet. After you sign the contract with the publisher the literary agent’s work is done, but the author’s headache is just beginning. Publishing conglomerates are notoriously stingy in putting resources and time into promoting their books. They publish LOTS of books every year – and they don’t have the time, resources, or inclination to adequately promote all their books.

You might have the most commercial book in the world, but if your book doesn’t receive any publicity than nobody will know about your book which means nobody buys it and your book will be out-of-print in a few years – which is what happens to most traditionally published books anyway.

Of course, you could max out your credit cards and take out loans to buy more publicity for your book – but this will more likely result in bankruptcy than a bestseller. The traditional publisher might offer to pay half of the publicity/promotion for your book if you pay the other half – but unless you want bankruptcy in your future you might want to be careful how much you put up for publicity.

When (and if) a traditional publisher signs up your book you might receive all kinds of promises about how they’ll promote your book. Take it all with a grain of salt. The person in the publishing house in charge of promoting your book is also in charge of promoting LOTS of books. And unless your name is Stephen King or John Grisham don’t expect the publicity of your book to be given much priority – especially if you’re a first time author. And if your first book doesn’t sell there’s a good chance that no publisher is going to want your second book.

By the way, don’t be surprised if the publishing conglomerate re-writes your book to make it more commercial.

Why bother with all that? Why not write what you want to write? Why bother writing a commercial novel that’s just like so many other books already out there anyway?

But one thing: in the unlikely event that a publishing house offers you a big advance my advice is to take it! If a publishing house gives you a big advance they’re almost definitely going to heavily promote your book – because they want to get a return on their investment.

Something you may want to ask yourself is – why do you write? Do you write to make money? Do you write for prestige and acclaim? Do you write with the opinions of others in mind? Or do you write because you have to create?

If the reason that you write is that you have to create than money, prestige, and the opinions of others are all secondary. Creating innovative works of literature is probably not going to make you money or give you prestige and acclaim anytime soon. And like many others who were creative – like Gauguin, Mahler, Rodin, etc. – you will receive endless harsh attacks.

Let others make all the money from their airport novels, let others receive all the prestige and acclaim for their conventional banal “poetry”. Let others receive all the applause for their conservative traditional works written in “good taste”. Their work will wither into dust over time. A hundred years from now no one will be reading their novels, poems, and plays.

Nearly everything ever painted, sculpted, or written in “good taste” later withered and died with time. “Good taste” is nothing more than what is in fashion at the time – and as time passes what was in “good taste” centuries ago becomes trivial.

Many of the masters of the past in literature, painting, sculpture, and music were nothing less than innovators and revolutionaries in their time. Their work often caused controversy because they were not enslaved to tradition. They did not care about “good taste”. They could give a damn about the opinions of others.

There is no correct way to write – at least in the creative sense. The very essence of creativity is to write without rules. In the arts there is no correct ism – except INDIVIDUALISM. Hopefully, you are a unique person. And if there’s no one else in the world like you why should you write like anybody else?

I am not against conventional writing. It has its place. I have utilized it for essays and autobiographical novels. But I reject the idea that everything – particularly creative literature – must be written in a conventional manner according to any set of rules, including grammar. There is no correct way to write creative literature! As writers we should SMASH TO PIECES any obstacle to individual expression – especially in literature – which has been chained to tradition and convention for far too long.

Copyright 2007 by Wolf Larsen

[Adolescent09]

Man.. although my pea sized brain can barely understand your poetry, and thus through my ignorance, hate it... I must say this essay of yours pretty much nails the spot. Beautifully pointed and well said. How I wish your poetry was just as thought provoking and not about having sex on nuclear warheads and having flowers singing eulogies... and such...

[ktd222]

:lol: edit: yes, that was going to be my alternative viewpoint

Man.. although my pea sized brain can barely understand your poetry, and thus through my ignorance, hate it... I must say this essay of yours pretty much nails the spot. Beautifully pointed and well said. How I wish your poetry was just as thought provoking and not about having sex on nuclear warheads and having flowers singing eulogies... and such...

I created pop-up poetry and hide-and-go-seek poetry once, but no one would publish it. So what’s to say others aren’t doing the same “innovative” writing? What’s to say it doesn’t already exist? Nobody tells me what I should and shouldn’t love about any work. I have my own reasons why I love specific author’s work – and that reason may be unique to that author only. Just because innovation is not marked by a big red sign that says “I’m being different” doesn’t mean it’s not happening.
By the way, I’m going to start writing my poetry on people’s foreheads while they are sleeping, so when they wake up and look in the mirror, it will give my poetry that extra “wow” effect.

[SheykAbdullah]

I'm not so sure that you are right. I don't think we can judge modern literature as we are too close to it, only time can tell what will survive and often time allows some of the most obscure, over-looked artists to live. As far as a lack of diversity in writing, what would you suggest be done to innovate the story? Should we rewrite the time sequences? Add in blobs of personal esoteria? It's already been done.

You say that the forms of literature are too limited, unlike music, but the forms of music are limited too; there are only a few KINDS of music; dramatic (like operas and musicals), instrumental pieces and vocal pieces. Within each are infitinite types, but so is there in literature.

Also, while on the one hand you demand free creativity and opinion in the arts, you also are mandating a dictatorial approach. For example, you claim people who call Pollack's pieces dribble ignorant of art, well I think they are worse than dribble (somewhere between a five-year old's crayola drawings and my attempts at spray-painting junked car) and I am far from ignorant about art.

Revolutions in an art cannot be forced, nor are they an inevitable occurance. The changes in painting and indirectly in sculpture that you cite happened as a direct result of the challenge of photography on a discipline that had been traditionally dependant on creating true-to-life images. In essence, the arts were forced to redefine themselves to justify their existence. Literature has no need of this because there is nothing that does its job better than it. Movies don't, if for no other reason than because the global information of a character (particularly what he is thinking) is generally lacking.

There may be some problems with publishing houses today, but they are no worse than they were in the past, but that is moot. The ultimate truth is there is no 'great art' because there is no standard for great art. There are pieces of art which some people consider great and I consider trash, just like there are some novels out there that some people consider great and you may consider trash, but there is no absolutism in this. If someone hates Shakespeare and loves Dan Brown, are they ignorant just because they refuse to acknowledge something that has become great by its establishment? Who can dictate to them that their taste is any worse than anyone else's? Art and literature are not sciences, nor will they ever be. There is no equation to produce great books or paintings, nor can there be one because aesthetics and values differ nearly inifinitely over a range of a single culture, let alone over the range of multiples of them.

You also mention that popular art has never been great art. What about Dickens? Boucher, Fragonard, Picasso (who was wildly popular after a time), David, Conan Doyle, Shelley, Coleridge, Byron, Raphael, Michelangelo, Rubens, Davinci and the list goes on and on of great artists popular in their own times.

[WolfLarsen]

Thank you SheykaAbdullah, ktd, and 09.

09 - when you read my poems it may help you to think of collage - or it might help you to stop reading my poetry all together. Lol.

ktd - You are right that lots of people that we've never heard are probably writing innovative literature.

SheykaAbdullah - you raise a lot of interesting points, some of which I agree with and others I do not. But at no point did I say that ALL popular art/culture is ALWAYS garbage.

You say that the major publishing houses have always been problematic. However, now there are more ways around them than ever before - like the Internet, Amazon.com, and print-on-demand. We don't have to submit ourselves to them if we don't want to now. In the publishing process, the writer has often had little or no power - that may change now if writers seize the new opportunities.

If I were twenty years older I would never have written the above essay. The traditional publishing industry was the only viable route for the writer - but now it's easier than ever to go around the major publishing houses. Maybe easy is not quite the word - but going with the traditional publishers is not all that good either - unless you're absolutely 100% sure they're going to adequately promote your book. I mentioned that in the unlikely event they give you a big advance they are almost definitely going to promote your book well, because they want a return on their investment.

As far as music goes I currently own hundreds and hundreds of CDs from all over the world - I'm sure many of you do too - and the variety of music in the world is wonderful - so I would have to disagree with what you said about music not having many choices - and music itself is evolving and changing all the time - much more so than literature. Also some of the wild stuff I hear on college radio stations (particularly late at night) do not seem to conform to the limited types of music you mention. In fact, the music I’m listening to right now defies category. I have no idea what it is. Lol. (I’m listening to some obscure station all the way on the far left end of the dial.)

You asked me what kind of changes I suggest in literature. I suggest that every writer do his own thing - that every writer invent his own literature. There may be a time and place for conventional writing - but I don't think we should only limit ourselves to convention.

Once again, thank you SheykaAbdullah, ktd, and 09.

Cheers!

Wolf Larsen

[Countess]

You're preaching to the choir; actually, you're preaching to the preacher. Get out of my pulpit. (-;

I've written enough diatribes on this topic that should I start again, I will only repeat myself.

For me - abject poverty or great wealth, I will not prostitute my work to sell it.

Finally: a case in point. On Fox News, Greta Van Susteran reported that the starting bid for Anna Nicole Smith's diary is $26,000. When I heard this, I thought to myself, "the ramblings of an inarticulate, semi-retarded addict stripper is selling for more money than I make in a year whist I, an English graduate with honors and a relatively coherent and intelligent person, cannot sell my work for a penny. I cannot, in fact, *give it away*."

I pondered it for a moment, and realized to what stark depravity the American public has sunk in its "artistic taste" and I resolved, perhaps on a deeper level than previously realized, not to advance this degradation by participating in it, even if it means eternal obscurity and the death of all my work.

Also, last night (when the above incident occured) I came home and wrote out a short scene that had played in my mind, a merging of my romantic yearnings with my philosophy on art. I'll post it in the writing section if anyone wants a read.

[SheykAbdullah]

As far as music goes I currently own hundreds and hundreds of CDs from all over the world - I'm sure many of you do too - and the variety of music in the world is wonderful - so I would have to disagree with what you said about music not having many choices - and music itself is evolving and changing all the time - much more so than literature. Also some of the wild stuff I hear on college radio stations (particularly late at night) do not seem to conform to the limited types of music you mention. In fact, the music I’m listening to right now defies category. I have no idea what it is. Lol. (I’m listening to some obscure station all the way on the far left end of the dial.)

I agree, there are many genres of music and there are many genres of literature. What you asked was why should we limit outrselves to novels, short stories, poetry, etc, which are not genres of literature, but kinds of literature. You made a false analogy. There are many genres of music, but as far as types of music go, you have voal songs (and within that ballads, love songs, etc), dramatic music (within that Opera, Musicals, etc) and instrumental compisitions. Thus, one may point out that as far as ypes of music go (not genres, to which you refer) it is as limited as literature.

However, I still believe the modern publishing houses are no worse a state than they have ever been before. One need only look back a hundred years or so to find the same scandals and trash enrapturing the minds of people. The only reason we don't know about them today is because they were ephemeral, just like no one will know about Anna Nichole Smith in seventy-five, a hundred years, except maybe as a brief footnote if something notable occurs in relation to her. Also, while there may be a thousand other mediums to transmit literature through-out the world today, if you aren't published who will read your material? Publishing houses still play an important, legitimate role in disseminating manuscripts to the public.

[Adolescent09]

The categories of literature or "genre" are abound as SheykAbdullah has properly emphasized. The only essential boundaries of literature are understandability, correct punctuation and grammatical tenses. Style, chronological consistency, and a foreknowledge of the literary work you wish to produce (without sounding esoteric..) are the paramount goals of literary success. Through the fine efforts of staunch classical authors of our decade and past, we may deduce that there was a theme which promoted a novel breakthrough in their societies literary tensions. John Steinbeck, Anthony Burgess, George Orwell and Ken Kessey all produced original works which starkly contrasted from the literature proprieties of their respective decades. John Steinbeck spoke out against Depression, Anthony Burgess spoke out against the harsh way society irrationally judges adolescents, George Orwell spoke out (in very brazen terms) against Nazism and Despotic rule, Ken Kessey spoke out, implicating the Combines and medical asylums for their abysmal treatment of medically imparied patients...

We can see that all authors whose names have stood the test of time and will do so for several decades, if not centuries to come, were able to "break ground". They staunchly rivaled what their societies thought was improper to discuss and promoted the true "openness" which good literature strives to achieve.

[jon1jt]

i agree with you, Wolf. but mediocrity has always existed, no? making up words in poetry has been done many times, by the way. see ginsberg/kerouac.

i posted an essay on the same topic from a poet mag that not a single person responded to when it was first posted. hmmm. i post it again here if for only to fill in any gaps left in the discussion.

--------------

FROM SEPT. 2006, POETRY MAGAZINE:
American Poetry in the New Century
"Poetry in this country is ready for something new. We are at the start of a century, and that, in the past, has marked new beginnings for the art. Pound and Eliot launched modernism in the opening years of the 20th century...and in the opening years of the 19th, 1802 to be exact, Wordsworth launched poetry's Romantic era with the 2nd edition of Lyrical Ballads. (...The early year of the 17th and 18th centuries did not mark new departures for English poetry. And American poetry found its true beginnings in Whitman and Dickinson...)

A new poetry becomes necessary not because we want one, but because the way poets have learned to write no longer captures the way things are, how things have changed. Reality outgrows the art form: the art form is no longer equal to the reality around it.

The need for something new is evident. Contemporary poetry's striking absence from the public dialogues of our day, from the high school classroom, from bookstores, and from mainstream media, is evidence of a people in whose mind poetry is missing and unmissed. A century ago our newpapers commonly ran poems in their pages: fifty years ago the larger papers regularly reviewd new book of poetry.

The place to look for the next poetry is probably not where your might look first. Modernism was born amid an upheaval in writing that was heavily technical: Pound's Imagism and Vorticism, Gertrude Stein's automatic writing, Eliot's free verse and collage. It would be naturalto look for the next poetry to emerge from other kids of experimental poetry. But this has been tried, and the innovations that followed those of Morderism...have not carried the art form with them.

My own experience with MFA programs, having taught in one, is that they can make of a writer a better writer. "Better" in this case means more knowledgable in the traditions and the contemporary scope of the art, more accomplished in the craft of writing, more aware of the numbus of critical commentary which surrounds and to some extent drives the art. That's the good news...At the same time, these programs carry pressures to sucumb to the intimidations implicit in a climate of careerism. They operate on a network of academic postings and prizes that reinforce the status quo. They are sustained by a system of fellowships, grants, and other subsidies that absolve recipients of the responsibility to write books that a reader who is not a specialist might enjoy, might even buy.
The MFA experienec can confuse the writing of poetry, as a career, with the writing of a poem as a need or impulse. Writing a poem is a fiercely independent act....Will the next Walt Whitman be an MFA graduate? Somehow it seems hard to imagine.

No major American poet has come from the academic world...(he lists among them Wallace Carlose Williams, Eliot who worked for a time at Lloyd's Bank, and Wallace Stevens) It is commonplace among creative writers that we should write what we know, but Hemingway took that a step further by seeking out fresh experience in the service of his writing...He sought to live more in order to writer better. That's not to say that one has to be chased around Pamplona by bulls to gain experience. It could be something as slight as the difference between the poem one might get from a poet strolling past a construction site versus the poem on might get from the poet who is pouring concrete. Either could produce the better poem, of course, but the latter's will be more deeply informed by experience. "To change your language," as Derek Walcott says, "you must change your life.
I personally don't know many who would think to cross the street, let alone do what Hemingway did, in the hopes of getting a poem out of it. Rather it is the unconscious habit of poets to wait for the poem to come to them. (In the words of a poet friend, "You don't choose the poem, the poem choose you.")...the point rather is that poets today don't seem to be aware that what they write will be influence by how they live.

At this point it is perfectly reasonable to ask that the public bear some responsibility for the plight of contemporary poetry. Our culture conspires to deny us our privacy, the quiet time it takes to read a poem. But I don't agree. The human mind is a marketplace, especially when it comes to selecting one's entertainment. Elizabethan theatergoers always had the option to go watch bearbaiting instead of one of Shakespeare's plays...

Poetry needs to find it's public again, and address it. Poets can help accomplish this by bearing in mind the influences of how they live on what they write, and of what they write on how their readers live. They can rethink the traditional oppositions both within poetry (as they have done with formal verse vs. free) and between poetry and the rest of the world. They can revisit inherited atitudes regarding art for art's sake, art as therapy, and lyric poetry as the only kind of poetry. The can, like the first Impressionist painters, embrace the importance of being wrong in the eyes of the status quo---and thereby take back poetry's given ground....

Groundbreaking new art comes when artists make a changed assumption about their relationship to their audience, talk to their readers in a new way, and assume they will understand. When Melville wrote, "Call me Ishmael"; when Whitman wrote, "I celebrate myself and sing myself/and what I assume you shall assume"; when Baudelaire wrote "Hypocrite lecteur"; when Frost in the first poem of his book, said, "You come too": each seemed to make transforming assumptions about his audience. Their direct address was address made somehow more direct. It held, succeeded, and literature was changed."

[Touch]

"No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money."

Samuel Johnson


I think that there are a few very good ideas in the essay, but a lot of it is overstated, and some of the points of comparison are simply misguided. "Why shouldn’t there be as many different kinds of literature as there are different kinds of music" - but there ARE as many different kinds. You seem to be saying that different GENRES equate to different modes of transmission, which is untrue. Here's some different kinds of music: jazz, metal, country, goth. Here's some different kinds of literature: detective fiction, gonzo journalism, gothic horror, sci-fi.

With music, you are talking about different genres - and there are far more genres of literature than there are of music. Now, while I appreciate the sentiment (that we need a revolution in literature), I suspect that the real problem here is that none of us are able to agree on precisely WHAT the problem is! Also, I think most publishers would be happy to publish something radically removed from the mainstream format of literature, as long as it was actually any good! And unfortunately, there's a lot of mediocre stuff out there...

Just my 2 cents.

[WolfLarsen]

Countess said:

"For me - abject poverty or great wealth, I will not prostitute my work to sell it. "

"...I resolved, perhaps on a deeper level than previously realized, not to advance this degradation by participating in it, even if it means eternal obscurity and the death of all my work."

Thank you Countess. Your words are few, passionate, and to the point. I wish my essay had those qualities.

SheykAbdullah said:

"However, I still believe the modern publishing houses are no worse a state than they have ever been before. "

That may be true, but there are more ways around the publishing industry than ever before - like posting boards, the Internet, Amazon.com, print-on-demand, and author's web sites. Not exactly perfect - but more options for writers who don't write airport novels than ever before - and more options for readers looking for something different than commercial fiction.

jon1jt makes some excellent points in his essay. Among them live an interesting life and hopefully your writing will be interesting too. He goes on to say "The need for something new is evident." He's right! And he says: "No major American poet has come from the academic world..." Maybe there are aspects of the academic world that discourage the innovation necessary to be a great poet?

Touch says:

"Also, I think most publishers would be happy to publish something radically removed from the mainstream format of literature, as long as it was actually any good!"

I agree and disagree. I think some smaller publishers might publish radically different literature if they thought they would at least make SOME profit - it just depends on the publisher - there might even be a few small publishing houses who would do it if at least they didn't think they would lose money. I think larger publishers would publish something radically different if they were fairly certain it would make them a lot of money. I think their main concern would be the perceived risk of losing money by publishing radically different literature. The other obstacle is a certain corporate mindset - which is often very conservative and allergic to risk taking and anything radical unless there's big money to be made.

Thank you Touch, Jon, SheykAbdullah, and Countess for your comments.

Cheers!

Wolf Larsen

[WolfLarsen]

Oh yeah, 09. 09 said:

"The only essential boundaries of literature are understandability, correct punctuation and grammatical tenses."

I strongly disagree. Somewhere, on this site should be my essay entitled "Who Needs Grammar? Let's Throw Grammar in the Garbage Can." If you can't find it on this site you can google Wolf Larsen and the link to the essay is on the left side of my main web site page. You will have to scroll down a bit to find it, but the essay talks about how we do NOT need correct grammar in creative work - that an anal obsession with grammar can hinder creativity in literature.

09 goes on to say:

"We can see that all authors whose names have stood the test of time and will do so for several decades, if not centuries to come, were able to "break ground". They staunchly rivaled what their societies thought was improper to discuss and promoted the true "openness" which good literature strives to achieve."

Those words are great 09! Thank you! Well said!

Cheers!

Wolf Larsen

[Adolescent09]

I strongly disagree. Somewhere, on this site should be my essay entitled "Who Needs Grammar? Let's Throw Grammar in the Garbage Can." If you can't find it on this site you can google Wolf Larsen and the link to the essay is on the left side of my main web site page. You will have to scroll down a bit to find it, but the essay talks about how we do NOT need correct grammar in creative work - that an anal obsession with grammar can hinder creativity in literature.

That is an interesting objection Wolflarsen and I must acquiesce with you to a point. Yes, grammatical scrutiny without concentrating astutely on the creativity of writing can marr the potentially profound meaning of its content, but if your writing is packed with bad syncopations and grammatical fallicies to the point where it is overtly incomprehensible, I think one should have some consideration for the fundamentals of grammar as a subject. Proper punctuation... commas... periods after short sentences... have been known to "stilt" writing to the point where it's outwardly unneffective but impulsive flaws in grammar such as sentence run-ons have proven to be very useful in writing. Here's an example:

A sentence which is grammatically correct but drably portrayed: I saw the birds, the bees and the wallows from my angel's burrow on the ground. My hands and legs spun on degrees against the dandilions and sifted yellow pollen on my palms.

A sentence run-on without the "stiltedness" provoking imagination: The birds and the bees and the wallows spun golden shadows, round and round, round and round my head,'Chirp--chirp, buzzzzz, deep droning call of life, about my earth-embedded countenance. Golden showers all around, drifting down inch by inch on open hands, angel wings, my floating legs... colored yellow..
--------------

So while I agree that attention on fine grammar and punctuation does less to promote imaginative thought, let us see what happens when grammatical attention is blatantly undermined:

The birds and the bees. The wallows. They spin, spin gold shadows! Round, round, round about my head going "chirp--chirp"! "Buzzzzzzzzz". Deep drone calls. My countenance is flat--in the earth--very flat. Showers gold, bright, bright gold, drifting about on imperceptible strings upon my hands like angel wings and on my legs like floating, floating paddles.. All, yellow. So, so, so yellow.

[cows]

I started this with the desire to be short and sweet, but had too much to say. Two part response.

1: On the entry:

The topic this thread is attempting to chew might just be too simple for its contributors. Isn’t that human? I like the idea, but lets revive this as a discussion – not a sigh of defeat (which is the impression I get from some responses).

First, I have a few issues with what Larsen said…

To say that novels, short stories, and poetry represent limited venues of writing is absurd. Writing a story, whether it is a short, novella, novel, whatever – it is a story and that’s that. The content! That is what's lacking. Creative approaches to writing are out there and more are on their way.

Also, writing is not a slave to grammar. Weak writers follow it to the grave, but the strongest writers will always know when and how to use proper grammar. If you are seeking a “Picasso” of literature, it would prove a point and then be rendered useless. I think that is why you used the word "can" in "an anal obsession with grammar can hinder creativity in literature." Why scoff at coherent writing? The stuffy artsy approach is reserved for appreciators and will never be shared by the innovators.

Lastly, music. I agree with Touch, but wand to add...What musician spends a career foregoing simple tools of music like rhythm and scales, which are equal to grammar for writing in my eyes (feel free to argue that)? Even jazz has rules. Perhaps I don’t get what you were trying to say with that, but it seems irrelevant.

2: The Future!

Phew. Now I can get to the goods.

There are so many trends in our culture right now that I’m sure you’re overlooking (because I’m definitely younger and see it). The established music industry is reaching its tipping point and the bands on indy labels or self-produced, are becoming the most popular among budding groups. Bands release music online, self-produce CDs and make a decent amount of money. Because music has the largest market in the arts, it will obviously move forward first.

If an equal audience were available for writing and music, independent writing would be evolve as quickly. Authors can and are selling and publishing their own work. It takes time and money to catch on. Nothing changes overnight.

New themes, styles, structures are desperately needed. Creative approaches to old ideas will even do in some cases! We have been rewriting Greek tragedy for far too long. Also, please consider that writing, at best, will amount to a tool used to gain insight into the present society for future historians and anthropologists. Why not be creative and f[mess?] with them by using creative measures. That’s just me. (I love that someone brought up Ginsberg and Kerouac. I've read Kerouac more-so. He is an innovative storyteller.)

I think writing is something that people don’t get into if they can help it because of the low capital reward. If you love it, you are doomed to be a writer, good or bad. Be proud of it. Don’t squander it. Get on the scene and suck the marrow out of the beast. Write about it in your way, that’s your charge. If you forget that, hell – you’ll be (as Larsen put) one of those airport novelists. At least you’ve got the cash!

Literary revolution is right here, right now, tangible, and if you don’t see it, that’s your fault for being jaded.

So lets discuss… What is the future? What are we doing to change things? What should be done? Is it even something that should be articulated?

I hope it has nothing to do with trite Chuck Palahniuk stuff. (Sorry for the barely related jab, it jumped out and I don’t want to take it back.)

Thanks for the thread.

-Ryan

[cows]

+, on the publishing/production/recording/advertising industry front, they will probably change to fit the trends and keep their power.

[WolfLarsen]

09 argues his point very well but there is still disagreement between us. Disagreement is good and natural - if we all thought the same what a boring place the world would be.

There are times where grammar is not necessary at all. I discovered this a decade ago when I wrote a 70,000 word run-on sentence called The Exclamation Point! There are whole pages where there is not one single comma, period, dash - nothing.

Those pages without grammar are sustained by rhythm - perhaps the pounding rhythm of Afro-Brazilian drums or free jazz or just the rhythm of the run-on sentence rushing forward.

I feel that grammar can be tossed aside entirely - it all depends on what you are writing. A lot depends on what the writer is capable of. But to be capable of doing amazing new things the writer has to be able to imagine them, and therefore cannot be chained to tradition. A person of slightly above average I.Q. will often write a far better work than a person of very high I.Q. if the former has a free imagination and the latter is a slave to tradition.

Cheers!

Wolf Larsen

[WolfLarsen]

Hello Cows. Thank you for your comment.

You know - I don't know what cows means by "Literary revolution is right here, right now, tangible..." Really? Where? I don't see it. I feel extremely discontented with the literary world. I am so HUNGRY to read something that's COMPLETELY DIFFERENT than everything else I've read.

Cheers!

Wolf Larsen

[VulpineDragon]

Well, when you're talking about proper grammar you have to remember that art itself is communication, and communication in society has standards to make it easier for people to communicate with each other. Specifically, in the world of written language, there are rules for pronunciation, spelling, grammar, usage, and all those other wonderful rules we all love and that are insisted on nearly everywhere. Such standards were designed for (and work best in the context of) communication for everyday purposes. And, the heart of creative writing (or any other form of art) as communication is to get one's ideas out there. If the artist wants to say something that's been said before, or communicate their ideas in a clear manner, all they need to is to follow the standards set before them.
But what if the artist wants to break a mold and put forth their ideas in a completely different manner? Or, what if they feel that what they have to say cannot be put into standardized syntax? Rules are made to be broken, so to speak. The danger with deliberately breaking rules of grammar is that it makes your writing hard to understand. Of course, this is cool if you want to make your audience work a little before they understand the work. But there can be such a thing as going too far. Will readers be able to get the message that you are trying to get out, or will they dismiss it as half-witted and meaningless? How far can you go before your art goes from being a cleverly expressed statement to a convoluted mess of letters and words that no one, not even the most tolerant and open-minded of readers, can sort out and gain enjoyment from?
More importantly, how are you supposed to sort out this kind of art from mediocre writing that is just plain bad? Tying in with the issue of mediocrity, there are so many writers out there (or people who have so little talent that they can't even be considered writers) who plain just can't write at all. With the really weird stuff, sometimes it can be hard to tell the difference. And, there are probably a few authors out there that are "ahead of their time"... their work is incomprehensible to people now but someday, when a few things about our culture are different, people will have a new context to put it into where it will finally make sense.

And there's also the issue that avoiding the rules of grammar can very easily destroy a piece as opposed to doing anything else.

[jon1jt]

Francis Fukiyama pronounced an "End of history" after the fall of the Berlin Wall. similarly, the end of writing came at the hand of Derrida's deconstruction. writing is a nice idea, so just enjoy it.

[Aiculík]

I don't agree. Thre are some interesting points, but I don't like the way you present it. You know... maybe I’m wrong (in fact I hope I am)... but this all sounds to me as if you tried to publish something and was refused, maybe even told that your work is not good enough. And so now you’re angry with all stupid publishers who preferred mediocre junk to your work.



The writer enjoys little independence. He is dependent on publishing corporations to help him reach a large audience seeking cheap entertainment. Hence, in order to make a living from his craft the writer often has no choice but to write mediocre and non-innovative “literature” that will be acceptable to conservative publishing conglomerates. In addition, since “success” is defined by how many copies are sold, the emphasis is on producing cheap mass entertainment.
Mediocre like who? You make it sound as if publishing corporations never published any work that wasn't mediocre. And that is not true.


Another conservatising influence (yes I probably just made up a word – good! We writers should make up words more often).
Creativity is one thing, hiding poor vocabulary by “inventing new words” another. Sorry.


another conservatising influence on the literary world is the whole prestige game. You get your work in certain prestigious “literary” magazines, get nominated for certain prestigious “literary” awards, etc. – and suddenly you’re considered a “great” writer/poet.
The pages of many (not all) of the most prestigious literary magazines are filled with excrement masquerading as great literature that doesn’t even qualify as mediocre – it’s just plain bad, conservative, and bland..
Or it's just you, who is just ignorant of literature. You just take your prejudices and form a position of ignorance and prejudice. You proclaim everything that doesn’t conform to your ignorant and prejudiced misconceptions of literature to be bad and mediocre. (Sounds familiar?)



There is no correct way to write – at least in the creative sense. The very essence of creativity is to write without rules. In the arts there is no correct ism – except INDIVIDUALISM. Hopefully, you are a unique person. And if there’s no one else in the world like you why should you write like anybody else?.
Right, there is no correct way to write. Which means there is no wrong way to write, either – including traditional way. Everyone is free to write as he considers best.


I am not against conventional writing. It has its place. I have utilized it for essays and autobiographical novels. But I reject the idea that everything – particularly creative literature – must be written in a conventional manner according to any set of rules, including grammar. There is no correct way to write creative literature! As writers we should SMASH TO PIECES any obstacle to individual expression – especially in literature – which has been chained to tradition and convention for far too long..

If well you not do grammar use it like why you. how See your will works be using grammar without popular.

The main function of the language is communication. And also literature is about communication – between author and readers. While you can sometimes break grammar rules to make your work innovative, you can’t just ignore it. There is nothing creative in the way I wrote two sentences above. Grammar is not something that was invented by mad linguists who only have one goal in their life, to destroy all creativity in people, you know. :) It's what helps language to work.

[blackowl]

I am glad to see a person understanding (REALY) that saying 'literature for public (folk)' especially Europen. Of course you are from north and much travelled. You know that you are living and poor or reach you will be always happy. I would like to discuss with you abt culture and cultures under attack. Have you ever read Wolfgang Borchert?

[Derringer]

I'm sorry to say this, but your essay made little sense. So the 'greats' were not original? Shakespeare was not original*?


But academia is primarily interested in promoting the “great” writers and poets of the past and those who today imitate them

Postmodern 'belatedness' suggests the use of reworking old ideas, but recent artists are not imitating- they are building and creating new things.


By a young age Picasso had assimilated the “masters” of the past – and he went on to create new brazen works of art – he departed from the past – and created wonderful CONTEMPORARY masterpieces. Mozart also mastered traditional styles of classical music – and he went on to create music that at his time was INNOVATIVE.


Well now we've jumped into Modernity. You would be very interested in Fredrich Jameson here, who has claimed that Modernity is not approved of by pop culture. I agree, to an extent. But, it is generally 'liked' in the 'Academic world' -- go check out a local university and I guarantee you will find a prof who loves modernist art.


Hence, the truly great masters of the recent past – in music (Stravinsky, Mahler), painting (Dali, etc.), sculpture (Rodin) – produced great works that were INNOVATIVE and hence FRESH and EXCITING. In contrast, those that worship the past tend to produce works that are stale and flat. Sure, there are adequate writers, painters, sculptors, and composers who can blindly copy the “greats” of the past – but by copying what’s already been done they are contributing nothing to the arts and literature.

This is just ignorance. Please joing your local art community.


There are those that argue that first you must learn tradition to be a great writer. By all means I agree you should read as much “great” literature as possible – both traditional and contemporary. But then some of these same people will go on to say “learn the rules before you break them.”

Forget learning the rules unless you plan to write a conventional essay or a guide to used car repair. In creative literature go ahead and unshackle yourself from all rules! SMASH any and all rules with a sledgehammer, a wrecking ball, or better yet with a pen or a paintbrush! Works of literature, music, painting, etc, should obey no conventional rules whatsoever. If you feel the urge to have rules invent your own! Look at Schoenberg’s 12 tone scale! Wow!


So you intend to become a greater writer with no knowledge of the language? I don't think anybody has ever said there are rules for art. There has suggestions of what the PURPOSE of art is --> what is the point of meaningless art? What is the point of 'breaking the rules' if you have no idea what you are doing? Purposeless art isn't art, its rubbish.


Instead of studying art (which they don’t) they take their prejudices (which are pro-representational and pro-realism) and from a position of ignorance and prejudice they proclaim everything that doesn’t conform to their ignorant and prejudiced misconceptions of art to be bad. In the world of literature it is even worse. Those who are ignorant, prejudiced, and close-minded stand in judgment of what is “good literature”.

This makes no sense whatsoever. So people in the 'world of literature' don't study art?


But let us suppose the writer is either not employed by academia or is employed in academia but could care less what some of his “colleagues” in the English department think – in other words he has a decent day job and thus doesn’t give a damn about making money from his writing. Such a writer may be influenced by such innovators as Baudelaire, Rilke, Octavio Paz, Anne Sexton, etc. and less influenced by the “greats” of the publishing conglomerates (the best-sellers) and the “greats” of the academic world (people who have been dead a very long time).

Whoa! Slow down! So you shouldn't care about critique? Gah? 'Baudelaire, Rilke and Paz are not the 'greats' of the academic world? Then what the hell did I spend all my money on?


Many of the “great works” of English literature in the canon were written by “gentleman” with disposable income (that they didn’t have to work for) and lots of free time, as well as the high social connections to insure that their work was published. Not all of them were talented or had much to say. Is a writer/poet’s work “great” just because it’s included in the Norton Anthology and the professor taught it in your literature 101 class

Ok. So now you have turned against Baudelaire -- who lived the BOHEMIAN LIFESTYLE! Many of the artists you have mentioned fit the bill here. Your just being ignorant here. You are writing poorly by making sweeping generalizations. A writer in the Norton with not much to say -- now im not going to defend everything, but something says that you didn't understand the work. Doesn't sound much better to pop culture not recognizing Modernity.


Literature has not even begun to reach its potential. In fact, literature will not even begin to reach its potential until all of humanity has ample food in its stomach and plenty of free time

What? I thought you didn't like artists that are well off and have free time. Literature has no 'potential' - it will always be necessary.


The seed of talent falls where it may. Most of those who have disposable income without having to work for it and thus have plenty of free time to write are inborn, have little or no work ethic, and are of mediocre abilities – like the president of my country George Bush. Besides, the outlook of the leisure class is often conservative, so it would not occur to them to write literature that is innovative

This doesn't help your essay at all. Ad hominen's against hasty, ignorant, unproven generalization. You sound like a jerk here.


Most people are so engaged in the struggle for survival that they do not have the time to create innovative literature. When humanity is freed from its bondage to an economic system that benefits only a privileged few than a shorter workweek for all will make it possible for more people to create great works of literature, painting, sculpture, etc.

I never knew Cesar Vallejo had the Internet.


If the world of painting can constantly evolve and change – why not literature?

Honest to goodness, you can not be serious here. This is just rubbish now.

Literature is backwards. You need to read more books. Seriously. Really quickly.


it’s just plain bad, conservative, and bland

Most essays I read make sense.















* well maybe not in story:p , but in use of language, stage dircetion...

[Derringer]

I appreciate that you want people to be original, but I really don't think you understand what original art is in the first place-- it has nothing to do with simply 'throwing away grammar' - and your attack on current artists is not necessary. Artists think about the art they make. They really think about the art they make. It is very important to them. It has a purpose. It's all right to disagree with what they are saying, but don't throw away the literary world as bland and uninnovative because that is not true.

If a person is going to school to be a writer, then they are not going for money. Otherwise they would be an engineer or someone who has a job.

[Captain Pike]

Please print something here which is outside of {poetry, short story, novel, playscript }

Perhaps I missed the point. Oh yeah, a blog...

[Adolescent09]

I appreciate that you want people to be original, but I really don't think you understand what original art is in the first place-- it has nothing to do with simply 'throwing away grammar' - and your attack on current artists is not necessary. Artists think about the art they make. They really think about the art they make. It is very important to them. It has a purpose. It's all right to disagree with what they are saying, but don't throw away the literary world as bland and uninnovative because that is not true.

If a person is going to school to be a writer, then they are not going for money. Otherwise they would be an engineer or someone who has a job.

You took the words out of my mouth... or if we're speaking it literal terms, the typed words out of my fingers. Although I, for one appreciated the OP's topic based on his perception of literature, I believe that blatantly overlooking the importance of grammar in writing is not a technique that should be readily condoned.

[SteveH]

The best literature is the kind without a price tag. The goal of writing should not be to sell books, but to write the most innovative and exciting literature imaginable.

That's what I always tell myself when I get another rejection letter. You too, eh?

[Turk]

It's clear we need a revolution in literature. But it's clear we need a revolution in all forms of art plus we need a revolution in the world too.

[NickAdams]

True originality is tough. Unless you are familiar with every book ever written how would you know you are original? How would you avoid reusing metaphors and similes? To be original I believe one must avoid used symbols and all allusions.
Still, one doesn’t create the language that they use, so they can’t be original in that sense. Tolkien created his languages based on others, so was he original or creative? If one can find a way to be original in the way they tell a story, what if the story is not original? The opportunity to be original has passed; only creativity is left. Creativity is a cave filled with echoes from generations of voices merged into the head of the writer, whom writes with one voice.

How about a semi-revolution?

[SleepyWitch]

Wolf, I haven't read your essay, but from what I've seen in quotes so far I think your idea of creativity is misguided.
psychologists distinguish between a whole array of different types of creativity (something like 5 or 7?? I can look it up later if you're interested). one of them is to apply established techniques correctly. another is to extend known principles or apply them to new situations... the type of creativity that involves inventing completely new principles is only one of many and, personally speaking, I wouldn't be surprised if this was the rarest type.

[SleepyWitch]

Look at all the endless varieties of music! It almost seems that there are as many kinds of music as there are drops of water in the ocean!
that depends on what kind of music you listen to. if you tuned in to a teenie pop station, you'd come to the conclusion that there is no variety in music at all.

[NickAdams]

Has any one tried self-publishing?
I was looking on Amazon.com and if you can produce the books it would be easy to sell.

[cows]

I'll be self publishing the first "X" number of copies of my first novel in the next year or so. How would it be easy to sell them? Do you set up a shop on Amazon like Ebay or something?

[NickAdams]

I'll be self publishing the first "X" number of copies of my first novel in the next year or so. How would it be easy to sell them? Do you set up a shop on Amazon like Ebay or something?

Ebay makes you pay for a sellers account and selling is an done in an auction format, so I wouldn't reccomend that.

Amazon lets you set up a sellers account for free, but takes a percentage of your sells. I would use amazon. You can display a synopsis and the first paragragh maybe more, so buyers can get a feel for your work. I think there might be less impulse buys on line.

Other thought I had: Try selling one or two to a used book shop and give one to the library, just to get it out there. It might be a good idea to put your email address in the book, so if someone really enjoys your work they can be refered to where you sell your other stuff online- maybe start a mailing list.

You can try and work out a deal with Barnes and Nobles, where they can display your books and you split the profits.

[Sindhu]

We Need a Revolution in Literature!


Copyright 2007 by Wolf Larsen

Thanks more than I can say for this wonderful piece of writing and for the debate it as generated. The title is what my rants are usually about till I get tired of arguing and stop. But this has really stimulated me- and I'm going to get down to a post- (long, very long- so be warned):D

Not that I agree with you on all points, but those will come up in my post.

But there are two points with illustrations that I must make here right now- one that I agree totally with the person who remarked that grammar was not created by a bunch of lunatics. With regard to my personal epiphany about this, would anyone interested, ( and I hope lots of people will be) take a look at this poem by Thomas Hardy and if possible post a brief account of what you think it means and any grammatical peculiarities noticed?

Neutral Tones


WE stood by a pond that winter day,
And the sun was white, as though chidden of God,
And a few leaves lay on the starving sod,
--They had fallen from an ash, and were gray.

Your eyes on me were as eyes that rove
Over tedious riddles solved years ago;
And some words played between us to and fro--
On which lost the more by our love.

The smile on your mouth was the deadest thing
Alive enough to have strength to die;
And a grin of bitterness swept thereby
Like an ominous bird a-wing....

Since then, keen lessons that love deceives,
And wrings with wrong, have shaped to me
Your face, and the God-curst sun, and a tree,
And a pond edged with grayish leaves.

Thomas Hardy




Again, Though I can't actually remember who said it, my 101% agreement with the poster who said that the revolution is taking place, HERE and NOW. To give just two examples - WolfLarsen, have you read Invisible Cities
by Italo Calvino or Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban? If those do not appear original, revolutionary etc etc then I really will have to fall back on the awful "Diffferent Strokes for Different Folks" excuse!! Oh, Gosh,I knew I would not be able to restrict myself to just two examples- but re the question of Genre - if someone can tell me how on earth to classify What Would Shakespeare Do?, 101 Answers to Life's Daily Dilemmas by Jess Winfield which I have bought from the Literature section, and taught in the Literature class as Novel, Essay, Short Story or Poetry, I would be both grateful and astounded. I won't go into the question of the revolution of texts taking place right now in several of the languages of India where I am from - but I must stress that they have mostly all been translated.

Since I mentioned teaching, I will confess that I am a member of the academia and the English Department at the university in Hyderabad, India where I teach at the Post Graduate and Doctoral levels, is regarded as one of the best in the country, as quite high up in world ratings even. BUT we do NOT throw out the baby with the bathwater- we do study the old, but we study them with challenging minds- I am a confirmed traditionalist in many ways , listing my anglophilic preferences from Beowulf and co, let alone Shakespeare. But during my Shakespeare class, one of the group assignments was to use Shakespeare in contemporary advertising- and no one who saw my students' perfomance coud continue to imagine that we are reworking on the tradtional as such. There is scope for much revolution in the canonical texts still if only we look for it optimistically and ask the right- or at least different questions. To give just one example, this line is from that freedom-loving poet Byron's pen, obviously intended to indicate triumph and Harmony:

"The White Man Landed! Need the Rest be Told?

My students did not require any prompting from me to answer immediately that Oh, yes- the rest NEEDED to be told, and they told so much that I had to call a halt in the interests of the timetable. New is not NECESSARILY equal to Revoltuionary, and the revolution should not, indeed cannot be connected merely to the production of Literature, there is a raging one ging on in the teaching, choosing, debating, understanding- acually just simply READING of literature. I taught Children's Literature as a perfectly respectable course last semester, something which would have been unthinkable even 5-10 years ago, and comic strips were discussed as literature and very profitably too.

And it is in no way the case that I am one of the honourable exceptions mentioned in the original essay, the exceptions are those who are keeping away due to imminent retirement or basic lack of interest.

Whew! That was supposed to be brief! Well, I'll wait for some comments before proceeding to the really long piece.:D ;) :argue:

[lupilu]

It is not the job of a writer to break barriers, though there are those who always will, it is the job of a writer to write, true to themselves, to please themselves and no one else. Any time you try to be innovative and creative you come across as desperate, stale and trying. Innovation is instinct, it is the writers words, whether or not meant. To all of us out there who are simply trying to write, our work is nothing less for not trying to be innovative. I'm not bothered if I'm ever published, I'll have paper and pen prised from my rigor mortised hand, whether it's any good or not I don't know, what I do know is I write, for the pure love of it. I may not break through barriers, but I'll always write.

[dzebra]

I think writing is much like art: there is no universal constant that when approached makes some literature better than other literature. The lasting appeal of something written is determined only by the readers. An inexperienced child may write a poor poem for his mother that is framed and kept on the mantle for generations, but a great author may write a nearly flawless book that is published and sold, but few readers ever get through the first half before setting it back on the shelf and forgetting about it.

My conclusion is this: write either for yourself or for your readers, no one will read anything else.

[stlukesguild]

I'm not certain I quite get what the point of Wolf's initial essay/rant was. Literature as we now know is too limitted? True innovation is stifled by academia, the money brokers, and the other powers that be? Give me a break! When was this NOT true? And when were the strongest writers still not able to overcome it all a produce something of great originality? Certainly all art forms can be broken up into major genre. In music we have symphonies, concertos, chamber music, opera and musical drama, song and choral music, and solo instrumental music any one of which can be broken into historical or stylistic categories (classical symphonies, baroque concertos, late romantic opera). Any of the genres may also be broken into sub-categories. Under choral music we might find cantatas, oratorios, passions, masses, Gregorian chant, etc... We might also find that any number of artists "blur" the categories/genre. Richard Strauss composed works that combined the symphonic with the song (Four Last Songs); Handel's Messiah combined opera or musical theater with choral music. Almost any modern/contemporary musical entity will fall into one or more of the major genre.

The same holds true of visual art. There are but several major art forms: Painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture, architecture, collage and assemblage, glass and ceramics, fiber arts, metalry... There are also but a few main genre/themes/subjects: portrait/figure, still life, landscape, histoire or narrative, genre scenes, and abstraction. Within these forms and genre the possibilities are endless. There are artists who combine the painting of the figure with landscape:

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k255/Stlukesguild/diana_callisto.jpg

There are paintings that combine the portrait with the still-life:

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k255/Stlukesguild/Quentin_Massys_001sm.jpg

There are works like William Blake's (painting? print? book?):

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k255/Stlukesguild/blake_urizen_7small.jpg

Joseph Cornell's boxes (sculpture? architecture? collage?):

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k255/Stlukesguild/cornell.mediciprincesssmall.jpg

or Robert Rauschenberg's works (???):

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k255/Stlukesguild/RauschenbergMonogram.jpg

... all of which blur almost all attempts at categorization.

Literature is no less constrained than any art form is... It's no less constrained than the imagination and abilities of the individual writers. What exactly is Sterne's Tristam Shandy? To me it seemingly destroys every notion of what I thought an 18th century novel was. What genre does Finnegan's Wake fall into? What doe we make of Kafka's or Borges short "fictions"? What exactly are Baudelaire's "prose poems"? And what on earth was Norman Mailer doing in Advertizments for Myself?

The fact is that the so-called categories/genre/art forms are not limitations. Many artists choose to consciously work within what might seem a limitted format. It offers a certain challenge. How does one achieve something original within a very time-worn form? How does one achieve something natural within a very artificial structure? It also offers a certain contrast. How shockingly original Baudelaire's very modern and urban poems can be within the "constraints" of the traditional sonnet or ballad form. Other artist's consciously choose to tear the forms apart... or ignore them altogether. Neither approach is better or will more assuredly lead to something of artistic merit.

I find myself greatly agreeing with Derringer:

I appreciate that you want people to be original, but I really don't think you understand what original art is in the first place-- it has nothing to do with simply 'throwing away grammar'...


Certainly there are any number of artists who amuse us with their clever artistic novelties. I will admit to a certain begrudging admiration for Georges Perec's A Void (a mystery novel complete with hilarious parodies of Keats and Poe... in which the author has not once employed the letter "E") or William Gibson's Agrippa: A Book of the Dead, a book which included text that disappeared under exposure to light while other text or images would appear in its place as well as a computer disc with an elegaic poem that erases itself. At the same time I greatly doubt that such a work has any real lasting power. I'm far more moved by some of Cormac McCarthy's works (written in the traditional novel form) or the poetry of Eugenio Montale, Anthony Hecht or Richard Wilbur that are continually structured upon some of the most time-worn forms: sonnet, ballad, etc... There is most certainly a great gap between "originality" and mere novelty. The painter, Giorgio Morandi spent his entire career painting a few bottles and limitting himself to a rather subdued range of colors...:

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k255/Stlukesguild/16.jpg

His paintings might initially seem not to have strayed far from the works of any number of "old masters"... and yet what he achieved within such an apparent constraint (especially when seen in contrast to the then contemporary works of the Abstract Expressionists) continues to speak to generations of artists and art lovers... and will undoubtedly do so long after the clever novelties of such "clever, clever" artist/dilettentes as Damien Hirst or Jeff Koons are long forgotten. Literature... art as a whole... is not in need of a "revolution". The real revolutions of true originality will surely continue to come... most often quietly and unexpectedly... in the work of the strong individual artists struggling to express themselves as fully, honestly, and forcefully as possible.

[Demian]

When I tried my akward hand at writing, I discovered that when it came to fiction I had trouble sustaining a piece all the way to a proper ending. At this time I employed a method I called 'subconcious syntax', only to discover that Breton, Joyce and a few others had beat me to the punch, and with much better form. All of my work to this day is free form---the first short story I wrote was done in one sitting and after a few hours it was finished. I'm sure this is not unique. But since then I have produced a lot of exciting beginnings only to see them all fizzle into obscurity. So here's my proposal: How about a genre of fiction produced by Beginnerers(so to speak), Middlers and Enders. Then they could swap results and form an organic whole. I guess story tellers around the campfire have already done this (the old give a statement and pass it on bit). But I have yet to see it done on a literary scale. What? Stephen King and Peter Straub wrote a book together? This revolutionary business is harder than it sounds!:lol:

[NickAdams]

When I tried my akward hand at writing, I discovered that when it came to fiction I had trouble sustaining a piece all the way to a proper ending. At this time I employed a method I called 'subconcious syntax', only to discover that Breton, Joyce and a few others had beat me to the punch, and with much better form. All of my work to this day is free form---the first short story I wrote was done in one sitting and after a few hours it was finished. I'm sure this is not unique. But since then I have produced a lot of exciting beginnings only to see them all fizzle into obscurity. So here's my proposal: How about a genre of fiction produced by Beginnerers(so to speak), Middlers and Enders. Then they could swap results and form an organic whole. I guess story tellers around the campfire have already done this (the old give a statement and pass it on bit). But I have yet to see it done on a literary scale. What? Stephen King and Peter Straub wrote a book together? This revolutionary business is harder than it sounds!:lol:

Surrealist played a game called the exquisite corpse that employed beginners, middlers and enders.

Would you mind posting some of your one sittings?

[Demian]

Soon I was taken to a concert hall. He showed me the rapt audience and then gestured toward a man waiting in the wings, just opposite of us. "Who is that?" I asked him, but he kept his silence a while longer. I could see tears streaming down the man's face as the odd consortium of oboes and single flutes played their otherworldly fare. "I've never heard music like this before. What is the name of this piece?" He touched my lips and said gently,"It's A Requiem for the End of the World." I felt as if I was floating with those notes, far above this world to one far beyond and behind us as well. But here he was, still alive, he had made it--he was working again. And here was the world he was sure would come to an end--listening to his masterpiece. And then he touched my lips again and I could hear something else. Above those notes I could hear the sound of Rachel weeping and without comfort for her soul. She was weeping for her lost children...

[NickAdams]

Soon I was taken to a concert hall. He showed me the rapt audience and then gestured toward a man waiting in the wings, just opposite of us. "Who is that?" I asked him, but he kept his silence a while longer. I could see tears streaming down the man's face as the odd consortium of oboes and single flutes played their otherworldly fare. "I've never heard music like this before. What is the name of this piece?" He touched my lips and said gently,"It's A Requiem for the End of the World." I felt as if I was floating with those notes, far above this world to one far beyond and behind us as well. But here he was, still alive, he had made it--he was working again. And here was the world he was sure would come to an end--listening to his masterpiece. And then he touched my lips again and I could hear something else. Above those notes I could hear the sound of Rachel weeping and without comfort for her soul. She was weeping for her lost children...

What's great about this is that it works as a beginning and ending too.:thumbs_up

[Crazy_mode60]

I Think we always speak about past about old writer in all things
Ok The old literature we must go back to it but when we need it

But We need Revolution at all

[blazeofglory]

We Need a Revolution in Literature!
An Essay by Wolf Larsen



I really subscribe to your ideas. I feel that a great writer must be above all these petty things, for price for a great book can not be paid. Ideas are invaluable.

Not only that the government must provide books free of costs.

But unfortunately today writers are more commercial and all they want out of books is money.
Money is no doubt required in life, yet it should not the end of all.

[KidTruth]

Well, I can really tell one thing about the writer...

He's unpublished =p

Yes yes, smash the barriers - but the simple truth is that people and audiences have not really changed over the course of the entire body of literature, and that people love good ideas. If people don't love your work, it may not be a good idea.

Logic, no?

But keep trying.

[autodrive]

There has been a revolution of language and book production and book selling.

Languages are mixing. Dictionaries and editors are no longer the last word.:)

Print on demand has made it far easier for someone to print small quantities of books.

And Internet book sales continue to grow, aided by increased online information and reviews at the point of purchase.

[Virgil]

We Need a Revolution in Literature!
An Essay by Wolf Larsen

The best literature is the kind without a price tag. The goal of writing should not be to sell books, but to write the most innovative and exciting literature imaginable.

Copyright 2007 by Wolf Larsen

What ever happened to Wolf? He hasn't been around here in over six months. I know he's a nut, but I was getting fond of him and his zany ideas. :)

[Jane Jane]

Stlukesguild, your words and the pictures you used were wonderful to read and a great deal to think on. Novelty in work or fashion or such has to be pretty special for it to touch me at all. I find that the simplest of melodies which perhaps are covered with intricasies as well as the simplest way of putting things with great deep and feeling are the greatest things I have ever read.I was unfamiliar with a couple of the paintings, they were most interesting.
Virgil, what do you mean calling this person a nut? What is meant by that and how do you know it for a fact? I have read some remarkable unbelievable biographies of people over the ages that were referred to like that, either in a joking or serious way. But upon reflecting upon their lives and looking at the ones who said so , I generally found it to be the other way around. :)

[jon1jt]

Stlukesguild, your words and the pictures you used were wonderful to read and a great deal to think on. Novelty in work or fashion or such has to be pretty special for it to touch me at all. I find that the simplest of melodies which perhaps are covered with intricasies as well as the simplest way of putting things with great deep and feeling are the greatest things I have ever read.I was unfamiliar with a couple of the paintings, they were most interesting.
Virgil, what do you mean calling this person a nut? What is meant by that and how do you know it for a fact? I have read some remarkable unbelievable biographies of people over the ages that were referred to like that, either in a joking or serious way. But upon reflecting upon their lives and looking at the ones who said so , I generally found it to be the other way around. :)


Virge is right, Wolf's a nut---you know, like a crazy nut, eccentric, cool, in that amusingly kooky way. He's a writer who craves for a revolution in literature...what's not to like about the guy? And his poetry is...um, well, nutty. Virge is a nut too, and so am I. Maybe you're a nut, Janey. :D Where is Wolf, good question.

[hhc]

I agree with you, our literature has remained stable for almost fifty years. It has actually become boring; everybody writes about the same things in the exact same way. No one has followed the path of Joyce, Faulkner, Borges, and other great innovators of the 20th century.
But why is that? All of what you said is true. But there is another factor that is virtually killing our creativity: conformism. Have you noticed that the most passionate, innovative and great works of literature have been produced in times of poverty, oppression and injustice or when their writers found themselves in desperate situations? Well, I have. Therefore, I believe that a writer has to be pushed by an internal or external fear. He has to be seeking to change the world, not to become rich enough to buy a Ferrari. Art is produced not by the brain, but by the heart. So, we need a big revolution in society, in our mentality, in our lives, to start writing more revolutionarily (new word?).

[PoeticPractice]

"An innovation in a literary form cannot establish itself as a new direction unless a sense of shared aims and objectives develops among experimental writers." -Patricia Waugh, Metafiction: The Theory and Practice of Self-Conscious Fiction

While this citation is an extract from a work that focuses on detailing metafiction, [furthermore, it is not as recent as I would prefer -- 1984], this particular section hits some points that are obviously closely related to where the subject matter of this thread began.

Although I am as excited as anyone else for the prospect of some type of a "nouvelle avant-garde", I am not so sure if attacking, (or at least, questioning), the economic motives of publishers or authors really accomplishes the true objective of this anticipation.

[miyako73]

if you ask me, fifty cent and p diddy are more innovative than Toni Morrison and Alice Walker combined as far as language use and poetic innovation are concerned.

Even Palin will kick their asses. At least, she creates new words everyday.

The role of literature is to make language dynamic, active, and alive.

Was it Faulkner who made up and used his own words?

if you want innovation, read syjuco's illustrado. now, that's a non-conformist piece of writing. But I doubt if Americans will read him; he's Asian who happens to be anti-prosaic literature

[blazeofglory]

I wholeheartedly support the idea that there must be a revolution in literature. I am fed up with too many conventionalist ideas and let us have a different approach to literature and reverse all that is old the way our values have undergone dramatic changes. Our literature has its roots in age old dead values, for today we live in a different world and I savvy that we all are averse to old values and we take on new philosophies and yet we seem too much obsessed with the obsolete.

I feel we must kind of give up all our obsolete literature. Let us writer in such a simple way any man, even dimwit can understand the meaning underlying a particular piece of literature.

Why should we follow Alexander Pope's hard-some, mind-boggling tough phrases and to hell with James Joyce's experimental style and I abhor and I am reproachful of this heap of nonessential stuff. Being and nothingness engaged me for many days and at the end of the day all I arrived it is drivel and now I am into grammatology by another pretender named Jack Derrida. What the heck has he done by simply meddling us in sets of theories. Literature and particularly classical literature is already tough and these few so called theorists, propagandists are getting them more complicated.

James Joyce and Derrida have written for less than 1 % people, to instruct and entertain a few readers of professorships.

Let new writers emerge who can outshine all those old stuffs and herald a new horizon of literature

[sulcus]

Your analysis of the mainstream is correct, but as with youth & music cultures, the next happenings are already occurring beneath the awareness of all but a tiny few. The internet and online publishing have busted the field open wide, though most are bogged down in debates over delivery systems over content. Time to restore the art of literature over its commerce. The internet will unlikely be able to deliver my work, which uses alphabets, typographies etc as well as words to examine the language and communication we all take for granted.

Any revolution in literature must restore the primacy of language to the novel, to nail down the slippery and elusive nature of meaning that words actually shroud rather than illuminate.

It's a big undertaking, but I'm game

[cyberbob]

LOL the essay sounds like one of the rants from The Fountainhead.

I agree though. The literary community is mainly composed of pretentious hero-worshippers who consider uneducated drunkards geniuses, and those who read Twilight.

[themiddleprince]

Been a long day and I only got as far as the writing / music analogy. They're not the same.

I can open my mouth, vocalise or click my tongue; or I can keep my mouth closed and whistle, or hum; I can clap my hands, snap my fingers, slap my cheeks; I can stamp the floor, kick a dustbin [trash can, US] or rub my denimed backside on a brick wall. It's music. I can play an external instrument. I can do any or all of these alone, with a bunch of mates in a bar or for money at Carnegie Hall. It's the range of possible variants that creates the varieties of form.

Verbal language - the words, the tone, the narrative context - is as varied as music. All Writing is just capturing language. Writing is to verbal language what trumpet playing is to music: it's a means of expressing it. Of course one can make a range of sounds with a trumpet, in traditional or completely erratic forms. Whether people will stay to listen -and particularly whether they will pay to hear it once or repeatedly - is a matter of experimentation.

Exactly the same is true of writing. Write what and how you like, there have probably never been better opportunities to put your creations before people's eyes. Who cares if it doesn't sell? If you care, write something else or don't write at all.

[WolfLarsen]

Hi everybody!

I notice that the comments get less hostile with the passage of time. Perhaps that's because we are in the midst of some of the greatest changes in communication since the invention of the printing press. In terms of the written word we are in a revolutionary era.

Perhaps most of it is worthless but the Shakespeares of today don't even realize how talented they are. They're typing away on their various "telephones" which have become small computers far more sophisticated than virtually anything that was in most of the sci-fi movies of my youth. These people typing away are reinventing the English language and all of the languages of the world, and they're having fun doing it. We are truly in the midst of the written word being constantly innovated by the masses. The written world has gone from the monasteries to the universities to the publishing corporations to the masses, and in those masses are the Shakespeares of today. And I could care less if I spelled shakzpear correctly, who cares?

The big publishing corporations owned by people like Rupert Murdoch are nervous. There is no longer any reason for the big publishing corporations to exist. There are just simply every year more & more options for the general public to get a hold of literature in unconventional ways. Soon there will be no more books. Books may very well go the way of CDs. And if you can download the book for two dollars from some author's website what do you need a major publisher for? The author is happy because he got his two dollars, the reader is happy because the book only cost two dollars, and well the publishers like Rupert Murdoch can go find some other hobby. Big deal. As writers you are now free of the publishing coroprations. You don't need them anymore. Let the publishing corporations go the way of the horse and buggy.

You can say you don't like the idea of a revolution in literature, but the whole infrastructure for revolution in literature is there. What is lacking is writers with balls. Too many writers don't have the courage to stand up to all the brainwashed ideas in their heads that were planted there by their grammar school teacher. And if you don't have balls you're writing probably isn't worth reading. Why should I take the time out to read a book that's too much like a whole bunch of other books I've already read?!

I agree that there's no point to be different just for the sake of being different. And if you're not different why are you writing? If you're writing is like everybody else's writing than why don't you become a garbageman instead, you'll be contributing more to society that way.

I'm different because I grew up in different circumstances. The lake was on one side and the black ghetto was on the other three sides of my neighborhood, and one of the best universities in the country was also in my neighborhood. I'm white with blond hair and blue eyes and I went to schools that were 90% black.

After a graduated from University I went up to Alaska where I worked a seasonal job of about a hundred hours a week. I spent the other eight months of the year writing whatever the hell I wanted to and traveling around the world, when I wasn't hanging out in New York City and taking in the advant-guard scene. I've been to over 50 countries, and I speak three languages. Maybe if you had a background like mine you'd be different too! Being different is not a choice for me. I am different. And that's why I write differently. And if anybody doesn't like it I could care less.

The brief time I lived in the suburbs I saw conformity and closemindedness on an appalling scale. It was pathetic.

My purpose is not to insult anyone. But I merely wish to explain to the traditionalists that not everybody chooses to be different. We just simply are.

Best wishes to all.

Wolf Larsen

[WolfLarsen]

Hello once again.

I will now take the time out to answer some of the comments that were made on this thread while I was gone.

Somebody said $.50 - the rapper - is more innovative than some of the writers of our day. That is how pathetic writing has become - or at least commercial writing. The only thing that big publishers care about is money. When $.50 is contributing more to culture than contemporary published writers that says a lot! I like rap. But as a writer it's disturbing to me to admit that rap music is more innovative and contributing more to culture than contemporary traditionly published literature.

Contrary to what some of the earlier posters said I do not think that everything in the canon is garbage. But some of it appears to be.

Somebody said let new writers emerge that are far greater than anything in the past. That will be great! And if the human race survives there will be new writers emerging who will be far greater than any of the greats of the past. It's important to study the writers of the past. But we should not be enslaved to the past.

Somebody said we need a revolution in the world too. They are right. Half of the human race lives on less than two dollars a day. Unions in places like Wisconsin may be smashed. It's time for the working people to rule, because working people produce the wealth. The bourgeoisie are about as useless as 19th century French royalty. The only thing the bourgeoisie are good for is ruining the economy.

Somebody had to cool idea of swapping beginnings and ends and middle parts of stories with different writers. Sounds exciting!

Some of the traditionalists sought to discredit innovation in literature by giving us some crummy examples of innovation. I don't ever expect a traditionalist to write a good piece of innovative literature. That's like asking garbagemen to dance ballet.

There are times it's best to write in a traditional manner. For example, you would not want a book on plumbing to be written in a experimental manner. When you need to clean out bodily fluids from your plumbing you want a book written in a traditional manner. In addition, some books are best written in a traditional manner. There was a book about a boy soldier in Africa written in a traditional manner that was great powerful. A traditional manner of writing was best for that kind of book.

I guess there are no rules. The only rules are the ones you make.
All the best for everyone.
Wolf Larsen

[cafolini]

What Wolflarsen is claiming to be a need is something that already has come to pass. And it is never going to go back to what it was. Many good points in the essay.

[BlackCat]

Grammar can't be tossed away completely because it is grammar that clues words together into a coherent sentence. You compare literature to art and music, but you forget something: literature is an art created out of words, and words are communicative tools. Art and music and break all boundaries they want, but to literature, there is the boundary of grammar, because without grammar literature is rendered incomprehensible.

[BlackCat]

also I don't really understand the ranting about capitalism. Capitalism has existed since the 18th century. During those time of capitalism we have produced the best writers possible: Dickens, Austen, Fitzgerald, Steinbeck, Hemmingway... People cannot just sit down idle all the time and write, we do need economic developments as well.

[cafolini]

I think that now that the children have learned how to read, the mongers should learn how to read the children or stay in the museum until they recycle.

[WolfLarsen]

For the most part the literary world is a sterile factory that produces an endless diarrhea of airport novels, insanely boring literary criticism, and well-crafted "literary" fiction that is completely useless except for reading in bed to get one sleepy. In addition, the literary world is infected with endless politically correct prudes who are not much different than born-again Christians. These politically correct prudes are not much different than those who censored works like Lady Chatterley's Lover.

[cafolini]

"Do you know how to eat a fig in society?"

The revolution has already taken place and the dynamics produce a staggering number of situations. The revolution is perpetual.

[Aspirational]

It seems from your replies to people here who've tried to give you their honest and sound reasoning on why your post is flawed (which is certainly my opinion as well) that you don't care about an actual discussion, but only about forcing your views down other people's throats. Your OP is filled with assertion after assertion - no evidence, no reasoning, no logic, just bold statements - and when someone tries to reply to it, your answer perpetually seems to be to reiterate what your post already said. What is the point of arguing with someone who refuses to see reason, who has already decided what they will believe, who will refuse to open his mind to any other viewpoints?

I also find it slightly pretentious that someone who (presumably) has never written a published work of fiction in his life thinks that he has the right to "demand" a change in literature. You should at least be at the forefront of that change, heading it, leading us forward, should you not? What makes you think an opinion like yours means anything, unless it comes from someone skilled enough (and we're talking world-class here) to make a difference to the course of literary fiction. Let me quote directly from you:


Many of the past “greats” that are in the canon of English literature are not so “great” at all.

Many of the “great works” of English literature in the canon were written by “gentleman” with disposable income (that they didn’t have to work for) and lots of free time, as well as the high social connections to insure that their work was published. Not all of them were talented or had much to say. Is a writer/poet’s work “great” just because it’s included in the Norton Anthology and the professor taught it in your literature 101 class?

Of course, some “great” works of the past are better than others. Some of these gentleman of leisure in the canon had talent – in addition to the work ethic necessary to produce great literature – but not all of them.

What are you saying? What gives you the right to insist that many (or any) of the English literary greats really didn't have talent, and then use that as a basis for furthering the "argument" you're trying to ram down peoples' throats, when you are, beyond any reasonable doubt, worse than any of them (this is not an insult, but rather a fact, and likely to be true for nearly every person ever likely to visit this forum: if I'm wrong and you are Seamus Heaney or something, then feel free to correct me and I'll back down lamely, but looking at your short story, I doubt it)? You are making an assertion that a huge number of people would disagree with, and then using it as a loudspeaker to cry out how sad you are that literature doesn't seem to require talent to grant success.

Now, in short, I agree with a lot of the things you've said, but everytime you relate them to "needing a revolution" I completely disagree. In fact, you tend to talk very tangentially, and then only relate what you've said loosely back to the original point, and you leave me completely unconvinced that there's much wrong with the literary world at all. I feel perfectly comfortable with how literature is produced now, and I certainly don't think we need a "revolution": literature is literature and shall always be. The "revolution" is happening around you right now.

[WolfLarsen]

If I understand one of the above posters correctly he insists that any changes in literature be made by those authors who are traditionally published. So that means that only one in every 2,000 writers should bring about change in literature according to him, because only one in every 2,000 writers is traditionally published. And for every successful traditionally published author there are hundreds more whose books are out of print within a matter of a few years. So I guess according to an above poster only one in every 10,000 writers should try and bring about changes in literature.

Well, I disagree. I don't care much for the writings of airport novelists.

The same poster called for more "reason". If you're looking for "reason" I assure you that you're on the wrong planet. On this floating rock with 6 billion primates you won't find much in the way of "reason".

Aspirational has implied that all of the other posters have tried to "reason" with me regarding my "flawed" opinions. I don't understand why Aspirational thinks that he speaks for everybody else who has posted on this thread. There are lots of different opinions on this thread, but apparently Aspirational thinks that he speaks for everybody. I don't care. Aspirational is free to think whatever he/she wants.

Aspirational expresseses his satisfaction with the literary world in its contemporary state. I'm sure that the likes of Rupert Murdoch and his colleagues at the other six dinosaurs would be happy to hear that. Keep buying their airport novels and sleepy "literary" fiction and they will be very happy. They pay their workers peanuts, and they take the rest of the money to the bank.

Personally I am so tired of "literary" fiction where the author does little but contemplate his or her navel. At least when I contemplate my navel I do so in a VERY creative way, which no doubt angers the traditionalists immensely. But lately I've been distracted by the real world, as some of you may have noticed. Of course, the traditionalists will also criticize me for not contemplating my navel as a creative person should. But you know the real world is pretty interesting. You might want to check it out. Maybe you could even try writing about it. That traditional writing style should at least be good for writing about the real world. I assume it's good for something besides just airport novels.

[Aspirational]

If I understand one of the above posters correctly he insists that any changes in literature be made by those authors who are traditionally published. So that means that only one in every 2,000 writers should bring about change in literature according to him, because only one in every 2,000 writers is traditionally published. And for every successful traditionally published author there are hundreds more whose books are out of print within a matter of a few years. So I guess according to an above poster only one in every 10,000 writers should try and bring about changes in literature.

Well, I disagree. I don't care much for the writings of airport novelists.

I'm not saying that only one of the authors who is currently published. What I'm saying is that your bold statements hold no credence for me. Unless you're at the forefront of world literature at the moment (if you are, correct me, and I'll take back everything I've said), who are you to give your opinion (and expect it to be taken seriously) on what world literature should be doing and where it should be going? And how can you be dictating the route it should take and exposing problems in it when you have no experience of what it is like to be a top author in any field of literature?

At least now you've said you "don't care much for the writings of airport novelists". That is an opinion; it is thus perfectly acceptable to voice. It is not, on the other hand, worthy of discussion for someone who is not "even" an airport novelist to be saying, blankly, that airport novelists are bad. You do not have the right to condemn another person's talent, when you have demonstrated none of your own, as a fact, no matter what your opinions of whether or not they are talented are. If everyone agreed that airport novelists have no talent, then it's perfectly acceptable for you to openly say that you can do better than them, but since not everyone agrees that, it's not: your statements are opinions, not facts, and so we must move on to what reasoning you give to them.


The same poster called for more "reason". If you're looking for "reason" I assure you that you're on the wrong planet. On this floating rock with 6 billion primates you won't find much in the way of "reason".

Again, looking down on humanity? It really annoys me that you think you have a good grasp of what humankind is, how they work and what they are capable of; something like your last sentence there ("On this floating rock with 6 billion primates you won't find much in the way of "reason"") I would expect to be a trivial quote coming from a truly great man having a laugh, rather than from someone who has achieved nothing and yet likes to make generalized comments about a world that has achieved a great deal and which he seems to completely misunderstand, and yet likes to scatter opinions on.


Aspirational has implied that all of the other posters have tried to "reason" with me regarding my "flawed" opinions. I don't understand why Aspirational thinks that he speaks for everybody else who has posted on this thread. There are lots of different opinions on this thread, but apparently Aspirational thinks that he speaks for everybody. I don't care. Aspirational is free to think whatever he/she wants.

I am free to think whatever I want, not because I'm great or because of "my rights", but because it is you - someone posing under-qualified and unreasoned opinions without basis and asking for them to be considered - who is making a controversial point, and me who is asking for evidence.

As for whether or not I speak for everybody, I don't really care. Perhaps someone has brought this up before, and tried to argue (like me), but soon tired of your pretentious way of replying (wherein you don't consider what we say, but rather try to find ways to reiterate your point). Perhaps everyone else here is too polite to point this out? Perhaps I am making a mistake, in which case I hope someone else will correct me. But one way or another, I'm trying to show you the problem in your OP; that has nothing else to do with whether or not other people are in agreement with me, although I may occasionally make use of one of their posts as an example of how you don't really reply.


Aspirational expresseses his satisfaction with the literary world in its contemporary state. I'm sure that the likes of Rupert Murdoch and his colleagues at the other six dinosaurs would be happy to hear that. Keep buying their airport novels and sleepy "literary" fiction and they will be very happy. They pay their workers peanuts, and they take the rest of the money to the bank.

"Their workers"? Can I ask you, what kind of workers do you think airport novelists have?

Literature, the way I see it, does not include airport fiction. Murdoch is not a literary writer, in my opinion; if you want one of those in the modern day, go to Ishiguro. Is there a problem with Ishiguro? Have you ever even read him? Have you ever even read a true modern-day literary author? Or is the entirety of your post based on the number of airport novels you've read?


Personally I am so tired of "literary" fiction where the author does little but contemplate his or her navel. At least when I contemplate my navel I do so in a VERY creative way, which no doubt angers the traditionalists immensely. But lately I've been distracted by the real world, as some of you may have noticed. Of course, the traditionalists will also criticize me for not contemplating my navel as a creative person should. But you know the real world is pretty interesting. You might want to check it out. Maybe you could even try writing about it. That traditional writing style should at least be good for writing about the real world. I assume it's good for something besides just airport novels.

You do so in a "VERY" creative way, do you? Can I ask, then, why NO-ONE will publish you (again, I could be wrong, but I expect I'm not)? Tell me, if the whole world but you thinks that literature is where it should be and your ideas (and stories, in terms of creativity) are off-the-mark, who would you guess is right?

[BlackCat]

Not all air port novels are bad...I mean they import the same stuff from Barnes and Nobles don't they? Nicholas Sparks is quite great to me actually, I love reading his love stories, how romantic <3

Anyway Aspirational does have a point. I do like your openess to revolution and a whole viva la revolucion attitude but something isn't right here. Your rail against modern literature, capitalism... these are pointless. Capitalism has existed for 200 years, yet within this 200 years mark we've produced the greatest writers. Even within the iron fist of the communist regime, literary geniuses always find their voices and produce canonical works that pass the test of time. This proves something. It proves that regardless of what political party a nation is under, of what ideologies hold ascendance, books and literature will always stay alive.

On the other hand, if capitalism should collapse, and novelists have the free time and a pressure free atmosphere to work their novels, it does not guarantee a perfect result. Why? Literature, like any arts, evolve from pressure. It is a kind of evolution which needs an invisible hand to push it. Literature without pressure, without a need to survive, to strive, to evolve, to me is void of any beauty and asthestic value/

[WolfLarsen]

I stopped reading aspirational's last post halfway through. In the part I did bother to read he says almost nobody except a handful of people have the right to criticize the lack of originality in much of contemporary traditionally-published "literature". That's hilarious! People will say whatever they want regardless of whether or not they have aspirational's approval! Perhaps the point should be who is aspirational to decide who has the right to criticize and not criticize the six dinosaurs - oops, I mean six sisters?

In addition, Aspirational continues on with the personal attacks. Like a certain clique of censored on this website he engages in Cyber bullying. I don't bother with posters who engage in cyber bulling just like I don't bother with censored on the streetcorner who make censored remarks to the passerby. (Yes I have to censor my comments now! What a shame I can't say what I want in these posts. Except as others have also noticed a certain clique on this website sure gets away with saying also kinds of censored things that others are not allowed to.)

Oh yeah, we are all primates. Don't believe me? Go to the primate section at the zoo and see how much the primates in the cages look like us!

Evolution and revolution is what has made it possible for us to write literature. Otherwise we'd still be in the trees eating bananas.

Unfortunately, I can't discuss Black Cat's post because of certain censorship policies on this website regarding discussing certain issues. I told you the literary world was uptight! But then again perhaps these rules apply more to those who have unconventional views.

At this point I'd like to thank some of the other posters for putting up some rather imaginative works. I was up late last night reading them. It was a joy! Thanks again. It's writers with imagination like some of you that makes it all worth it. If I click on five boring stories where the author doesn't take any chances and takes the safe road but then I'm lucky enough to find just one exciting thing to read it really makes my day! I can remember sitting through looooong poetry readings with horrible conventional poets that sometimes even rhymed, but if just one person got up and read something unusual and totally different and new it would really make my day!

Don't bother with the conventionalists. All they do is endlessly repeat all the same rules that they learned in grammar school. Anybody can write a book and put the periods and commas in the right place.

And then the conventionalists try to lecture us about all the rules we learned in creative writing 101 back in college or high school. We literary adventurers know those rules too - and we've moved on to do new things! Better to try out something new and even fail in the attempt then to write the same old stuff that 1 million others have written! What's the creativity in that?

Of course, some of you that have embarked on a creative road may now regard me as a traitor, because I also write in the conventional manner when it suits me. And at the present time it suits me.

I think the main thing is that regardless of whether you're writing in a conventional or nonconventional manner you should never bore your reader! In addition, take risks, push the envelope! If you're gay or bisexual or into wife swapping or you have unusual views or unusual experiences to tell than even if you write in a conventional manner your writing will still be fresh and bold!

Oh no, I mentioned wife swapping. Gee, am I going to get into trouble again?

In something I wrote that involved two airplanes a skyscraper and the president a group of cyber bullies descended on the post and said all kinds of horrible things, and yet I was the one disciplined for using the word ignorant to describe their behavior! And everybody who saw the comments of that Lynch mob knows that they were being ignorant!

Can you imagine that?

The main tactic of the traditionalists seems to be cyber bullying. Who know why? Because traditionalism is bankrupt! Traditionalism is a rotten diseased rat carcass filled with maggots. And practically all of the "greats" that the traditionalists praise were the innovators of their day.

[hillwalker]

I think the main thing is that regardless of whether you're writing in a conventional or nonconventional manner you should never bore your reader! In addition, take risks, push the envelope! If you're gay or bisexual or into wife swapping or you have unusual views or unusual experiences to tell than even if you write in a conventional manner your writing will still be fresh and bold!

100% agree. If you don't enjoy what you're writing how can you expect anyone else to? If you don't surprise or even shock yourself then you're cheating your readers.

Best wishes for a conventional 2012.

H

[Alexander III]

Capitalism has existed for 200 years, yet within this 200 years mark we've produced the greatest writers./

No...last time I checked the greatest epoch for literature was the renaissance. I mean do we really have anyone in the last 200 years that can stand toe to toe with Dante or Shakespere? Possibly Tolstoy or Proust, but even then, highly debatable. And Homer Virgil ect.? Why the bias for the last 200 years? I won't say the last 200 years have been great for all art, but the best? Sounds rather audacious.


It is a kind of evolution which needs an invisible hand to push it. Literature without pressure, without a need to survive, to strive, to evolve, to me is void of any beauty and asthestic value/

?

So Byron, Tolstoy, Proust, Fitzgerald are void of beauty simply because they never suffered from poverty and political oppression?

[WolfLarsen]

While I must profess respect for Alexander's knowledge and also his excellent creative writing I strongly feel that the best literature created by mankind will be in our future. There have no doubt been many greats in the past, but I believe it is in the future that mankind will achieve its greatest literary achievements.

In places like Cuba illiteracy has been virtually wiped out. When illiteracy is virtually wiped out on the planet the things that mankind will accomplish in literature will be phenomenal.

Mankind cannot fulfill its potential when half of the human race is living on less than two dollars a day. There are so many people who could be Shakespeares of the 21st century who instead are working long hours every day just to survive. And how many kids in Third World countries who could become future Shakespeares are instead on the streets shining shoes? Or even in some first world countries like America a significant part of the young people receive a rotten/mediocre education.

As Jack London said in the Sea Wolf "The seed will fall where it may." Many of those who have superior educations and the free time to write that comes from inherited wealth simply aren't up to the task of writing great innovative literature. In fact, the mentality of the privileged few is a conservative one, and inherently hostile to creativity.

This is not to say that some privileged country gentlemen in 19th century England didn’t manage to produce some decent literature. But the descendents of today's working class will produce literature of much more greatness.

For example, CCNY (a public university in New York City with open admissions known as the "poor man's Harvard") has produced more Nobel Prize winners then most of the Ivy League universities on the East Coast combined. (No doubt, the Ivy League universities are much injured by their "Legacy" program.)

Anyway, the golden era in literature is not in the past, it is in the future. The other night I discovered there are some very talented, very creative individuals on this very website who are writing innovative work better than some of the stuff in the Norton Anthology of Literature. That statement is both a compliment to some of the writers on this posting board, and also an indictment of the canon according to Norton. I read a fair amount of the Norton Anthology as it was the only book I had when I spent some months at sea on a commercial fishing boat.

If the Norton Anthology represents the best literary work in the history of man then we have scarcely evolved from the butt-scratching apes in the zoo. While I respect some of the work in this canon I must say not all of it is impressive.

I have my suspicions that some of the best literary work of the past did not find its way into the canon, but found its way into the garbage can. Manuscripts that contained too much politics, contained unconventional or unpopular ideas, too much sex, too much homosexuality, or simply a writer didn't have the right contacts, or didn't come from the right class of people to have the right contacts - you can bet that any number of factors might prevent a great work from getting published, let alone getting into some canon.

Of those works lucky enough to get published you can bet that the conservative academic/publishing environment is not going to put something in the canon that's going to ruffle too many feathers. Of course, there are many great people in academia, I was lucky enough to have some great professors. But as many of you know when you start getting high up in the academic structure, when you encounter those in higher positions who are making the decisions, well you might find a lot of vultures who seem to be primarily concerned with covering their ***, amongst other things. And my guess is those people in higher positions have had a lot to say as to what goes in the canon. I doubt the average college professor has much say in what goes in the canon, and should you be lucky enough to be having a drink with a great college professor you might hear some amusing comments about the "canon".

However, this does not mean I wish to throw out the canon. If you find garbage amongst gold you certainly don't throughout the gold as well. Of course, garbage is a strong word. Perhaps mediocre would be a better word to describe some of the works that are in the canon. I am of course talking about the canon of English literature, as I cannot even begin to comment on the literature of other cultures, as my education unfortunately overly emphasized the literary achievements of a rather backward island on the periphery of Europe. That same island is producing great contemporary painting today, and maybe producing great contemporary literary talent that far out shines it's more primitive past. If it is I doubt the publishing conglomerates will bring it to the light of day.

Just because some book is in your literature class in college doesn't mean it's good. Somebody on the bus next to you typing away on their "telephone"/computer might be writing something far superior. And what's amusing is that they might not even be trying to write great literature, they might be just writing a slang-filled grammatically-incorrect creative tidbit to a friend. But the seed falls where it may.

[cafolini]

While I must profess respect for Alexander's knowledge and also his excellent creative writing I strongly feel that the best literature created by mankind will be in our future. There have no doubt been many greats in the past, but I believe it is in the future that mankind will achieve its greatest literary achievements.

In places like Cuba illiteracy has been virtually wiped out. When illiteracy is virtually wiped out on the planet the things that mankind will accomplish in literature will be phenomenal.

Mankind cannot fulfill its potential when half of the human race is living on less than two dollars a day. There are so many people who could be Shakespeares of the 21st century who instead are working long hours every day just to survive. And how many kids in Third World countries who could become future Shakespeares are instead on the streets shining shoes? Or even in some first world countries like America a significant part of the young people receive a rotten/mediocre education.

As Jack London said in the Sea Wolf "The seed will fall where it may." Many of those who have superior educations and the free time to write that comes from inherited wealth simply aren't up to the task of writing great innovative literature. In fact, the mentality of the privileged few is a conservative one, and inherently hostile to creativity.

This is not to say that some privileged country gentlemen in 19th century England didn’t manage to produce some decent literature. But the descendents of today's working class will produce literature of much more greatness.

For example, CCNY (a public university in New York City with open admissions known as the "poor man's Harvard") has produced more Nobel Prize winners then most of the Ivy League universities on the East Coast combined. (No doubt, the Ivy League universities are much injured by their "Legacy" program.)

Anyway, the golden era in literature is not in the past, it is in the future. The other night I discovered there are some very talented, very creative individuals on this very website who are writing innovative work better than some of the stuff in the Norton Anthology of Literature. That statement is both a compliment to some of the writers on this posting board, and also an indictment of the canon according to Norton. I read a fair amount of the Norton Anthology as it was the only book I had when I spent some months at sea on a commercial fishing boat.

If the Norton Anthology represents the best literary work in the history of man then we have scarcely evolved from the butt-scratching apes in the zoo. While I respect some of the work in this canon I must say not all of it is impressive.

I have my suspicions that some of the best literary work of the past did not find its way into the canon, but found its way into the garbage can. Manuscripts that contained too much politics, contained unconventional or unpopular ideas, too much sex, too much homosexuality, or simply a writer didn't have the right contacts, or didn't come from the right class of people to have the right contacts - you can bet that any number of factors might prevent a great work from getting published, let alone getting into some canon.

Of those works lucky enough to get published you can bet that the conservative academic/publishing environment is not going to put something in the canon that's going to ruffle too many feathers. Of course, there are many great people in academia, I was lucky enough to have some great professors. But as many of you know when you start getting high up in the academic structure, when you encounter those in higher positions who are making the decisions, well you might find a lot of vultures who seem to be primarily concerned with covering their ***, amongst other things. And my guess is those people in higher positions have had a lot to say as to what goes in the canon. I doubt the average college professor has much say in what goes in the canon, and should you be lucky enough to be having a drink with a great college professor you might hear some amusing comments about the "canon".

However, this does not mean I wish to throw out the canon. If you find garbage amongst gold you certainly don't throughout the gold as well. Of course, garbage is a strong word. Perhaps mediocre would be a better word to describe some of the works that are in the canon. I am of course talking about the canon of English literature, as I cannot even begin to comment on the literature of other cultures, as my education unfortunately overly emphasized the literary achievements of a rather backward island on the periphery of Europe. That same island is producing great contemporary painting today, and maybe producing great contemporary literary talent that far out shines it's more primitive past. If it is I doubt the publishing conglomerates will bring it to the light of day.

Just because some book is in your literature class in college doesn't mean it's good. Somebody on the bus next to you typing away on their "telephone"/computer might be writing something far superior. And what's amusing is that they might not even be trying to write great literature, they might be just writing a slang-filled grammatically-incorrect creative tidbit to a friend. But the seed falls where it may.

But the seed falls where it may, indeed.

[Alexander III]

While I must profess respect for Alexander's knowledge and also his excellent creative writing I strongly feel that the best literature created by mankind will be in our future. There have no doubt been many greats in the past, but I believe it is in the future that mankind will achieve its greatest literary achievements.

In places like Cuba illiteracy has been virtually wiped out. When illiteracy is virtually wiped out on the planet the things that mankind will accomplish in literature will be phenomenal.

Mankind cannot fulfill its potential when half of the human race is living on less than two dollars a day. There are so many people who could be Shakespeares of the 21st century who instead are working long hours every day just to survive. And how many kids in Third World countries who could become future Shakespeares are instead on the streets shining shoes? Or even in some first world countries like America a significant part of the young people receive a rotten/mediocre education.

As Jack London said in the Sea Wolf "The seed will fall where it may." Many of those who have superior educations and the free time to write that comes from inherited wealth simply aren't up to the task of writing great innovative literature. In fact, the mentality of the privileged few is a conservative one, and inherently hostile to creativity.

This is not to say that some privileged country gentlemen in 19th century England didn’t manage to produce some decent literature. But the descendents of today's working class will produce literature of much more greatness.

For example, CCNY (a public university in New York City with open admissions known as the "poor man's Harvard") has produced more Nobel Prize winners then most of the Ivy League universities on the East Coast combined. (No doubt, the Ivy League universities are much injured by their "Legacy" program.)

Anyway, the golden era in literature is not in the past, it is in the future. The other night I discovered there are some very talented, very creative individuals on this very website who are writing innovative work better than some of the stuff in the Norton Anthology of Literature. That statement is both a compliment to some of the writers on this posting board, and also an indictment of the canon according to Norton. I read a fair amount of the Norton Anthology as it was the only book I had when I spent some months at sea on a commercial fishing boat.

If the Norton Anthology represents the best literary work in the history of man then we have scarcely evolved from the butt-scratching apes in the zoo. While I respect some of the work in this canon I must say not all of it is impressive.

I have my suspicions that some of the best literary work of the past did not find its way into the canon, but found its way into the garbage can. Manuscripts that contained too much politics, contained unconventional or unpopular ideas, too much sex, too much homosexuality, or simply a writer didn't have the right contacts, or didn't come from the right class of people to have the right contacts - you can bet that any number of factors might prevent a great work from getting published, let alone getting into some canon.

Of those works lucky enough to get published you can bet that the conservative academic/publishing environment is not going to put something in the canon that's going to ruffle too many feathers. Of course, there are many great people in academia, I was lucky enough to have some great professors. But as many of you know when you start getting high up in the academic structure, when you encounter those in higher positions who are making the decisions, well you might find a lot of vultures who seem to be primarily concerned with covering their ***, amongst other things. And my guess is those people in higher positions have had a lot to say as to what goes in the canon. I doubt the average college professor has much say in what goes in the canon, and should you be lucky enough to be having a drink with a great college professor you might hear some amusing comments about the "canon".

However, this does not mean I wish to throw out the canon. If you find garbage amongst gold you certainly don't throughout the gold as well. Of course, garbage is a strong word. Perhaps mediocre would be a better word to describe some of the works that are in the canon. I am of course talking about the canon of English literature, as I cannot even begin to comment on the literature of other cultures, as my education unfortunately overly emphasized the literary achievements of a rather backward island on the periphery of Europe. That same island is producing great contemporary painting today, and maybe producing great contemporary literary talent that far out shines it's more primitive past. If it is I doubt the publishing conglomerates will bring it to the light of day.

Just because some book is in your literature class in college doesn't mean it's good. Somebody on the bus next to you typing away on their "telephone"/computer might be writing something far superior. And what's amusing is that they might not even be trying to write great literature, they might be just writing a slang-filled grammatically-incorrect creative tidbit to a friend. But the seed falls where it may.

I agree with you that the future will be where the greatest works come from,

but modern does not equal better.

But as you say, looking at the population in the future there will be many Dante's and Virgils and Homers. It is probability that is in our favor.

[Darcy88]

If the Norton Anthology represents the best literary work in the history of man then we have scarcely evolved from the butt-scratching apes in the zoo. While I respect some of the work in this canon I must say not all of it is impressive.

However, this does not mean I wish to throw out the canon. If you find garbage amongst gold you certainly don't throughout the gold as well. Of course, garbage is a strong word. Perhaps mediocre would be a better word to describe some of the works that are in the canon.

What works in the Norton Anthology do you find mediocre and unimpressive?

I don't foresee this future golden age of literature. A large percentage of humanity will continue to be encumbered by necessity and even many of those with ample leisure time will go on squandering it with various distractions, such as television, video games, ect. Even with success at combating illiteracy we now have a plague of aliteracy, of people who are able to read but simply choose not to. We won't have a bunch of Shakespeare's popping up. Not everyone can be a Shakespeare. It takes the right genes, the right environment, a complex falling into place of numerous variables that can't and won't occur for many.

When I browse my copy of the Norton Anthology I am taken aback at the sheer wealth of astounding artistic achievement gathered therein.

[Aspirational]

What works in the Norton Anthology do you find mediocre and unimpressive?

I don't foresee this future golden age of literature. A large percentage of humanity will continue to be encumbered by necessity and even many of those with ample leisure time will go on squandering it with various distractions, such as television, video games, ect. Even with success at combating illiteracy we now have a plague of aliteracy, of people who are able to read but simply choose not to. We won't have a bunch of Shakespeare's popping up. Not everyone can be a Shakespeare. It takes the right genes, the right environment, a complex falling into place of numerous variables that can't and won't occur for many.

When I browse my copy of the Norton Anthology I am taken aback at the sheer wealth of astounding artistic achievement gathered therein.

I agree with this. A golden age of literature in the future is possible, but hardly something that anyone can see coming; it would most likely be largely coincidental and last for only one to two generations. In any case, WolfLarsen is hardly likely to be at the head of that golden age (and even if he is, without support from other super-talented literary writers he still won't be able to change the way literature is percieved and written, NOT that there is anything wrong with that way).

[stlukesguild]

Wolf... no one is going to buy into your notion of an egalitarian golden age of the future... especially when you need to skew the facts (lie?) to prove your point:

For example, CCNY (a public university in New York City with open admissions known as the "poor man's Harvard") has produced more Nobel Prize winners then most of the Ivy League universities on the East Coast combined. (No doubt, the Ivy League universities are much injured by their "Legacy" program.)

CCNY has nine Nobel Laureates. Colombia has 96. The University of Chicago has 87. MIT has 77. Harvard has 46. etc...

Anyway, the golden era in literature is not in the past, it is in the future. The other night I discovered there are some very talented, very creative individuals on this very website who are writing innovative work better than some of the stuff in the Norton Anthology of Literature.

And you continue to undermine your argument by suggesting a glaring lapse in critical judgment.

If the Norton Anthology represents the best literary work in the history of man then we have scarcely evolved from the butt-scratching apes in the zoo.

Art evolves in the sense that it changes. Artists must deal with the world in which they exist. But art is not like science. In spite of all our advantages in terms of knowledge and access to the whole of literary history we are not blessed with a wealth of writers today who are inherently greater than Homer, Dante, and Shakespeare.

I have my suspicions that some of the best literary work of the past did not find its way into the canon, but found its way into the garbage can. Manuscripts that contained too much politics, contained unconventional or unpopular ideas, too much sex, too much homosexuality, or simply a writer didn't have the right contacts, or didn't come from the right class of people to have the right contacts - you can bet that any number of factors might prevent a great work from getting published, let alone getting into some canon.

You've been reading too much of the politically correct criticism. You make some rather unlikely suppositions assuming that writers/artists of the past would have acted like writers of today in terms of openly questioning their leaders, their faith, etc... At the same time you miss out on the glaring audacity of many of the greatest writers/artists of the past which in no way supports the notion that the canon is chosen in support of the power elite. Shakespeare was quite likely bisexual, may have had an affair with a mulatto, and wrote plays that were clearly amoral: good does not prevail... evil is not ugly, ignorant and ultimately the loser. Shakespeare's rival atop the canon, Dante audaciously reinvents heaven, hell, and everything in between as he sees fit. Surely Milton would have been much more fit as a role model of the time. And then there's Michelangelo with all his nudity and his pent-up (homo-) sexual frustration exploding above our heads in the very heart of the Catholic Church. Your suspicions prove nothing without digging further.

However, this does not mean I wish to throw out the canon. If you find garbage amongst gold you certainly don't throughout the gold as well. Of course, garbage is a strong word. Perhaps mediocre would be a better word to describe some of the works that are in the canon. I am of course talking about the canon of English literature, as I cannot even begin to comment on the literature of other cultures, as my education unfortunately overly emphasized the literary achievements of a rather backward island on the periphery of Europe.

As others have asked, I would like to know just which works you imagine are "mediocre" and why.

[Aspirational]

Can I ask which writers on this site you think can match the Norton Anthology? And can you provide some links to their work? Perhaps if everyone were to agree that Shakespeare-level talent is littered around the fabric of society at every level from the slums to the upper-class, then everyone would agree that literature needs to change the way it's represented. Somehow, though, I doubt you ever saw any work on this website that you really think is better than the Norton Anthology. Possibly, you've never read the Norton Anthology. I suppose the likeliest situation is just that you're so convinced by this revolution concept (you seem to want it to be true) that you've convinced yourself that the work of sub-optimal writers (OK, I accept that there may be on this forum one person, a neglected gem capable of matching the writers in the Norton Anthology, but the vast majority of people here could never dream of being in that class, let's be honest) is superior to those of the people the rest of the world (including said witers) hold up as the best.

[WolfLarsen]

I wrote a reply to Darcy the other night which I will post now. I will post responses to the other posters later time permitting.

Hello Darcy,

Actually, that's a very good question! And I wish I knew the answer, but it was 20 years ago that I was in the middle of the Bering Sea with only the Norton anthology.

Even if I had a copy of the Norton anthology here right now with me I probably would not take the time out to reread/skim through the book to properly answer your question, although it is a very good question.

Perhaps not all of the problem is the Norton anthology. Perhaps English literature is rather limited compared to some other cultures. After all, England is an island on the periphery of Europe. Many artistic and literary achievements were occurring in continental Europe long before the Anglo-Saxons became even remotely civilized. Perhaps great English literature and painting begins with the Romantics, perhaps not. I am no expert. And I'm not going to take the time out to become an expert. If I have the time I'd rather study the literature of continental Europe, the Middle East, India, and China.

Perhaps the Norton anthology for me was sort of like this website. Everyone in the Norton anthology is a capable writer. But guess what? Virtually everybody on this Internet site is a capable writer.

But you see it's not enough to be a capable writer. Cities are filled with capable buildings that are boring and add nothing to the advancement of architecture. So you see you can be a very capable architect or writer and still add nothing to the advancement of architecture or literature. You need to do something new!

In the world of literature as long as you're doing something different I feel that it's okay to write in a conventional style. However, it's a lot more difficult to write something different in a conventional style when practically everybody and their dog is writing in the conventional style. Why should I bother reading something that reminds me of 10,000 other works I've read?

Look at the art museum in Bilboa or the new bandshell in Chicago and you will never forget it. Look at an adequate building that fits into its environment and you will probably forget it. But there is always somebody who beats the odds, and writes something conventional and still manages to write something truly unique. On this website there is at least one such writer. He can take important powerful people and reduce them to some trivial and rather pathetic human being sitting on the toilet. I don't think he actually had anybody sitting on the toilet in his stories, but you get the idea. He's good. He somehow manages to make conventional writing feel fresh, which is not an easy thing to do. Most conventional writing feels stale.

It's not easy to make a conventional story worthwhile reading. So a story is well-written with proper grammar? So what!! As far as I'm concerned you learn correct grammar in grammar school, and after that it's time to do something new. If you have a white-collar job you use correct grammar all day long. When you get home don't you want to do something different? If you have a blue-collar job you probably have to do everything by the book all day long for safety reasons, and you should carefully follow safety procedures! But when the work day is done the last thing you want to do is be tied down by rules and routine. You want to be creative!

People keep saying that correct grammar is the architecture of the sentence. What's going to happen if you don't use correct grammar? Are all the sentences going to come crashing down on screaming people like a falling building or something? Take some chances! Get some balls! Do something different!

In some ways there isn't much difference between the Norton anthology and this website. Some people write exciting innovative literature, and others just right competent literature. Both in the Norton anthology and this website you will find some exciting bold literature and then you will find literature that is merely competent.

And if I'm stuck on some goddamn fishing boat on the Bering Sea chopping fish heads off all day long day after day I tell you when I'm lucky enough to have some free time I want to read something amazing! But as I found out not everything in the Norton anthology is amazing. Unfortunately that all happened 20 years ago, so I couldn't tell you which authors and poets were disappointing, but a lot of them were. I guess I had high hopes the first time I could choose for myself what in the Norton anthology I would read, as opposed to whatever was assigned to me in college, but as I sat in that bunk I became more and more disappointed with each turn of each page. I didn't see as much greatness in the Norton anthology as I was hoping for. It was disappointing. But just like this website some were more creative and therefore made a greater contribution to the advancement of literature than others.

[Darcy88]

Even if I had a copy of the Norton anthology here right now with me I probably would not take the time out to reread/skim through the book to properly answer your question, although it is a very good question.

Perhaps not all of the problem is the Norton anthology. Perhaps English literature is rather limited compared to some other cultures. .

Chaucer, Shakespeare, Donne, Milton, Swift, Pope, Blake, Shelley, Keats, Wordsworth, Mill, Dickens, Wilde, Conrad, Woolf, Lawrence, Joyce, Auden, Eliot, and the list goes on and on, a cavalcade of creative geniuses whose works are worth more than a million times their weight in gold. Sure, some writers' works are less stellar than others, but I have a hard time, looking through the table of contents now, finding my finger over a name that I'd feel confident in dismissing as a merely "competent" writer.

It sounds like you are casting judgement on the entire body of English literature based on a perfunctory scan of the Norton Anthology some two decades ago. Look through it again. Engage a few of the works. I'd wager you'll have the same experience I had. The cover of that anthology is like a closet door in a C S Lewis novel. It opens into a fantastic world of beauty and wonder.

The core works of the canon are unimpeachable. Shakespeare's plays, Donne's poetry, Paradise Lost, Conrad's novels, ect. Due to the fact that I am only vaguely familiar with the literature of other cultures I won't proclaim that of England to be the greatest. But its got to be in the running at least.

I just re-read Heart of Darkness, am now reading Blood Meridian, and next up have the Alexandria Quartet, which I've scanned and read a few chapters of. I must ask, what precisely about the past or present state of English literature so turns you off and provokes this sweeping condemnation? In what way could the creations of a Conrad, a McCarthy or a Durrell be substantially improved upon? McCarthy is leaving me speechless, Durrell was a master, and Conrad is.... well he's Conrad. Two of my favourite authors are D H Lawrence and Henry Miller. English literature abounds with writers who pushed the envolope, penning masterpieces that took little heed of convention, the critics be damned.

Your critique smacks of some kind of hairbrained idealism, of a longing for some utopian state disconnected from and utterly beyond reality, issuing from blind categorical negation.

[WolfLarsen]

Darcy - Yes you've mentioned some very impressive names in English literature. However, if I'm going to take a timeout to read something that's not contemporary I'm certainly not going to bother with English literature, partly because I already got plenty of it in college and high school. I will look at French literature. I will look at Italian literature. I will look at the literature of China and India.

In university I took a course on Shakespeare. There was ONLY Shakespeare in that course. He's good. Particularly when you have the lights of Harlem at your feet at two o'clock in the morning. What a beautiful view and Shakespeare in my hand! Yes it's wonderful! I would read Shakespeare out loud. Absolutely wonderful!

But you know. As good a Shakespeare is I do not feel he is as good as many say he is.

A different poster said something about the number of Nobel Prize laureates amongst professors at different universities. Never would I ever ever say that CCNY had more noble prize WINNERS amongst its ALUMNI then the University of Chicago. Not only does the University of Chicago leave all those legacy universities on the East Coast in the dust, but the University of Chicago leaves CCNY in the dust as well. It's not even close, it's not even remotely a contest. After all, it's the University of Chicago. And listen carefully - I'm talking about certain Ivy League universities on the East Coast that have something called the legacy program. I'm not talking about Ivy League universities that do not have a legacy program. The legacy program is an affirmative action program for dumb rich white kids. Well, most of them are white. I'm not trying to be racist, after all I'm white. But I had to say that because I seem to get accused of just about everything around here. LOL

Nor did I ever say I believe in complete egalitarianism. There are some people like George Bush Junior who attended one of those legacy universities. I know high school dropouts that are more intelligent than George Bush Junior. So you got some high school dropouts I knew who work as crewman in Alaska who make the Ivy League legacy types look dumb, they make me look dumb, because they work 12 hours a day sleep six hours a day and read the other six hours. You can say anything you want about the legacy universities but as far as I'm concerned they are overpriced good old boy clubs. Of course, at those legacy good old boy clubs you're bound to make some good contacts that will help you in business or politics or academia later in life, which is very useful if you want to be one of the masters of the universe. (Well academics don't become masters of the universe.) But I bet the ones that go to the Ivy leagues on scholarships are far more intelligent than the gentleman's C types. In fact, I bet you the ones that go to the Ivy leagues on scholarships are more intelligent than Wolf Larsen 1000 times over.

Then there was something about the painter of the Sistine Chapel being gay. Yes he was gay. But so was the Pope at the time (at least that's what I read in the book about the sex lives of the popes). I guess it's all about who you blow, I mean know. Talent doesn't hurt. To bad the prudes later had the private parts painted over. So many damn prudes interfering in literature and the arts, but that's a different subject.

[Aspirational]

Your critique smacks of some kind of hairbrained idealism, of a longing for some utopian state disconnected from and utterly beyond reality, issuing from blind categorical negation.

This, essentially, is what I've been trying to say. WolfLarsen, your post makes a lot of bold statements and follows on from them as if they are certain fact, whereas actually . Someone with little experience or remembered knowledge (you do, after all, admit to last reading the Norton Anthology 20 years ago, and further to be unwilling to read it again) is confidently blaring out their conclusions on the craft they choose to ignore the fundamentals of: why then should we listen. It seems that you've come to a conclusion and are unwilling to reconsider it (if you were willing to reconsider, why not show a little more care for what is in the Norton Anthology?); so where is this exchange of ideas meant to happen? You trying to insist that your unshared views are true is not an exchange of ideas. It's you being unwilling to look up the facts simply because what you actually have done is made a decision which will suit your desire to grab attention with these controversial statements and then refused to back away from it in the face of a series of people all asking you to look carefully at the work in question and provide actual evidence.


Darcy - Yes you've mentioned some very impressive names in English literature. However, if I'm going to take a timeout to read something that's not contemporary I'm certainly not going to bother with English literature, partly because I already got plenty of it in college and high school. I will look at French literature. I will look at Italian literature. I will look at the literature of China and India.

In university I took a course on Shakespeare. There was ONLY Shakespeare in that course. He's good. Particularly when you have the lights of Harlem at your feet at two o'clock in the morning. What a beautiful view and Shakespeare in my hand! Yes it's wonderful! I would read Shakespeare out loud. Absolutely wonderful!

But you know. As good a Shakespeare is I do not feel he is as good as many say he is.

Fair enough, it's your opinion that Shakespeare isn't as good as many say he is. But I was born and brought up in India, in Bengal, where people worship Tagore as the greatest writer ever. I am well versed now in Indian literature (Hindi, Bengali, Urdu), Chinese literature (classical mainly but also some modern), English literature (everything since Chaucer), European literature (from all periods), Classical literature (Greek, Latin, Sanskrit), Arabic literature (Arabic, Sufi, Persian, Dari, etc.), and American literature. Note that this means I have grounding and reasonably valid opinions on the entire Western world of literature, as well as the Islamic, Indian and Chinese writers. And having seen all of them, I still think and have finally come to the conclusion that Shakespeare is indeed unmatched and, actually, unrivalled (as a thinker, at least: perhaps not as a poet). So opinions, you will find, are greatly divided on such matters. There is not one fact that you can hold up as the truth and build argument on argument on: your opinion that Shakespeare is anything less than what people believe him to be is just that. An opinion.

[Darcy88]

Wolf, thanks for your reply, but you didn't really address my objection to your initial thesis that we need a revolution in literature. How could McCarthy be substantially improved upon? Was Tennessee Williams, the homosexual drug-user whose works often focused on working-class characters and touched upon various risque subjects such as rape, too conventional and limited for your liking? How about Walt Whitman, Alan Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, or any of the other dozens of poetic innovators who have graced the stage of English literature? English literature is diverse, dynamic, astonishing.

[mortalterror]

If I were to suggest a work of literature to Wolf Larsen it would have to be the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, which can conveniently be found in the Norton Anthology. ;)

[WolfLarsen]

I must profess my respect for the knowledge and excellent debating skills of some of the other posters here. After reading some of these posts the only thing I'm really convinced about is that there are some very intelligent people on this posting board. However, I still think that any number of factors might help prevent a great author from getting his or especially her works published. As I said before one of those factors might be a writer’s sexual preferences, amongst others.

As other posters have pointed out many gay and bisexual writers have been able to overcome tremendous obstacles of discrimination. However, remember the sexual preferences of an author may not have always been obvious to all of his contemporaries. Some biographer may later find out that such and such a writer was gay or bisexual, but while that person was living not everyone may have been aware of a particular author's sexual preferences. However, the more obvious it is that a man is gay or bisexual the more likely he is to experience discrimination.

Look what happened to Oscar Wilde when his sexual preferences became public. It was not pretty.

To argue that the academic world is free of prejudice is flawed. Well into the 20th century, for example, there were racial quotas at Ivy League institutions that restricted the number of Jews admitted. Whites with Anglo-Saxon names were given preference over Catholics, blacks, etc.

To argue that the literary world itself is free of prejudice is flawed. The experiences of some of the Harlem Renaissance writers and poets are a testament to that. Imagine the movers and shakers of the literary world having an event to honor your writing but not inviting you because you're black.

Yes, many writers have managed to overcome these obstacles of discrimination, but I doubt that that all great writers who were black, gay, Jewish, etc. were able to overcome these obstacles of discrimination. But for every great manuscript by a black, gay, immigrant, Catholic or Jewish writer that found its way into the canon we cannot discount the possibility that many more great manuscripts found their way into the garbage can after the author died.

We are supposed to believe that the canon (according to Norton or some other authority) is somehow a flawless representation of the best literature written. I doubt that's true. I think it's much more random than that. A number of factors might help a work to become published (like the author having the right connections). Any number of factors might make it less likely that a great work gets published.

Look at the publishing world today. It's a big diarrhea factory, but some people (like Rupert Murdoch) are making lots of money from it. The publishing world of centuries ago was different in some ways perhaps. But to argue that all the best works of the past were actually published and later included in some canon seems far-fetched at best.

Of course, what some posters will then do is recite various names of writers/poets in the canon as if that proves anything. Prove to me and everybody else that every single writer/poet in Norton’s anthology was great. I think the quality of work in the Norton anthology is much more uneven than that. I doubt that every single person listed in the canon is a god of literature.

Take William Wordsworth for instance. Don't get me wrong, I love his poems! What's there not to like about them?

But you know what? He's kind of light reading. Not that that's bad. Why not read Wordsworth to fall asleep at night? You're bound to have some pleasant dreams! But frankly there are people posting on this website who are contributing more to the advancement of literature than Williams Wordsworth.

It's difficult for me to admit that Wordsworth is less than a literary god not only because I enjoyed William Wordsworth' s poetry, but also because I was fortunate enough to have a Professor Wordsworth for a semester. His descendent is an excellent professor who I very much respected.

Anyway, just because there are people on this website who are more talented than Wordsworth (the Romantic poet, certainly not the professor) doesn't guarantee that their work will ever be included in some canon. In fact, no matter how good you are the odds are you will never be in any canon unless you know the right people, because your work will probably never be widely distributed and published if you don't know the right people.

More likely the work of Allen Ginsberg will be included in some canon then anybody on this website. What a shame! Much of Allen Ginsberg’s material is not even half as good as some of the stuff on this website. Of course, his famous poem "Howl" is pretty good, but "Mein Kampf" by the Jewish poet David Lerner is much better. (Great poem. Horrible title.)

And of course many of you have heard about a book by Saul Bellow called Herzog. I believe it's received some fancy-dancy award of some kind. Herzog contributes very little to literature in my opinion. There are people on this website who are taking far greater risks and being far more creative and therefore contributing far more to the advancement of literature then Saul Bellow's Herzog. But the sad fact is Saul Bellow's Herzog is much more likely to be included in some future canon than some of the very talented writers on this website. And frankly, all over the Internet you will find writers creating far greater literature than Saul Bellow's Herzog. Virtually all of these individuals are very un-famous.

This is not to say that Saul Bellow’s Herzog is an incompetent work of literature. Just like a competent carpenter can hammer a nail into place the sentences in Saul Bellow's Herzog are decently written. But that's about it. There are competent carpenters, and there are master craftsmen who can do beautiful creative things with wood. There are people on this website (and other websites) who are doing beautiful creative things with words. And frankly, I haven't even begun to scratch the surface here. Unfortunately, it can be rather time-consuming finding the most creative works, because there are plenty of other works that are more of the quality of Saul Bellow's Herzog. That is, competent works that show little creativity or don't really have much to say except that author seems to know where the commas and periods go. Who cares if you know where the commas and periods go? You learn that in grammar school. It's time to do something besides just put the commas and periods in the right place. Maybe for variety you should try putting them in the wrong place. Whether you write in a creative or conventional style do something unique! Do something different than everybody else! Why should I or anybody else read your work if you're not writing something unique? When I say you I don't mean any person in particular I mean everyone that writes.

The time has come to question many of the assumptions about the literary world. Why should we blindly accept every author/poet in the Norton anthology or any other canon as being great? Why should we accept things without questioning them? Why shouldn't we think for ourselves?

The works of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Donne, Milton, Swift, Pope, Blake, Shelley, Keats, Wordsworth, Mill, Dickens, Wilde, Conrad, Woolf, Lawrence, Joyce, Auden, and Eliot are certainly above average. But these people are all primates, albeit advanced primates. There is no reason why other talented members of the same species can’t write works of equal quality, or perhaps do even better.

In this universe is estimated that there are billions of galaxies. Out there in all those billions of galaxies may be species who are far more intelligent and/or economically and culturally evolved than us. Perhaps their literary achievements make the works of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Donne, Milton, Swift, Pope, Blake, Shelley, Keats, Wordsworth, Mill, Dickens, Wilde, Conrad, Woolf, Lawrence, Joyce, Auden, and Eliot look like monkey scratchings in comparison.

Don't take anything for granted. Form your own opinion.

[cafolini]

Good stuff. Apart from the creativity idea, which has become an unalyzed canon with which I disagree, as you know, I like very much what you had to say here. There is a lot here that is, for today, beyond words. Dictionaries are not even half complete. Language is evolving but far too slow. Why? The misserable canons that repress antomyms and parallel routes. There is a lot of superstition posing as understition. Understanding is always there. Superstanding more, but not even considered. Languages other than English are even more primitive in the use of verbs that are lacking.
Have fun. Thanks for sharing.

[JCamilo]

I must profess my respect for the knowledge and excellent debating skills of some of the other posters here. After reading some of these posts the only thing I'm really convinced about is that there are some very intelligent people on this posting board. However, I still think that any number of factors might help prevent a great author from getting his or especially her works published. As I said before one of those factors might be a writer’s sexual preferences, amongst others.

You are seriously mixing modern publishing busines with Literature. Take even Shakespeare, a non-published genius. Because, well, it was not his point while being published is quite the point of today.

I have no doubt, as anyone else here, that many factors can prevent a author to receive his glory for while. No doubt, Oscar Wilde example may be one of those. Obviously, Dante was one of those. Shakespeare (he was just a playwritter), Homer (the greek language he used was quite gone), Emily Dickinson (never even tried) and there may be even some genius unheard. But those factors, all, are not eternal. You only need a society change, new winds, and sundenly a work is recovered. Take Sappho - she suffered a lot of those factors and in a time when the physical register was ridiculous and yet, she is one of the muses, etc.

Simple as put, every kind of writer has his readers. Those readers will eventually in the history curse have a strong voice. Even if for 15 minutes, even if they are underground, etc. And they will transform those authors, like for example Baudelaire was transformed in some short of sensible dandy, and this will increase the interest for this author. And this process is irreverssible.


As other posters have pointed out many gay and bisexual writers have been able to overcome tremendous obstacles of discrimination. However, remember the sexual preferences of an author may not have always been obvious to all of his contemporaries. Some biographer may later find out that such and such a writer was gay or bisexual, but while that person was living not everyone may have been aware of a particular author's sexual preferences. However, the more obvious it is that a man is gay or bisexual the more likely he is to experience discrimination.

Look what happened to Oscar Wilde when his sexual preferences became public. It was not pretty.

Oscar Wilde would have another face had him not blantanly lied in a court. But what happened with him? He is now worshiped, perhaps even beyond his own talent, as a witty man, as a stilized critic, as some short of freedom fighter. He got the repulse of his time, but certainly not of all time.


To argue that the academic world is free of prejudice is flawed. Well into the 20th century, for example, there were racial quotas at Ivy League institutions that restricted the number of Jews admitted. Whites with Anglo-Saxon names were given preference over Catholics, blacks, etc.

To argue that the literary world itself is free of prejudice is flawed. The experiences of some of the Harlem Renaissance writers and poets are a testament to that. Imagine the movers and shakers of the literary world having an event to honor your writing but not inviting you because you're black.

Nobody is arguing that. Good writers overcome even language barrier, after all look the huge influence of writers from Russia, a country of barbarians according to western europe, either be czarists or communists. At the long run, the prejudice against black writers is slowly fading, as you cann't certainly admit all world is racist.


Yes, many writers have managed to overcome these obstacles of discrimination, but I doubt that that all great writers who were black, gay, Jewish, etc. were able to overcome these obstacles of discrimination. But for every great manuscript by a black, gay, immigrant, Catholic or Jewish writer that found its way into the canon we cannot discount the possibility that many more great manuscripts found their way into the garbage can after the author died.

If this happens, it is more because his own peers didnt saw this talent, maybe himself. Just imagine how women overcome a similar scenario. It is possible that some potential was lost, just was lost because a car accident or a law school.


We are supposed to believe that the canon (according to Norton or some other authority) is somehow a flawless representation of the best literature written. I doubt that's true. I think it's much more random than that. A number of factors might help a work to become published (like the author having the right connections). Any number of factors might make it less likely that a great work gets published.

The Canon cann't be actual and has nothing to do with the publishing of the work as we think now. And nobody thinks the canon is perfect.


Look at the publishing world today. It's a big diarrhea factory, but some people (like Rupert Murdoch) are making lots of money from it. The publishing world of centuries ago was different in some ways perhaps. But to argue that all the best works of the past were actually published and later included in some canon seems far-fetched at best.

I wonder why? Writting was such rarity then, writting as well as you claim, that think many great writers were lost seems like the far-fetched idea.


Of course, what some posters will then do is recite various names of writers/poets in the canon as if that proves anything. Prove to me and everybody else that every single writer/poet in Norton’s anthology was great. I think the quality of work in the Norton anthology is much more uneven than that. I doubt that every single person listed in the canon is a god of literature.

Is there anyone arguing that all poets in Norton anthologies are great?


Take William Wordsworth for instance. Don't get me wrong, I love his poems! What's there not to like about them?

But you know what? He's kind of light reading. Not that that's bad. Why not read Wordsworth to fall asleep at night? You're bound to have some pleasant dreams! But frankly there are people posting on this website who are contributing more to the advancement of literature than Williams Wordsworth.

This is funny. Because the claim that there may be a poet here as good as Wordsworth is a possiblity, but the claim that people in this site are giving greater contributions to literature than he did is not. You know,because contribution to literature is more like History than opinion. You get any poster here who gave such contribution to literature that is able to have new words, sentences, ideas, lead an aesthetic movement, give impulse to other writers, have poems remembered and you have someone which contribution is that big. Is there such person? Put in mind, you have to argue against history (does not matter if Wordsworth was white, tall, british, tory) of a guy who lived for quite a time and people here who are just starting.


It's difficult for me to admit that Wordsworth is less than a literary god not only because I enjoyed William Wordsworth' s poetry, but also because I was fortunate enough to have a Professor Wordsworth for a semester. His descendent is an excellent professor who I very much respected.

Anyway, just because there are people on this website who are more talented than Wordsworth (the Romantic poet, certainly not the professor) doesn't guarantee that their work will ever be included in some canon. In fact, no matter how good you are the odds are you will never be in any canon unless you know the right people, because your work will probably never be widely distributed and published if you don't know the right people.

Publishing today is more easier than during his time. The audience is like 1000 bigger than his time. The visibility is much bigger. Why not? And who are those right persons? They must know the lake poets? What puts in your mind that Wordsworth was idely distributed and published? There is probally more members in this site than the first 5 pritings of Lyricall Ballads. I am sorry, but if people are not famous today, it may just because they are bad.


More likely the work of Allen Ginsberg will be included in some canon then anybody on this website. What a shame! Much of Allen Ginsberg’s material is not even half as good as some of the stuff on this website. Of course, his famous poem "Howl" is pretty good, but "Mein Kampf" by the Jewish poet David Lerner is much better. (Great poem. Horrible title.)

Considering the title is part of the work, probally you see a problem. But of course, I am sure Ginsberg is a good example of a guy with the right conections and all popularity. He certain was in the top of the mainstren America.


And of course many of you have heard about a book by Saul Bellow called Herzog. I believe it's received some fancy-dancy award of some kind. Herzog contributes very little to literature in my opinion. There are people on this website who are taking far greater risks and being far more creative and therefore contributing far more to the advancement of literature then Saul Bellow's Herzog. But the sad fact is Saul Bellow's Herzog is much more likely to be included in some future canon than some of the very talented writers on this website. And frankly, all over the Internet you will find writers creating far greater literature than Saul Bellow's Herzog. Virtually all of these individuals are very un-famous.

People do not consider Pericles a great play, it was written by Shakespeare. Of course, people who study Shakespeare like to read it, but the play itself, is not canonized. And there is a considerable amount of great authors works that are forgotten and not even published anymore.


This is not to say that Saul Bellow’s Herzog is an incompetent work of literature. Just like a competent carpenter can hammer a nail into place the sentences in Saul Bellow's Herzog are decently written. But that's about it. There are competent carpenters, and there are master craftsmen who can do beautiful creative things with wood. There are people on this website (and other websites) who are doing beautiful creative things with words. And frankly, I haven't even begun to scratch the surface here. Unfortunately, it can be rather time-consuming finding the most creative works, because there are plenty of other works that are more of the quality of Saul Bellow's Herzog. That is, competent works that show little creativity or don't really have much to say except that author seems to know where the commas and periods go. Who cares if you know where the commas and periods go? You learn that in grammar school. It's time to do something besides just put the commas and periods in the right place. Maybe for variety you should try putting them in the wrong place. Whether you write in a creative or conventional style do something unique! Do something different than everybody else! Why should I or anybody else read your work if you're not writing something unique? When I say you I don't mean any person in particular I mean everyone that writes.

The time has come to question many of the assumptions about the literary world. Why should we blindly accept every author/poet in the Norton anthology or any other canon as being great? Why should we accept things without questioning them? Why shouldn't we think for ourselves?

Dude, I am in Brazil. Nortons editions have no saying in the world of literature, just in some market in one country. If you need a revolution to get down with Norton, you just need money to buy the damn thing, Not a revolution. At all.


The works of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Donne, Milton, Swift, Pope, Blake, Shelley, Keats, Wordsworth, Mill, Dickens, Wilde, Conrad, Woolf, Lawrence, Joyce, Auden, and Eliot are certainly above average. But these people are all primates, albeit advanced primates. There is no reason why other talented members of the same species can’t write works of equal quality, or perhaps do even better.

In this universe is estimated that there are billions of galaxies. Out there in all those billions of galaxies may be species who are far more intelligent and/or economically and culturally evolved than us. Perhaps their literary achievements make the works of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Donne, Milton, Swift, Pope, Blake, Shelley, Keats, Wordsworth, Mill, Dickens, Wilde, Conrad, Woolf, Lawrence, Joyce, Auden, and Eliot look like monkey scratchings in comparison.

Don't take anything for granted. Form your own opinion.

If you are talking about literature, you are talking about influence. Your mind is not so free as you think, neither your opinion so relevant and independent (in fact, you are repeating a lot of other writers), but really, if you think you need to debauche the past to be great, you are just being romantic. Like Wordsworth.

[Darcy88]

The works of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Donne, Milton, Swift, Pope, Blake, Shelley, Keats, Wordsworth, Mill, Dickens, Wilde, Conrad, Woolf, Lawrence, Joyce, Auden, and Eliot are certainly above average. But these people are all primates, albeit advanced primates. There is no reason why other talented members of the same species can’t write works of equal quality, or perhaps do even better.


What is your point? Who is arguing that the great writers of the past cannot be equaled? And show me a writer on this website who has "contributed more to the advancement of literature" than Wordsworth.

Its kind of funny you use Oscar Wilde as an example of bias in the literary world considering how popular and widely read his works are.

I still don't see what is wrong with the past or present state of literature. I don't see why we need a revolution in literature. Great cutting edge works have been written and continue to be written. Your belief that many masterworks were consigned to the trash can is kooky to say that least. I'm sure it happened, but certainly not on the scale you imply.

[cafolini]

What is your point? Who is arguing that the great writers of the past cannot be equaled? And show me a writer on this website who has "contributed more to the advancement of literature" than Wordsworth.

Its kind of funny you use Oscar Wilde as an example of bias in the literary world considering how popular and widely read his works are.

I still don't see what is wrong with the past or present state of literature. I don't see why we need a revolution in literature. Great cutting edge works have been written and continue to be written. Your belief that many masterworks were consigned to the trash can is kooky to say that least. I'm sure it happened, but certainly not on the scale you imply.

On the contrary, I think his scale is too small.

[Darcy88]

On the contrary, I think his scale is too small.

Any proof of this, or is it just a nice little speculative fantasy of yours? Works were lost through the ages, but I doubt there were a bunch of Shakespeares going unnoticed due to their lack of social connections or their sexuality.

[cafolini]

Any proof of this, or is it just a nice little speculative fantasy of yours? Works were lost through the ages, but I doubt there were a bunch of Shakespeares going unnoticed due to their lack of social connections or their sexuality.

There is no lost & found in this context. How could there be any proof? I think it is not a little, but a big speculative fantasy of mine. On the other hand, that Shakespeare was one of the great is your speculative canon fantasy.

[Darcy88]

There is no lost & found in this context. How could there be any proof? I think it is not a little, but a big speculative fantasy of mine. On the other hand, that Shakespeare was one of the great is your speculative canon fantasy.

You don't think that Shakespeare was one of the greats?


When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself, and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man’s art, and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee,—and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

Perhaps you may be on to something. No, not very great at all.

[WolfLarsen]

Cafolini said:

" Good stuff. Apart from the creativity idea, which has become an unalyzed canon with which I disagree, as you know, I like very much what you had to say here. There is a lot here that is, for today, beyond words. Dictionaries are not even half complete. Language is evolving but far too slow. Why? The misserable canons that repress antomyms and parallel routes. There is a lot of superstition posing as understition. Understanding is always there. Superstanding more, but not even considered. Languages other than English are even more primitive in the use of verbs that are lacking.
Have fun. Thanks for sharing. "

Wolf responds:
HA HA HA Ha ha ha ha HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!

Yes, we need to eat chicken-dinosaurs! If we insert the DNA of correct grammatical structure into a Shakespeare pigeon's womb, and we splice the DNA with a few strands of Allen Ginsberg's Howl then we will certainly get the giant cannon/canon blast through the fortress of the literary establishment that we are all seeking.

But more seriously you're right! The dictionary is not complete! Let's start making up new words! Some of the words can be less bizarre and more of the words can be more bizarre! The more bizarrer the better! Hell, if the 43rd president can make up words why the hell can't we?! Why the hell should Webster have a monopoly on dictionaries?! Everybody should make their own dictionaries if they want to! New literature doesn't have to make sense in the traditional sense, it need only make sense in the postmodern sense!

And why shouldn't we invent new languages?! Everyone can speak their own language! The more languages the better!

Traditionalists will say that this will hamper communications. That's true and not true, because within everything there is its opposite. Something might not make sense to a traditional thinker but those fluent in the postmodernisms of all the arts will understand what's going on.

Sounds like a great time to go creative. But meanwhile I will go traitor. The carcass of traditionalism still has some good meat on it that for the time being and I will devour!


JCamilo said:

"... Dude, I'm Brazilian..."

This says everything! Porque Brazil e o melhor pais no mundo! Que sorte tem voce! Melhor voce mora aqui com os gringos no frio e eu moro la em Brazil em su lugar. Esta bom? Braaaaziiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiil!

You see, Camilo does not understand our anal-retentive obsession with Norton's anthology. How could he? He's Brazilian. Only anal-retentive Americans like myself or perhaps anal-retentive Englishmen could possibly understand this anal-retentive obsession with Norton's anthology.

But even though I am the son of an immigrant and my anal-retentive self is not necessarily understood by all the relatives I must say that as a man born in America - can you hear the national anthem playing in the background? – I mean I have just as much right to be as anal-retentive as any Anglo-Saxon Protestant American. I'm certainly not insulting my Anglo-Saxon Protestant countrymen, but to be honest I prefer the hot dogs of Cambodia to the ones of the good old USA. I am an internationalist American!

Look Camilo, it all goes back to the wars between the English and the French in North America. The French got Quebec and the English got the rest of it. Unfortunately, the USA rose up to dominate the world and that is part of the reason why English and not French is the dominant language of the world. If the French had won in North America we would all be arguing about something or another in French, and no doubt since French culture is far less inhibited and anal-retentive and far more sensual we probably wouldn't have this anal-retentive obsession with the Norton anthology. We would be more like Brazilians, albeit French-speaking ones.

But I have a solution. All the Brasileiros should go live in the United States and Britain to help Anglo-Saxon culture become less anal-retentive. Meanwhile, I will live in Brazil and keep all of the Brasileras happy. Don't worry, I'm up to the task, after all I have lots of energy!

Oh wait wait! Perhaps the transvestites (though technically men) can stay in Brazil with me. I've been to 51 countries but I tell you Brazil has the best transvestites! The transvestites in Brazil are proof that the most beautiful women are actually men!

There are other posters who will say that all of the above is a digression from the topic at hand. I couldn't disagree more. We all need to be more Brazilian! The more Brazilian we are the greater that English literature will become.

The fact is the more contact we have with other cultures the more enriched the Anglo-Saxon/English language will become. No doubt, conquering India helped the British become more cultured, because the subcontinent is an older culture than Britain. Britain’s growth as a world power exposed it to other cultures and helped her to become more than just some isolated rock on the periphery of Europe.

But now the question remains how do we civilize the Americans? Just kidding, sort of.

[WolfLarsen]

Oh, and somebody submitted a rather decent poem by Shakespeare for review:


When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself, and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man’s art, and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee,—and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.


I had some fun with that poem for ten minutes and this is what I came up with:

When we fly like disgrace through each other's eyes,
I all alone weep like falling nuclear missiles,
And trouble falls up to heaven like some skyscraper’s orgasm,
I look upon all the thousands of hallucinations of myself, and curse my brains,
Wishing me to be rich with millions of huge vaginas,
Featured like millions of McDonald's hamburgers rolling into Shakespeare's mouth,
Desiring this man's correct grammatical structure around my penis,
With what I most enjoy like a NASA rocket blasting through my brains
Yet in whose thoughts I feel the despisement of millions of pigeons,
Happy I think on his penis & anus & smile like a bisexual euphoria,
Like 365 days arising & crashing & breaking open,
From a sullen earth that sings all its billions of cadavers at Heaven's Gate,
For my sweet semen in a man's mouth is the greatest wealth of all things,
And let's lynch all the kings

Anybody else want to kick around some Shakespeare?

[Darcy88]

Oh, and somebody submitted a rather decent poem by Shakespeare for review:



I had some fun with that poem for ten minutes and this is what I came up with:

When we fly like disgrace through each other's eyes,
I all alone weep like falling nuclear missiles,
And trouble falls up to heaven like some skyscraper’s orgasm,
I look upon all the thousands of hallucinations of myself, and curse my brains,
Wishing me to be rich with millions of huge vaginas,
Featured like millions of McDonald's hamburgers rolling into Shakespeare's mouth,
Desiring this man's correct grammatical structure around my penis,
With what I most enjoy like a NASA rocket blasting through my brains
Yet in whose thoughts I feel the despisement of millions of pigeons,
Happy I think on his penis & anus & smile like a bisexual euphoria,
Like 365 days arising & crashing & breaking open,
From a sullen earth that sings all its billions of cadavers at Heaven's Gate,
For my sweet semen in a man's mouth is the greatest wealth of all things,
And let's lynch all the kings

Anybody else want to kick around some Shakespeare?

Very creative, but I think I prefer the original better, without all the gratuitous obscenity. Shakespeare was so great he could create a more powerful impact without resorting to crass shock tactics.

[osho]

We Need a Revolution in Literature!
An Essay by Wolf Larsen

The best literature is the kind without a price tag. The goal of writing should not be to sell books, but to write the most innovative and exciting literature imaginable.

Look at all the endless varieties of music! It almost seems that there are as many kinds of music as there are drops of water in the ocean!

What a different story when you go to the bookstore! In the literature section of the bookstore you will find only novels, short stories, and poetry. That’s it! Why only novels, short stories, and poetry? Why is literature so limited? Why shouldn’t there be as many different kinds of literature as there are different kinds of music? Why must writers limit themselves only to novels, plays, short stories, and poetry? Why shouldn’t writers invent endless kinds of literature besides just novels, short stories, and poetry? It’s fine to write novels, short stories, and poetry – but why not invent new forms of literature as well?

One of the reasons literature is so limited is that it is still shackled to the major publishing conglomerates and the universities. Literature will not be free until it has unshackled itself from the crass commercial interests of the publishing conglomerates and the conservative influences of the universities.

Publishing houses have one and only one purpose: to make money. They are hostile to innovation in literature, because publishing innovative literature involves risk. And they certainly don’t want to risk their money! The publishing conglomerates want to continue pouring potential best sellers (particularly airport novels) unto the market. And to the publishing houses that’s all literature is – a market.

I am not against the publishing conglomerates. Their books provide popular entertainment to the masses. Their backlist includes many good works of literature from the past, (because they make money from them). But while I am not against the publishing conglomerates I don’t like lies – like the misrepresentation of these huge corporations that own an endless array of imprints as being anything other than money-hungry corporations. Contemporary literature of quality needs a home – and that home is not and cannot be the publishing conglomerates – because today’s publishing conglomerates are only concerned with money.

I am also not against those who work in publishing conglomerates either. For most employees of publishing conglomerates the work is hard, the pay is low, and as the publishing conglomerates have increasingly focused solely on making money the personal rewards for many editors (like getting a favorite manuscript into print) are dwindling. Today an editor in a publishing house cannot push a book for publication just because he loves it – more and more he has to work with books based on their economic potential.

Academia may claim to be interested in quality in contemporary literature, and academia may also be less interested in money. But academia is primarily interested in promoting the “great” writers and poets of the past and those who today imitate them. (Of course there are exceptions to this – there’s exceptions to everything.) Anyway, after learning in a university about the “greats” of the past what is the writer/poet to do? Should he imitate the “greats” of the past in his writing, or should he seek to create his own innovative literature?

By a young age Picasso had assimilated the “masters” of the past – and he went on to create new brazen works of art – he departed from the past – and created wonderful CONTEMPORARY masterpieces. Mozart also mastered traditional styles of classical music – and he went on to create music that at his time was INNOVATIVE.

Hence, the truly great masters of the recent past – in music (Stravinsky, Mahler), painting (Dali, etc.), sculpture (Rodin) – produced great works that were INNOVATIVE and hence FRESH and EXCITING. In contrast, those that worship the past tend to produce works that are stale and flat. Sure, there are adequate writers, painters, sculptors, and composers who can blindly copy the “greats” of the past – but by copying what’s already been done they are contributing nothing to the arts and literature.

There are those that argue that first you must learn tradition to be a great writer. By all means I agree you should read as much “great” literature as possible – both traditional and contemporary. But then some of these same people will go on to say “learn the rules before you break them.”

Forget learning the rules unless you plan to write a conventional essay or a guide to used car repair. In creative literature go ahead and unshackle yourself from all rules! SMASH any and all rules with a sledgehammer, a wrecking ball, or better yet with a pen or a paintbrush! Works of literature, music, painting, etc, should obey no conventional rules whatsoever. If you feel the urge to have rules invent your own! Look at Schoenberg’s 12 tone scale! Wow!

Let’s take grammar for example. Obeying the rules of grammar is fine if you’re writing a conventional essay or a manual about car repair. However, when you’re writing creative literature you should write as freely as possible – without rules.

There are those that argue that if the writer does not obey the rules of grammar his work will be incomprehensible. That depends. It depends on the writer and his style and it also depends on the reader. In some cases, the writer may be creating for a more limited audience – like those who are familiar with modern and postmodern developments in the arts and literature, for instance – and that would explain why many readers might find a given work incomprehensible. In other cases, the writer may simply be incompetent. However, at times when a work seems incomprehensible it might be the reader’s fault. For example, if the reader hates a work of literature for no other reason than that it is different (i.e. more creative than more conventional works) than it’s the reader’s fault that the work seems incomprehensible. Certainly, if the reader is lazy, ignorant, or simply close-minded he may choose not to apply himself to any literature that is different than what he is used to. Such a person may be more comfortable reading an airport novel or one of the works of the past “greats”. At times, such a person may have an advanced degree and consider themselves highly cultured and learned, but all those years reading literature that is conventional can make it harder for that person’s brain to concentrate on and grasp anything that’s written in a new and innovative manner. The fact that their brain may have a hard time grasping anything that’s written differently than what they’re used to is not the fault of the writer, it is the fault of that particular reader.

There are people who look at a Jackson Pollock canvas and say, “My five year old can do a better job than that.” Of course, such people are ignorant of art. Instead of studying art (which they don’t) they take their prejudices (which are pro-representational and pro-realism) and from a position of ignorance and prejudice they proclaim everything that doesn’t conform to their ignorant and prejudiced misconceptions of art to be bad. In the world of literature it is even worse. Those who are ignorant, prejudiced, and close-minded stand in judgment of what is “good literature”.

Should the writer create works of “literature” easily accessible to even the most ignorant and close-minded of readers? Sure, if he wants to make money or be accepted by the conservative world of academia.

But let us suppose the writer is either not employed by academia or is employed in academia but could care less what some of his “colleagues” in the English department think – in other words he has a decent day job and thus doesn’t give a damn about making money from his writing. Such a writer may be influenced by such innovators as Baudelaire, Rilke, Octavio Paz, Anne Sexton, etc. and less influenced by the “greats” of the publishing conglomerates (the best-sellers) and the “greats” of the academic world (people who have been dead a very long time).

Frankly, I am rather disappointed with English literature and have ironically found greater inspiration for my writing outside of literature in the other arts (painting, sculpture, architecture, music, modern dance, postmodern theater, etc.). Many of the past “greats” that are in the canon of English literature are not so “great” at all.

Many of the “great works” of English literature in the canon were written by “gentleman” with disposable income (that they didn’t have to work for) and lots of free time, as well as the high social connections to insure that their work was published. Not all of them were talented or had much to say. Is a writer/poet’s work “great” just because it’s included in the Norton Anthology and the professor taught it in your literature 101 class?

Of course, some “great” works of the past are better than others. Some of these gentleman of leisure in the canon had talent – in addition to the work ethic necessary to produce great literature – but not all of them.

Literature has not even begun to reach its potential. In fact, literature will not even begin to reach its potential until all of humanity has ample food in its stomach and plenty of free time.

The seed of talent falls where it may. Most of those who have disposable income without having to work for it and thus have plenty of free time to write are inborn, have little or no work ethic, and are of mediocre abilities – like the president of my country George Bush. Besides, the outlook of the leisure class is often conservative, so it would not occur to them to write literature that is innovative.

Most people are so engaged in the struggle for survival that they do not have the time to create innovative literature. When humanity is freed from its bondage to an economic system that benefits only a privileged few than a shorter workweek for all will make it possible for more people to create great works of literature, painting, sculpture, etc.

Hence, the greatest most innovative period of literature does not lie in the past – but in the future.
In a different kind of economy huge amounts of money will not be wasted on maintaining a class of worthless bourgeois bums – and huge amounts of money will also not be wasted on gigantic bloated militaries.

With more money available culture, literature, and the arts would flourish more than ever – because we could improve the quality of education – including teaching more art in the schools – and offering free higher education to all. In such a society, we could also give a modest living stipend to writers and artists. And since more diverse parts of humanity would be free to create great literature – instead of just a small privileged leisure class – literature will have more variety and innovation than ever.

Thus freed from their chains to market forces and academia writers would be free to create a new innovative literature. A general population with a reduced workweek would have more time to read a new revolutionary literature that’s constantly changing and evolving. If the world of painting can constantly evolve and change – why not literature? If classical music can constantly evolve and change than certainly literature can also evolve and change.

The defenders of tradition look to the past because they cannot imagine a future any different than the status quo.
But in fact, civilization is constantly changing. The world is different than it was a hundred years ago – and extremely different than it was just three hundred years ago.

Human civilization has existed thousands of years – imagine the human race thousands of years from now! We as a species (homo sapiens) have existed 150,000 years – imagine the human race 150,000 years from now!

If the human race is not extinct in a thousand years – and with constant war and the nuclear bomb that’s a big if – but if the human race is here a thousand years from now it is certain that capitalism will be a distant memory as feudalism is today. So far the human race has gone from hunter gathering to ancient city states to empires like the Roman to feudalism than national monarchies to capitalist “democracy” for the rich.

Hence, human civilization is constantly evolving, and as civilization evolves so will literature. And just as human civilization has not even begun to reach its full potential, so the same is true for literature and the other arts.

The best contemporary writers of creative literature – those who write today and will be read a hundred two hundred a thousand years from now – will not be those who copy the past but instead those who CONTRIBUTE to the DEVELOPMENT of literature. The writers who will be read a thousand years from now will be those who helped literature to advance.

I don’t care whether you like my own literature or not – for the purposes of this essay it is irrelevant. If every writer wrote completely different from each other – and completely different from the “greats” of the past – then there would be more reason to pick up a book – because god knows what’s in between the covers of that book! And if you don’t like that author’s writing you can pick up another author’s book knowing that that book will be completely different than the one you just glanced through.

Hence, THERE IS NO CORRECT WAY TO WRITE. In fact, the more we depart from the idea that there’s a correct way to write the more variety we offer to our readers. We thus begin to offer readers an exciting universe of literature where every author is completely different than another – how exciting!

Traditionalists will argue that it is preferable and natural that literature remain the most backward and conservative medium of the art world. (Compare literature’s snail-like advancement to the great innovations in painting, sculpture, and the other arts since the beginning of modernism in the late 19th Century.) However, there is nothing positive about literature’s relative backwardness compared to the other arts. Even classical music in the past 120 years has left the literary world behind in innovation, boldness, and creativity! How pathetic!

Look – the reason that literature is so backward compared to the other arts can be explained by several simple reasons. The first is money. For a writer to make enough money to support himself comfortably he has to sell A LOT of books. A painter, on the other hand, needs only a few appreciative buyers to support himself. Thus, it is easier (not completely easy – but easier) for the painter to paint whatever he wants. The painter may have to deal with galleries – but he doesn’t have to deal with publishing corporations. The painter doesn’t have to consider entertaining a large reading audience primarily looking for cheap entertainment like the writer does. Hence, partly or mainly for monetary reasons painting has left behind the literary world in boldness, innovation, and quality.

The writer enjoys little independence. He is dependent on publishing corporations to help him reach a large audience seeking cheap entertainment. Hence, in order to make a living from his craft the writer often has no choice but to write mediocre and non-innovative “literature” that will be acceptable to conservative publishing conglomerates. In addition, since “success” is defined by how many copies are sold, the emphasis is on producing cheap mass entertainment.

So writing remains the most conservative, mediocre, and backward medium of the art world partly or mostly because of money.

Another conservatising influence (yes I probably just made up a word – good! We writers should make up words more often) – another conservatising influence on the literary world is the whole prestige game. You get your work in certain prestigious “literary” magazines, get nominated for certain prestigious “literary” awards, etc. – and suddenly you’re considered a “great” writer/poet.

The pages of many (not all) of the most prestigious literary magazines are filled with excrement masquerading as great literature that doesn’t even qualify as mediocre – it’s just plain bad, conservative, and bland.

The same is true for many “literary” awards. An “avant-garde” poet received a very large monetary award recently. I won’t name him here – but his work was so conservative, so dull, so devoid of innovation, so much like a zillion other poems you see everywhere that I don’t see how his poetry could be considered “avant-garde”. I guess for the people giving out the prestigious awards and the money anything that doesn’t rhyme is considered “avant-garde”.

The contemporary writer/poet who wants literature to advance forward instead of being stuck in backwardness is inherently outside the literary world. He views the official literary world with contempt. He understands that the publishing conglomerates, academia, prestigious literary magazines, and award givers are mostly hostile to innovative literature. The contemporary writer/poet who wants literature to advance understands that the literary world is an obstacle to wonderful innovative literature and therefore must be SMASHED TO PIECES. Literature is great – but the literary world is not.

It would be a great day for literature if all writers and poets started using the pages of the prestigious literary magazines as toilet paper. We don’t need the editors of the prestigious “literary” magazines to showcase great literature because they don’t even know what literature is – let alone great literature. The same can be said of those who give out prestigious “literary” awards – but maybe I shouldn’t say that – sometimes they actually give money to people who write good poetry!

The great literature of our time is rarely found in prestigious “literary” magazines – it’s rarely found in the Sunday books section of the New York Times – and you would be lucky to find the great literature of our time in the bookstore.

The great literature of our time can sometimes be discovered in the less famous literary magazines. The great literature of our time can sometimes be discovered on posting boards.

The poetry stacks of the nation’s public libraries are filled with poets who were famous and prestigious in their times but who have since been forgotten. You open the book and begin reading and you often encounter mediocrity. These formerly famous poets were usually able enough – but their work lacked vision – their work appealed to the popular tastes of their day – but their lack of boldness and originality doomed their work to obscurity over time. The literary establishment has rarely been right in judging who are the great poets and writers of their day, because the tastes of the literary establishment are so conservative and backward.

As writers most of us – with the exception of the airport novelists – have nothing to gain from the literary world. The traditional literary world is an obstacle to great contemporary literature. The literary world as we know it is an obstacle – an unnecessary middleman – between the writer and the reader. The literary world limits the reader’s choice to an array of airport novels and boring banal “literary” novels that help people fall asleep at night.

Why should big publishing conglomerates decide which books are available to the general public? After all, there is no positive reason for the publishing conglomerates to exist anymore – except for their backlists.

With the new technology print-on-demand a reader purchases a book and a copy is printed up especially for him or her. How nice! And the price is almost the same as a traditionally published book – and further advancements in technology will only bring the costs down more. The reader no longer needs to be satisfied with merely choosing amongst the thrillers, romances, and “literary” novels at the bookstore. With the Internet and print-on-demand the reader’s choices are no longer restricted by the dictates of the publishing industry – the reader’s choices are endless!

Of course, the traditionalists and people employed in the traditional publishing conglomerates may argue that many of the books available via print-on-demand are not masterpieces. But the same is true of the books sold by the traditional publishing industry. In fact, if the book is published by the traditional publishing industry you can bet that the book was published primarily because of its commercial potential.

With the technology print-on-demand books that are not commercial can now be made available to the general public. For the first time ever the general public can purchase and read all kinds of works of literature that were never available before.

Another great innovation that makes more possible than ever is the Internet.
The Internet weakens the traditional prestigious “literary” magazines vis-à-vis the less famous literary magazines that are more likely to publish innovative literature. Before, the more traditional literary magazines could use their prestigious names to receive greater distribution in the bookstores, and it was more difficult to get hold of the less famous literary magazines. But now, with the Internet, the less famous literary magazines that publish more innovative literature are only a click away.

Of course, traditionalists will argue that not all innovative literature is good. However, most literature written in a traditional style is not good either. In fact, contemporary literature written in a traditional style is more likely to be stale – which is what often happens when one copies from the “masters” of the past. I am not saying that all contemporary literature written in a conventional style is stale. However, most contemporary poetry and prose written in a traditional style seems to be stale.

Also with the Internet comes the posting boards. I’ve heard other writers/poets complain that many literary posting boards are no more than cliques hostile to outsiders, and other posting boards engage in all kinds of censorship, and still other posting boards are presided over by control freaks who ban everybody who they disagree with, and on some boards there’s intolerance towards writers/poets who feel shy about commenting on the works of others.

I can understand why writers and poets would find the above problems very irritating. However, I still feel that posting boards are a positive – or can be a positive influence in the world of literature. In addition, posting boards have a great potential to transform the literary world.

Posting boards make it possible for writers/poets to view each other’s work. In addition, the general public can enjoy a greater variety of literary voices than ever before.

In addition, another extremely important innovation is the word processor. The word processor, by freeing the writer from the typewriter, has made it possible for the writer to experiment more than ever! A writer can try out zillions of new styles of writing on his processor and go back and change anything he wants easier than ever!

With the word processor the writer is freer than ever to experiment. The writer may ravage the page at will! The writer is free to change, improve, evolve, invent new words, etc!

Other technologies like print-on-demand make it easier than ever for the writer to bypass the publishing conglomeracy. You are now free! You don’t have to write some crass commercial novel to get published – you don’t have to write within the “literary” novel’s limitations on creativity – you can write anything any way you want to and the general public will be able to read your book.

Of course, traditionalists will argue that a self published print-on-demand book stands little chance of being “successful”. But the traditionalists seem to define a book’s “success” more by its sales, and less by its quality or innovation.

To this I respond that a traditionally published book stands little chance of commercial “success” either. The vast majority of traditionally published books fail commercially.

Each publishing conglomerate works on much the same premise as a tree. A tree you ask? Yes, a tree – a tree throws out endless seeds every spring – and as you know only a small number of those seeds ultimately become trees.

The same is true of traditionally published books. Each publishing conglomerate throws out lots and lots of books every year – and the few that make it and generate high sales sustain the publishing conglomerate’s profits.

And just as a tree throwing out seeds does nothing to nurture its offspring publishing conglomerates nurture very few of their books with adequate publicity.

The system works for the publishing conglomerates and the few airport novelists whose books become best sellers – but the losers are the vast majority of authors whose books never generate good sales and whose books are out-of-print within a few years.

The other loser is the member of the general public who walks into a bookstore wanting to read something different than the same fare of romances, action-thrillers, and “literary” fiction.

But now, with the advent of the Internet and posting boards and print-on-demand and the endless choices on Amazon.com and other online retailers the man or woman who wants something different than romances, thrillers, “literary” fiction and the like can now find an endless variety of literature on posting boards, in obscure e-zines that publish “out there” literature, and on author’s web-sites.

Hence, now both the writer and the reader are free from the restraint of choices found in traditionally published books.

The posting boards have a very important role to play. Over time, some posting boards may acquire a reputation for having more daring writing and will draw more interest from the general public. The public will be able to purchase on Amazon.com via print-on-demand whatever author they choose. Old outmoded institutions like the traditional publishing industry and the New York Times Book Review will play no role in any of this at all.

Hence, the posting boards, (or at least some of them), will provide the general public with a venue to read all kinds of exciting innovative literature like they’re never read before, and the posting boards will thus help the writer of innovative literature to receive exposure and thus help writers to become increasingly independent of the big publishing conglomerates.

Of course, not all writers want to be independent of the big publishing conglomerates. Many writers want to make big royalties, and the only way to do that is to write commercial airport novels. Of course, after the aspiring would-be airport novelist has actually written the commercial work he has to somehow get the attention of a literary agent, which is nearly impossible. If after writing the commercial work the writer is lucky enough to get a literary agent and then (hopefully) a publisher the would-be airport novelist is still not on easy street yet. After you sign the contract with the publisher the literary agent’s work is done, but the author’s headache is just beginning. Publishing conglomerates are notoriously stingy in putting resources and time into promoting their books. They publish LOTS of books every year – and they don’t have the time, resources, or inclination to adequately promote all their books.

You might have the most commercial book in the world, but if your book doesn’t receive any publicity than nobody will know about your book which means nobody buys it and your book will be out-of-print in a few years – which is what happens to most traditionally published books anyway.

Of course, you could max out your credit cards and take out loans to buy more publicity for your book – but this will more likely result in bankruptcy than a bestseller. The traditional publisher might offer to pay half of the publicity/promotion for your book if you pay the other half – but unless you want bankruptcy in your future you might want to be careful how much you put up for publicity.

When (and if) a traditional publisher signs up your book you might receive all kinds of promises about how they’ll promote your book. Take it all with a grain of salt. The person in the publishing house in charge of promoting your book is also in charge of promoting LOTS of books. And unless your name is Stephen King or John Grisham don’t expect the publicity of your book to be given much priority – especially if you’re a first time author. And if your first book doesn’t sell there’s a good chance that no publisher is going to want your second book.

By the way, don’t be surprised if the publishing conglomerate re-writes your book to make it more commercial.

Why bother with all that? Why not write what you want to write? Why bother writing a commercial novel that’s just like so many other books already out there anyway?

But one thing: in the unlikely event that a publishing house offers you a big advance my advice is to take it! If a publishing house gives you a big advance they’re almost definitely going to heavily promote your book – because they want to get a return on their investment.

Something you may want to ask yourself is – why do you write? Do you write to make money? Do you write for prestige and acclaim? Do you write with the opinions of others in mind? Or do you write because you have to create?

If the reason that you write is that you have to create than money, prestige, and the opinions of others are all secondary. Creating innovative works of literature is probably not going to make you money or give you prestige and acclaim anytime soon. And like many others who were creative – like Gauguin, Mahler, Rodin, etc. – you will receive endless harsh attacks.

Let others make all the money from their airport novels, let others receive all the prestige and acclaim for their conventional banal “poetry”. Let others receive all the applause for their conservative traditional works written in “good taste”. Their work will wither into dust over time. A hundred years from now no one will be reading their novels, poems, and plays.

Nearly everything ever painted, sculpted, or written in “good taste” later withered and died with time. “Good taste” is nothing more than what is in fashion at the time – and as time passes what was in “good taste” centuries ago becomes trivial.

Many of the masters of the past in literature, painting, sculpture, and music were nothing less than innovators and revolutionaries in their time. Their work often caused controversy because they were not enslaved to tradition. They did not care about “good taste”. They could give a damn about the opinions of others.

There is no correct way to write – at least in the creative sense. The very essence of creativity is to write without rules. In the arts there is no correct ism – except INDIVIDUALISM. Hopefully, you are a unique person. And if there’s no one else in the world like you why should you write like anybody else?

I am not against conventional writing. It has its place. I have utilized it for essays and autobiographical novels. But I reject the idea that everything – particularly creative literature – must be written in a conventional manner according to any set of rules, including grammar. There is no correct way to write creative literature! As writers we should SMASH TO PIECES any obstacle to individual expression – especially in literature – which has been chained to tradition and convention for far too long.

Copyright 2007 by Wolf Larsen
In fact I find his writings highly revealing and in fact I support his ideas of freeing our literary world from the age old shackles of academia and a few publishing houses. We have no revolution in literature over the centuries and we still are haunted by the ghosts of the past. Yes literature is today has a boundary and our past theorists and academics still influence the way literature is written and we have been exorcised by the ghosts of Shakespeare, Milton, Dickens and the like and nobody dares something different and few can defy the age torn style of writing. Let us be open and be liberal and free ourselves from the fetters of traditionalism and grammaticism. In fact English has mainly for colonial reasons been a lingua franca and people across many geographical zones and cultural regions speak and write in English and yes as a second language they have a lot of difficulty in speaking out their thoughts through English and in fact the grammar of English is too complicated to master and it takes a lot of energies and efforts of us to master this language and though we can compete with any native writers in content but in style we are far behind and as such let us rule our the primacy of grammar over literature. Of course a piece of literature must be something that must be written in a lucid and eloquent way and people are after taste, favor, philosophy and the like in a piece of writing and those who take on this literary journey can come up with all these elements save grammatical correctness and it is really a big challenge and it is something they cannot easily internalize and if this part is loosed free we can come across plenty of non-native writers who have been simply blocked from getting publicity.

I like the idea of writing innovatively and I am also feeling that our fixation with traditional writing styles have crippled us and if a writer is given the freedom of writing as he wants not the way his editors or publishers want he can come up with such beautiful literary pieces he can even dazzle Shakespeare or Milton for that matter for today we live in a different age and today we have great many sources and we are clustering together globally and the Internet has revolutionized information and anybody living anywhere across the globe can freely and unlimitedly communicate with anybody and can learn from one another. Today's humans have boundless resources and the only bitter reality he is hard pressed to live with is depression. Today's man has a longer span of life and yet the quality of life has become very low and though we have a variety of dishes and sadly we have lost the appetite and as a result we live half-starved and of course today's literature must come up with some of the realities we come upon in every walk of life and as a writer myself I feel we are doing disservice to the realities we live with today.

I like this essay so much and I have this saved in my folder and find it a subject of reference whenever I do write something

[Darcy88]

I just don't see it. I am not particularly widely read but I can come up with innumerable examples of unique experimental literature that pushes boundaries, defies conventions, written by all sorts of individuals, be they homosexual, poor, whatever. Anyone who looks at English literature from Chaucer to today and finds it lacking in quality and diversity is obviously blind. We have literature full of sex, full of politics, full of all that could possibly offend the "anal-retentiveness" Wolf rails against.

[osho]

I just don't see it. I am not particularly widely read but I can come up with innumerable examples of unique experimental literature that pushes boundaries, defies conventions, written by all sorts of individuals, be they homosexual, poor, whatever. Anyone who looks at English literature from Chaucer to today and finds it lacking in quality and diversity is obviously blind. We have literature full of sex, full of politics, full of all that could possibly offend the "anal-retentiveness" Wolf rails against.

I like the way you have put forth and I second your idea of doing something literarily. I am averse to classicisms in literature sticking to everything old and classical. Today we have homosexuals among us and some are activists, others are traditions – breakers, kind of renegades, iconoclasts. I am often an extremist, not a political fanatic and an ideological fundamentalist but in art I opt for anarchism. I want to break with everything past and I distaste the ones who always recommend classicists and want to judge our pieces of literature by their standards. They are dead bones and I loathe them and I turn to living writers though they adulterate their writings and yet they are bold enough to put forth what really goes inside their minds. Sometimes nudity, sometimes stupidity. I like the modern stuff. Something you can call post colonial or post modern, though I hate labels

[WolfLarsen]

Osho said:


In fact I find his writings highly revealing and in fact I support his ideas of freeing our literary world from the age old shackles of academia and a few publishing houses. We have no revolution in literature over the centuries and we still are haunted by the ghosts of the past. Yes literature is today has a boundary and our past theorists and academics still influence the way literature is written and we have been exorcised by the ghosts of Shakespeare, Milton, Dickens and the like and nobody dares something different and few can defy the age torn style of writing. Let us be open and be liberal and free ourselves from the fetters of traditionalism and grammaticism. In fact English has mainly for colonial reasons been a lingua franca and people across many geographical zones and cultural regions speak and write in English and yes as a second language they have a lot of difficulty in speaking out their thoughts through English and in fact the grammar of English is too complicated to master and it takes a lot of energies and efforts of us to master this language and though we can compete with any native writers in content but in style we are far behind and as such let us rule our the primacy of grammar over literature. Of course a piece of literature must be something that must be written in a lucid and eloquent way and people are after taste, favor, philosophy and the like in a piece of writing and those who take on this literary journey can come up with all these elements save grammatical correctness and it is really a big challenge and it is something they cannot easily internalize and if this part is loosed free we can come across plenty of non-native writers who have been simply blocked from getting publicity.

I like the idea of writing innovatively and I am also feeling that our fixation with traditional writing styles have crippled us and if a writer is given the freedom of writing as he wants not the way his editors or publishers want he can come up with such beautiful literary pieces he can even dazzle Shakespeare or Milton for that matter for today we live in a different age and today we have great many sources and we are clustering together globally and the Internet has revolutionized information and anybody living anywhere across the globe can freely and unlimitedly communicate with anybody and can learn from one another. Today's humans have boundless resources and the only bitter reality he is hard pressed to live with is depression. Today's man has a longer span of life and yet the quality of life has become very low and though we have a variety of dishes and sadly we have lost the appetite and as a result we live half-starved and of course today's literature must come up with some of the realities we come upon in every walk of life and as a writer myself I feel we are doing disservice to the realities we live with today.

I like this essay so much and I have this saved in my folder and find it a subject of reference whenever I do write something

Bravo! Bravo! Braaaaavoooooooo!

Clap! Clap! Clap! Clap! Clap! Clap! Clap! Clap! Clap!

Very well said! Well done! And I love the run-on sentences. They will drive the traditionalists crazy!

Darcy doesn't understand. I write the words as they enter my head. In the speed of lightning the phrases throw themselves from my head to the page. There is no attempt at being crude. What it was written is natural. If I change them to be less "crude" I would be censoring myself. And if the poem I wrote has "shock value" it is because the literary world is so anal and the literary world engages in so much censorship that virtually anything is "shocking". This reinforces my argument that the best work often does not see the light of day for any number of reasons, one of which being a work maybe too "shocking". We have not evolved far enough from the time when Victorians (who were shocked at everything) covered the legs of living room tables with pants because they found the "naked" legs of living room tables to be shocking. In fact, at the present moment we are regressing. Society is becoming more sexually puritanical again and less tolerant and more likely to engage in censorship of authors who do not self-censor themselves.

Darcy posted a poem which appeared to have a strong element of homosexual desire. I stayed with that theme. Homoerotic sexuality is not crude. Homoerotic sexuality is beautiful! It's too bad we can't celebrated it more openly!

Your reaction, which is all too common, proves exactly one of my points that the literary world is extremely uptight, puritanical, and often engages in censorship. This is not a personal attack on you Darcy, it is an indictment of the powers that be in the literary world, and the powers that be in the literary world are tremendous obstacles to the creativeness of writers.

Perhaps your reaction is not much different than the reaction that many had to Lady Chatterley's Lover, Lolita, and many other books that were banned.

Again, I am not indicting you Darcy, I am indicting the literary world.

[hillwalker]

Your reaction, which is all too common, proves exactly one of my points that the literary world is extremely uptight, puritanical, and often engages in censorship. This is not a personal attack... it is an indictment of the powers that be in the literary world, and the powers that be in the literary world are tremendous obstacles to the creativeness of writers.

Perhaps you need to explore those corners of the 'literary world' that don't conform to your blinkered view. There's a lot of exciting stuff out there.

And as for your ground-breaking method of writing - 'stream of unconsciousness' was pioneered almost 100 years ago (have a look at Gertrude Stein's 'Tender Buttons' published in 1914). So you're not as revolutionary as you think.

H

[cafolini]

I think you are missing the point, here, Hill. I might not agree with Wolflarsen on creativity. But even if he said that word, meaning transformation, as I do, you can't take away a lot of what he is saying by simply labeling it. He's not doing any stream of conciouness here. People often think that if they can name or label something they achieved control over it. Thus useless catalogs were always born and stunk, and acted as canons to achieve too much putrifying stability on the possibilities of evolution and understanding of spheres outside catalogs.

[JCamilo]

JCamilo said:


This says everything! Porque Brazil e o melhor pais no mundo! Que sorte tem voce! Melhor voce mora aqui com os gringos no frio e eu moro la em Brazil em su lugar. Esta bom? Braaaaziiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiil!

You see, Camilo does not understand our anal-retentive obsession with Norton's anthology. How could he? He's Brazilian. Only anal-retentive Americans like myself or perhaps anal-retentive Englishmen could possibly understand this anal-retentive obsession with Norton's anthology.

I do not think you understand well. I have no problem to understand the american need to organize the market in cathegories, in status, in watever. Absolutely, It is very easy to understand.

Be it Norton, be it Harold Bloom, be It Oprah. Be it one of the hundred antologies of the universe. The point is that the international status of those authors cannt be achived by something so regional as Norton Anthologies. Take Shakespeare, way before Norton he was take in France by Voltaire and in germany by Goethe. Norton influence is just minimal, it is not just modern authors who will fail short from their listing, some olders too.

And this is very different from the capacity of an author to be canonized. Because Norton is more a reflex than a cause and some canonized authors are notorious for their little reading and there is a huge room for "underground" authors. If that is your revolution, then consider it done 3000 years ago. It is not because I am Brazilian, but you certainly need to build up a better argument to why an author has international fame than the boon of a regional groups.

[Darcy88]

Wolf, ever heard of Arthur Rimbaud? Or Whitman? Or Ginsberg? Ginsberg is really the nail in the coffin of your thesis. If the world of literature at all fit with your conception of it, Ginsberg would not be as famous and as widely read as he is. Non literary types are likely to know his name. Find me an individual who in person and in art presents a purer personification of nonconformity than that homo-sexual drug-using hippy Jew who wrote wild, wild poems back in the 50s.

You mention the Lady Chatterly Obscenity Trial. Oh, so you've heard. The walls you imagine to still stand were sent toppling down long ago. If a work is rejected now its because of its lack of quality, not its failure to conform. There is an astute liberal readership out there who will read anything of merit. To become a Rowling one must censor oneself, one must conform. But no true artist measures themselves according to such commercial standards. A true artist seeks recognition from other artists first and foremost, and then from a select group of tasteful art-lovers.


Very well said! Well done! And I love the run-on sentences. They will drive the traditionalists crazy!

I'm reading Blood Meridian, you know, the book which the establishment critic Harold Bloom has labeled the finest work written in the English language in 25 years, and it has sentences that run on for ages, at least in one instance for an entire page.

Darcy posted a poem which appeared to have a strong element of homosexual desire. I stayed with that theme. Homoerotic sexuality is not crude. Homoerotic sexuality is beautiful! It's too bad we can't celebrated it more openly!

WE CAN celebrate homosexuality openly these days. Ginsberg, Ginsberg, Ginsberg.


Your reaction, which is all too common, proves exactly one of my points that the literary world is extremely uptight, puritanical, and often engages in censorship. This is not a personal attack on you Darcy, it is an indictment of the powers that be in the literary world, and the powers that be in the literary world are tremendous obstacles to the creativeness of writers.


Yes Wolf, you got me. I reflect the uptight, puritanical spirit of today's publishing world. Me, a bisexual far-left radical atheist, so far left I've gone fallen off the wing, two of whose favourite writers are D.H Lawrence and Henry Miller. I actually to a degree liked your poem, but it is a poor degradation of the initial beauty and brilliance of Shakespeare's sonnet.

You mention Lolita too. Again, proof of how traditional strictures have been exploded.


Society is becoming more sexually puritanical again and less tolerant and more likely to engage in censorship of authors who do not self-censor themselves.

This one honestly made me laugh. Society is by all glaring signs becoming LESS and LESS sexually puritanical and inhibited. Turn on a television. Read the books that are written. Listen to the music. The 60s happened. The sexual mores of today make those of the 60s look Victorian.

Parts of the publishing world censor for sex, politics, convention. The literary world as a whole censors for quality. Perhaps this is your true beef.

[stlukesguild]

The goal of writing should not be to sell books, but to write the most innovative and exciting literature imaginable.

According to whom? Artists must pay their rent and utilities as much as anyone else.

Look at all the endless varieties of music! It almost seems that there are as many kinds of music as there are drops of water in the ocean!

What a different story when you go to the bookstore! In the literature section of the bookstore you will find only novels, short stories, and poetry.

Hmmmm... last time I went to a book store I found Novels, Short Stories, Epic Poetry, narrative Poetry, Lyrical Poetry, Philosophy, Theology, Art Criticism, Literary Criticism, Biographies, Histories, Travelogues, Romances, Comic Books, Graphic Novels, Essays, Pornography, Children's Books, and I could go on and on. It seems that either your bookstore sucks or you don't know half as much about literature as you would have people think.

It’s fine to write novels, short stories, and poetry – but why not invent new forms of literature as well?

Again, it seems that you have little real experience with what varieties of literature are available. Baudelaire, Rimbaud and on through W.S. Merwin have been playing with varieties of "prose poetry". J.L. Borges made a career of blurring the boundaries between fiction and non-fiction, science fiction and philosophy, the short story and literary criticism, etc... There are plenty of writers who have pushed the capabilities of the book and various literary forms, but since when has pushing the boundaries or inventing new art forms been the central goal of art and the artist?

One of the reasons literature is so limited is that it is still shackled to the major publishing conglomerates and the universities.

Oh... and the visual arts and music are not equally "shackled" by those institutions that control the flow of money? When has this never been so? When, in you fantasy world, do you imagine that artists will not be beholding to those with the money?

Publishing houses have one and only one purpose: to make money. They are hostile to innovation in literature, because publishing innovative literature involves risk.

Hmmm... and yet they continue to churn out books by Anne Carson and Geoffrey Hill and other poets who cannot begin to make money on the level of the best-sellers. They continue to publish new translations of the Shanameh and Beowulf because of the mass audience for those works?

Contemporary literature of quality needs a home – and that home is not and cannot be the publishing conglomerates – because today’s publishing conglomerates are only concerned with money.

You haven't learned the first reality of art, have you? Art follows money. Artists need money as well as anyone else and the arts have always thrived where there has been a strong financial support for the endeavors of the artists.

By a young age Picasso had assimilated the “masters” of the past – and he went on to create new brazen works of art – he departed from the past – and created wonderful CONTEMPORARY masterpieces.

And what is your point? Don't start citing Picasso unless you think you know enough about him and his artistic development to engage in a real discussion. Picasso in no way rejected the art of the past. Of all the artists of the century he was the one probably the most indebted to the existence of the modern museums. Picasso, like any talented artist, developed his own unique voice. As with many of his Modernist peers he developed a language that was quite different from his immediate predecessors. He did not do so in order to be innovative... he did so because he recognized that the time he lived in demanded a different visual language from that he had inherited from his immediate predecessors. This language, however was quite definitely built upon the achievements of his predecessors.

Mozart also mastered traditional styles of classical music – and he went on to create music that at his time was INNOVATIVE.

What are the "traditional styles of classical music"? If you know so much about classical music you will know that the composers a generation or two before Mozart were working at the height of the Baroque era. By the mid-1750's the shift was underway toward "classicism"... less display of virtuosity, a clarity of form, balance, elegance, and an avoidance of extremes of emotion. Mozart inherited a style already fully developed by J.S. Bach's sons, Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, and Johann Christian Bach, as well as Joseph and Michael Haydn, Baldassare Galuppi, Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, Christoph Willibald Gluck, etc... Mozart has never been deemed as a great innovator, such as Beethoven, Wagner, and Stravinsky, but rather as a composer who took existing forms to the highest level within the language of the classical era. Great art is not always about innovation. J.S. Bach (perhaps the most important figure in Western classical music) was not a great innovator. Neither was Johannes Brahms or Richard Strauss, and yet all remain central figures of classical music.

Hence, the truly great masters of the recent past – in music (Stravinsky, Mahler), painting (Dali, etc.), sculpture (Rodin) – produced great works that were INNOVATIVE and hence FRESH and EXCITING.

Yet Mahler was deeply rooted in the music of Wagner while Rodin owed much to Michelangelo, Donatello, and even Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux. Brahms was quite likely one of the most conservative composers of the late 19th century, firmly rooted in the music of Beethoven and rejecting all the innovations wrought by Wagner... and yet Brahms' achievements equal or surpass those of any composer of the era. Again, innovation is not the sole measure of art.

In contrast, those that worship the past tend to produce works that are stale and flat.

That's true... but only in the sense that 95%+ of all art is mediocre at best, and so the majority of those firmly rooted in tradition achieve little of any worth... but then again the majority of those iconoclasts who rush headlong into the "new" achieve little more than novelties that are soon dated and rightfully forgotten.

There are those that argue that first you must learn tradition to be a great writer. By all means I agree you should read as much “great” literature as possible – both traditional and contemporary. But then some of these same people will go on to say “learn the rules before you break them.”

Most art schools, creative writing departments, and departments of composition push contemporary works of art and contemporary ideas as much as they push the traditional... indeed, probably moreso.

Forget learning the rules unless you plan to write a conventional essay or a guide to used car repair. In creative literature go ahead and unshackle yourself from all rules! SMASH any and all rules with a sledgehammer, a wrecking ball, or better yet with a pen or a paintbrush! Works of literature, music, painting, etc, should obey no conventional rules whatsoever. If you feel the urge to have rules invent your own! Look at Schoenberg’s 12 tone scale!

You really don't understand art, do you? All of these great innovators you speak of had the greatest understanding, respects, and profound love of the achievements of their predecessors. Any art school... any creative writing department is full of sophomoric iconoclasts who can rant about revolutions is the arts with the best of them... but will never achieve the least thing of merit for the simple reason that the great innovations in the arts have never been wrought by iconoclasts ignorant and disrespectful of art, but rather by those artists with the deepest love and understanding of the artistic tradition they have inherited. Schoenberg was fully aware of the tradition of classical music... to the point that he could write the most masterful music in the Romantic style he inherited at a young age. His innovations were structured greatly upon the achievements of Wagner and Mahler and Debussy stretching the possibilities of chromaticism. He was also deeply indebted to Brahms' chamber works. Schoenberg simply took these to the logical conclusion... creating a music that conveyed the manner in which the old order was fragmenting in the same way that Cubism and T.S. Eliot's fragments conveyed such. His goal was continue the Austro-Germanic tradition of classical music... not to destroy it.

Let’s take grammar for example. Obeying the rules of grammar is fine if you’re writing a conventional essay or a manual about car repair. However, when you’re writing creative literature you should write as freely as possible – without rules.

Why? When you break the traditional rules you are forcing the audience to go outside the inherited artistic language. The question become: "To what purpose?" Breaking the rules simply for the sake of breaking the rules results in little more than meaningless novelty.

Certainly, if the reader is lazy, ignorant, or simply close-minded he may choose not to apply himself to any literature that is different than what he is used to. Such a person may be more comfortable reading an airport novel or one of the works of the past “greats”.

This has been the argument of those who have embraced the extremes of the avant-garde for nearly a century: it is all the audience's fault. They're lazy, ignorant, and stupid... unlike myself, the genius visionary artist. It makes for a great defense mechanism... if your art is rejected it is because the audience is too moronic to recognize a profound artistic prophet.

At times, such a person may have an advanced degree and consider themselves highly cultured and learned, but all those years reading literature that is conventional can make it harder for that person’s brain to concentrate on and grasp anything that’s written in a new and innovative manner.

My God! We got an answer for everything. If the masses don't like your work, it's because they are but idiots and bumpkins. If the critics, and academics, and others educated in literature don't like your writing, it's because they have become so accustomed to the "conventional" (and what exactly is the "conventional" in literature?) and so they are blind to your genius. You can't lose.

There are people who look at a Jackson Pollock canvas and say, “My five year old can do a better job than that.” Of course, such people are ignorant of art. Instead of studying art (which they don’t) they take their prejudices (which are pro-representational and pro-realism) and from a position of ignorance and prejudice they proclaim everything that doesn’t conform to their ignorant and prejudiced misconceptions of art to be bad. In the world of literature it is even worse. Those who are ignorant, prejudiced, and close-minded stand in judgment of what is “good literature”.

Everyone comes to art carrying a degree of ignorance and bias. Art employs a language and a vocabulary that must be learned prior to our understanding it. The artist who intentionally breaks outside of the boundaries of the inherited artistic tradition... the inherited language and vocabulary of a given culture recognizes that this will result in making his or her work more challenging and less accessible. To do so without purpose is merely pretentious.

Should the writer create works of “literature” easily accessible to even the most ignorant and close-minded of readers? Sure, if he wants to make money or be accepted by the conservative world of academia.

But of course you are above making money... unlike virtually every artist in the whole of history.

Frankly, I am rather disappointed with English literature and have ironically found greater inspiration for my writing outside of literature in the other arts (painting, sculpture, architecture, music, modern dance, postmodern theater, etc.). Many of the past “greats” that are in the canon of English literature are not so “great” at all.

Frankly, I couldn't care less about your opinions. You have not proven yourself with regards to your critical acumen to an extent that I could take your criticism seriously, and you certainly haven't proven your own writing ability as worthy of standing alongside any of the "greats" that you are so quick to dismiss. Indeed, without getting into specifics, you are but making broad sweeping generalizations that have no value whatsoever.

Many of the “great works” of English literature in the canon were written by “gentleman” with disposable income. Not all of them were talented or had much to say. Is a writer/poet’s work “great” just because it’s included in the Norton Anthology and the professor taught it in your literature 101 class?

Again, meaningless generalizations: Many of the "great works" were written by rich guys. They can't have had anything worth saying, can they?

Of course, some “great” works of the past are better than others. Some of these gentleman of leisure in the canon had talent – in addition to the work ethic necessary to produce great literature – but not all of them.

Many... some... more meaningless generalizations. Anyone can play at this game: "The majority of modern poetry is boring". Who are the "majority"? Why are they boring... and to whom?

Literature has not even begun to reach its potential. In fact, literature will not even begin to reach its potential until all of humanity has ample food in its stomach and plenty of free time.

Spoken like a true prophet. We all eagerly await this glowing future in which poverty and hunger (and undoubtedly warfare and violence and disease) have all been eradicated and we are all basking of the glow of an infinity of artistic genius.

The seed of talent falls where it may. Most of those who have disposable income without having to work for it and thus have plenty of free time to write are inborn, have little or no work ethic, and are of mediocre abilities – like the president of my country George Bush. Besides, the outlook of the leisure class is often conservative, so it would not occur to them to write literature that is innovative.

More generalities and stereotypes. I won't even waste my time going into composers, artists, and writers who were born wealthy... let alone those who became wealthy through their own efforts and yet continued to create. But doesn't this entire thought go against your earlier notion that real art isn't the product of a desire to make money? By this standard might we not say that those rich guys who didn't need to work... and didn't need to write to make money... approached their writing from a higher ethical position?

Most people are so engaged in the struggle for survival that they do not have the time to create innovative literature. When humanity is freed from its bondage to an economic system that benefits only a privileged few than a shorter workweek for all will make it possible for more people to create great works of literature, painting, sculpture, etc.

In a different kind of economy huge amounts of money will not be wasted on maintaining a class of worthless bourgeois bums

God! What pretension! The middle-class are all but bums... unlike the artistic genius such as yourself who contributes so much to society... by... by... staring at your navel?

With more money available culture, literature, and the arts would flourish more than ever – because we could improve the quality of education – including teaching more art in the schools – and offering free higher education to all. In such a society, we could also give a modest living stipend to writers and artists. And since more diverse parts of humanity would be free to create great literature – instead of just a small privileged leisure class – literature will have more variety and innovation than ever.

I gotta find out just what you've been drinking.

Thus freed from their chains to market forces and academia writers would be free to create a new innovative literature. A general population with a reduced workweek would have more time to read a new revolutionary literature that’s constantly changing and evolving.

Yep... I really gotta find out what you've been drinking.

Hence, human civilization is constantly evolving, and as civilization evolves so will literature. And just as human civilization has not even begun to reach its full potential, so the same is true for literature and the other arts.

Art changes as the artists respond to the world in which they live. Art does not get better or worse. Certainly there are periods and cultures... even cities that have produced more works of artistic genius than others but art is not like science in the manner that the least medical student today knows more about disease and its treatment than the greatest doctors of the 1500s. Perhaps if art never changed... if the goals and standards remained ever stagnant, then we might expect later generations to build upon the achievements of earlier... and surpass them. But such is not the reality. Art, as you suggest, is ever changing and artist will forever struggle in attempting to come to terms with the world and the artistic traditions they have inherited.

The best contemporary writers of creative literature – those who write today and will be read a hundred two hundred a thousand years from now – will not be those who copy the past but instead those who CONTRIBUTE to the DEVELOPMENT of literature. The writers who will be read a thousand years from now will be those who helped literature to advance.

Again... the goal is not the development of art. Painters don't sit about pondering how they might contribute to the development of painting. Painting... art... develops as artists respond to the world they live in. Some will dig deeper into the traditions they have inherited, others will turn the traditions on their heads in order to best convey what it is they have to express.

Traditionalists will argue that it is preferable and natural that literature remain the most backward and conservative medium of the art world. (Compare literature’s snail-like advancement to the great innovations in painting, sculpture, and the other arts since the beginning of modernism in the late 19th Century.) However, there is nothing positive about literature’s relative backwardness compared to the other arts. Even classical music in the past 120 years has left the literary world behind in innovation, boldness, and creativity! How pathetic!

Your comparison is simply sad because all it does is suggest little grasp of the very real achievements of literature, and very little grasp of just how rooted in the whole of the tradition of painting and classical music modern and contemporary painting and music remain.

Look – the reason that literature is so backward compared to the other arts can be explained by several simple reasons. The first is money. For a writer to make enough money to support himself comfortably he has to sell A LOT of books. A painter, on the other hand, needs only a few appreciative buyers to support himself.

Please! Stop now, before you make yourself look more and more foolish. What do you know of the costs incurred by a painter? What do I need to be a poet? A pencil and a notebook... perhaps a computer in the corner of a tiny apartment somewhere. How much does it cost to rent the studio space and pay for the utilities needed in order to have a place to paint? How much do canvases and stretchers coast? Of course I can get around these costs if I have a woodshop and the proper tools. But still the wood and canvas and primer add up. And how expensive is oil paint? Go price some cadmium red on the internet. And what of frames? And then all I gotta do is sell the work... but how do I meet those wealthy patrons who can afford to buy a painting... and how much do I actually need to sell in order to make anything approaching a decent income from a day job?

Thus, it is easier for the painter to paint whatever he wants. The painter may have to deal with galleries – but he doesn’t have to deal with publishing corporations.

The galleries ARE the same as the publishing houses. They are there to make money. They only show that which they believe they have an audience for. In return for connecting the artist with the buyer the galleries take between 30%-50% of the market price.

The painter doesn’t have to consider entertaining a large reading audience primarily looking for cheap entertainment like the writer does.

No... the visual artist must entertain the wealthy collector. Some are looking for something to communicate their wealth and stability. Others are looking for something that communicates their willingness to take chances. Still others are but bored and looking for something that shocks... for but a moment. A very few have a real eye for art.

Another conservatising influence (yes I probably just made up a word – good! We writers should make up words more often) – another conservatising influence on the literary world is the whole prestige game. You get your work in certain prestigious “literary” magazines, get nominated for certain prestigious “literary” awards, etc. – and suddenly you’re considered a “great” writer/poet.

How does this differ from any other art form? If I am given a one-man show at certain prestigious galleries I will certainly be taken seriously by the art press and art collectors. If I am able to demand a certain price and I can get into the museums, my reputation is certainly assured (for at least my lifetime). If the Berlin Philharmonic performs my composition, I will suddenly be in demand. If I am recorded on Deutsche Gramophone with the London Philharmonic, I will assuredly be recognized as a leading figure in music.

The pages of many (not all) of the most prestigious literary magazines are filled with excrement masquerading as great literature that doesn’t even qualify as mediocre – it’s just plain bad, conservative, and bland.

And...? The art galleries are filled with equally excretory works as are the concerts of contemporary classical music.

The same is true for many “literary” awards. An “avant-garde” poet received a very large monetary award recently. I won’t name him here – but his work was so conservative, so dull, so devoid of innovation, so much like a zillion other poems you see everywhere that I don’t see how his poetry could be considered “avant-garde”. I guess for the people giving out the prestigious awards and the money anything that doesn’t rhyme is considered “avant-garde”.

Again with the generalities. By not naming this poet your complaint is meaningless and comes off as nothing more or less than petty envy.

It would be a great day for literature if all writers and poets started using the pages of the prestigious literary magazines as toilet paper. We don’t need the editors of the prestigious “literary” magazines to showcase great literature because they don’t even know what literature is – let alone great literature. The same can be said of those who give out prestigious “literary” awards – but maybe I shouldn’t say that – sometimes they actually give money to people who write good poetry!

More generalities and petty envy.

With the technology print-on-demand books that are not commercial can now be made available to the general public. For the first time ever the general public can purchase and read all kinds of works of literature that were never available before.

Technology is changing the game in how literature, music, film, and art are marketed. There is no profound revelation there. Most artists recognize this and struggle with trying to come to terms with the new technologies. The notion that this represents some Utopian future in which the artist will be in complete control of his or her endeavors is naive in the least.

Something you may want to ask yourself is – why do you write? Do you write to make money? Do you write for prestige and acclaim? Do you write with the opinions of others in mind? Or do you write because you have to create?

Gee! Thanks Wolf. I don't know what we would have done without you. I mean surely none of us who create works of art of any genre had even thought to ever sit down and ask ourselves just what our goals were.

If the reason that you write is that you have to create than money, prestige, and the opinions of others are all secondary. Creating innovative works of literature is probably not going to make you money or give you prestige and acclaim anytime soon. And like many others who were creative – like Gauguin, Mahler, Rodin, etc. – you will receive endless harsh attacks.

Gauguin did? I thought he was largely ignored and ended up dying in French Polynesia of a combination of syphilis, morphine, and a weak heart. Even then he was supported by the leading Parisian dealer, Ambroise Vollard. Mahler? His own music seems to have had responses. The public seems to have quite liked his music (to the point that by his death there had been over 260 performances of his symphonies across Europe and the US), but critics and many musicians and singers were resentful of his dictatorial conducting style which insisted on the highest standards. And Rodin? He struggled early on... as most artists do, but by mid-career he was awarded endless official and private commissions as well as awards and prizes. While still alive, his studio/home was officially converted into the Musée Rodin.

Let others make all the money from their airport novels, let others receive all the prestige and acclaim for their conventional banal “poetry”. Let others receive all the applause for their conservative traditional works written in “good taste”. Their work will wither into dust over time. A hundred years from now no one will be reading their novels, poems, and plays.

Nor will they be reading 95%+ of the stuff written by those aspiring to be "serious" writers revolutionizing literature. In the mean time, the artist/writer needs to pay rent and support his or her family.

Nearly everything ever painted, sculpted, or written in “good taste” later withered and died with time. “Good taste” is nothing more than what is in fashion at the time – and as time passes what was in “good taste” centuries ago becomes trivial.

Yesterday's "good taste" is today's "avant garde" and "shock art".

Many of the masters of the past in literature, painting, sculpture, and music were nothing less than innovators and revolutionaries in their time. Their work often caused controversy because they were not enslaved to tradition. They did not care about “good taste”. They could give a damn about the opinions of others.

Neither could they care the least about manifestos proscribing what art is... including your own.

The literary world as a whole censors for quality. Perhaps this is your true beef.

:iagree::hand:

[osho]

Perhaps you need to explore those corners of the 'literary world' that don't conform to your blinkered view. There's a lot of exciting stuff out there.

And as for your ground-breaking method of writing - 'stream of unconsciousness' was pioneered almost 100 years ago (have a look at Gertrude Stein's 'Tender Buttons' published in 1914). So you're not as revolutionary as you think.

H


I have read Wolf's To the Light House and I read repeatedly and I found them unappealing though she wrote to experiment with something innovative. She skipped over the traditionalist way and yet she complicated the literary style more and making her books unreadable and more academic that could be just the text book type for some literary critics to work on or pride over their pedantic knowledge. And why not literature simple and why philosophy, art should be within the grab of the few pedants only. I have tried to read Ulysses like hell and finally I gave up. I have a choice and I can enjoy some lighter stuffs and even Tolstoy is simple, Dostoevsky is not that tough. These few weirdo think they are above and beyond the reach of the common reader like myself. I hate to wrack my mind with their trashy ideas and this thread starter has something to share, some revolutionary ideas that lays before me endless possibilities and I enjoy reading such stuffs and indeed we live not in a classical age and we have different values, many things to do with a very little time at hand

[hillwalker]

I think you are missing the point, here, Hill. I might not agree with Wolflarsen on creativity. But even if he said that word, meaning transformation, as I do, you can't take away a lot of what he is saying by simply labeling it. He's not doing any stream of conciouness here. People often think that if they can name or label something they achieved control over it.

I’m afraid I disagree. I’m not attempting to undermine his arguments by labelling the way Wolf Larsen writes (and so achieve control over it - how ludicrous would that be).

To quote the man himself:


I write the words as they enter my head. In the speed of lightning the phrases throw themselves from my head to the page. There is no attempt at being crude. What it was written is natural. If I change them to be less "crude" I would be censoring myself.

Most would call that method of writing ‘stream of consciousness’ – it’s not belittling what he is doing by describing it in such terms. And it’s interesting to note that Gertrude Stein herself detested the term ‘stream of consciousness’. She resisted attempts to pigeon-hole her style, insisting she was writing ‘stream of unconsciousness’ literature because there was no conscious effort made to guide her creative flow. Does that ring any bells?

I commend Wolf’s endeavours to extend literature beyond conventional limits. But he’s confusing editing with censorship and populist writing with literature. His mission to change the world is doomed at the first step because he has no comprehension of what it is he is trying to change. Insisting the ‘literary world’ still adheres to Victorian values is absurd. Charges of obscenity and blasphemy have no doubt been aimed at the ‘literary world’ by conventional, secular (non-literary) society since man learned to write. Surely the criminal case against Lady Chatterley’s Lover would never have come about had it not been published by the ‘literary world’. Dismissing most literature that predates his oeuvre as puritanical and short-sighted is ridiculous.

I agree that much of mainstream (‘airport’) literature is deplorable. Celebrities cashing in on their names by ‘writing’ an updated autobiography each year, formulaic thrillers and undemanding, pretentious fluff that passes as contemporary fiction. But it’s not the fault of the ‘literary world’ that these books sell better than material that makes demands on its readers. The media is desperate to support dumbing down. An audience that is easier to please is cheaper to entertain. It’s all about the dollar.

Wolf’s writing attempts to defy description – but basically he’s displaying atrocity as an art form. It’s already been done before: Luis Bunuel, David Cronenberg, David Lynch, Francis Bacon, Heironymous Bosch, Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Christopher Brookmyre, J G Ballard… I could go on. But the one thing that all the above have in common is talent. Without talent it is pointless trying to revolutionise literature – unless Wolf is advocating more dumbing down (which seems to contradict what he has set out to do).

Which brings us perhaps to what he is really trying to do. His guerrilla tactics to undermine any attempts on these pages to critique work subjectively is certainly anti-establishment. Presumably he considers me a fuddy-duddy because I won’t put up with lazy or shoddy writing. He has recently suggested to a number of aspiring writers on here that they ignore well-intentioned, constructive criticism because altering their work is conforming to the puritanical norm. They are giving in to literary censorship by accepting advice. How is that going to help anyone? It certainly isn’t going to allow those who have requested feedback to develop their writing skills. It’s merely promoting the misguided idea that everyone is a genius.

Is any editor going to suggest to Stephen King that he cut down on his flannel, or plead with James Paterson that he learn the basic skills of writing and stop churning out drivel? No, because neither feels obliged to answer their critics any more. They earn their publishers millions. Wolf seems to be of a similar mindset… except that he has yet to sell books by the container load. His attempts to hijack these forums in order to promote this misguided agenda that anything goes, and his one-man mission to revolutionise (or is that destroy?) the medium that so far has been intent on not publishing his masterpieces is desperate and will prove to be self-defeating.

Talent will out.

H

[JCamilo]

That description is also very similar to surrealism ideal, Breton, Bataile and others...


Please! Stop now, before you make yourself look more and more foolish. What do you know of the costs incurred by a painter? What do I need to be a poet? A pencil and a notebook... perhaps a computer in the corner of a tiny apartment somewhere. How much does it cost to rent the studio space and pay for the utilities needed in order to have a place to paint? How much do canvases and stretchers coast? Of course I can get around these costs if I have a woodshop and the proper tools. But still the wood and canvas and primer add up. And how expensive is oil paint? Go price some cadmium red on the internet. And what of frames? And then all I gotta do is sell the work... but how do I meet those wealthy patrons who can afford to buy a painting... and how much do I actually need to sell in order to make anything approaching a decent income from a day job?

Now, now Stlukes, while his idea is illogical and again he mistakes the editorial market for the world of literature (seems to not understand the academic world is not very keen to the best-sellers, but thinks they work to together to make us read J.k.Rowling and Shakespeare at the sametime), the cost of a product has little to do with how much a painter must waste with canvas and pretty colors and the poet with clouds. It is simple an old rule of market: if you can have 2000 books for 2000 buyers, it will be cheaper if you have as single canva for 2000 buyers who will lift the price up in attempt to collect it.

However, it is to note, that a painter that have only one buyer - his loving mother - will get 15 cents, a cake and a kiss for his art, so, the vallue of an painting increases with the public that has interest on buying it just like a writer.

And of course, there is many painters (and lets here add anyone who works with visual arts and illustrations) receive money like writers, as their are part of the industrial process: book illustrators, comic book artists, animation illustradors, video game illustradors, etc.

But the main question is why who you sell and to whom you work have anything to do with who will be reading you in 100 years? Canonization never gave a cent about popularity, fame or personal success, even because the form of mainstream market changes with economical models, so back in Dante days, he had less public than however painted the chappel and of course, which artist have wider audience than the archictetes?

[WolfLarsen]

There are posters who appear to misunderstand what I have said. When did I say I invented stream of consciousness? I never said that.

One poster even took issue with posters (like myself) disagreeing with his comments on the works of others. I don't have the right to my opinion according to him.

I have the right to have my own opinion and express it, or perhaps I am naive enough to believe so. I'm still not convinced that everyone in the canon is great.

Last night I came across the works of two different writers whose work was far more interesting than ANYTHING I read in my years of formal education. Of course, I only have a BA in English literature so there are others with more advanced degrees who know more than I do about the canon. All I'm saying is that it is not uncommon for me to come across very un-famous writers on the Internet whose writing is far more creative than anything I read during 16 years of formal education.

It seems to me that we are living in a very exciting time for literature. Generations of public schooling has made the general population more literate than ever, and some of those individuals are very talented. The Internet makes their work available.

God forbid you should argue that there are unknown contemporary writers on the Internet who are better than Shakespeare. There are those who will form a lynch mob and nail you to the cross.

[hillwalker]

One poster even took issue with posters (like myself) disagreeing with his comments on the works of others. I don't have the right to my opinion according to him.

That's me of course, but the gist of your statement is untrue and you know it. If you read my responses on these forums you will see I uphold the right of everyone to share their opinions on here (WolfLarson included).

What I took issue with was your childish line by line dismissal of every comment I had made in one particular posting, negating each and every comment I made, If that's your unsubtle way of disagreeing with my opinions by trolling then yes, I'll take issue with it. Grow up.

H

[cafolini]

Haha stlukesguild, you have it all wrapped up in celophane. Put a bow on it and deliver to the wing of packaged gifts.

[stlukesguild]

I have read Wolf's To the Light House and I read repeatedly and I found them unappealing though she wrote to experiment with something innovative. She skipped over the traditionalist way and yet she complicated the literary style more and making her books unreadable and more academic that could be just the text book type for some literary critics to work on or pride over their pedantic knowledge. And why not literature simple and why philosophy, art should be within the grab of the few pedants only. I have tried to read Ulysses like hell and finally I gave up.

osho- I will argue that neither Woolf nor Joyce engaged in mere experimentation for the sake of being new. There were larger goals, and certainly both writers were more than aware and skillful in the use of traditional approaches to writing. Hermann Hesse (I believe it was in an introduction to The Steppenwolf) suggested that as an artist one must write in the vocabulary of the time. He admits he would have preferred to have continued in the path of the great 19th century novelists such as Dostoevsky, but he recognized that he could not. He needed to write in the vocabulary of the time... however debased that vocabulary was. Imagine early Modernism... a period when the old truths were coming apart at the seams: religion, aristocracy... science and industry were pushing forward at a hitherto unknown rate.

Is it not then surprising that so many major artists sought out an art form that employed the use of fragmentation: the fragmentation of Cubism, the fragmentation of the narrative in Joyce, T.S. Eliot, Faulkner, etc..., the fragmentation of collage and assemblage, the fragmentation of Eisenstein's montages in film or Murnau's fractured forms, the fragmentation of traditional tonality... the loss of a home base (the key) in the music of Schoenberg and Berg, and Webern? This has nothing to do with novelty or innovation for the mere sake of innovation. Of course there were similar iconoclasts. The Italian painter, Marinetti called for the destruction of all the museums and the destruction of the old order through the "cleansing" power of warfare. How many remember Marinetti? The architect, Adolf Loos declared that ornament was crime in his attack upon Gustav Klimt. Klimt's Kiss remains the single most reproduced painting in the history of art and he remains the single most beloved Austrian painter and one of the most beloved of the whole of Modernism... and who is Loos?

I have a choice and I can enjoy some lighter stuffs and even Tolstoy is simple, Dostoevsky is not that tough. These few weirdo think they are above and beyond the reach of the common reader like myself. I hate to wrack my mind with their trashy ideas and this thread starter has something to share, some revolutionary ideas that lays before me endless possibilities and I enjoy reading such stuffs and indeed we live not in a classical age and we have different values, many things to do with a very little time at hand.

Again, I don't think Joyce and Woolf were writing with the idea of being above or looking down upon the common reader. Have you read Woolf's essays? The Common Reader is beautifully written and highly accessible... and suggests that she is not seeking out some elite audience but rather an audience of the well-informed or experienced common reader. Woolf and Joyce undoubtedly were writing for an audience like themselves as most artists create for an audience that they imagine as being like themselves. The problem with later writers and artists of the avant-garde is that they imagine themselves as some elite above or beyond the masses, and as such they may end in creating art in which the only dialog they are having is with other artists within their academic clique.

Picasso suggested that one avoids stagnation and produces of of real merit (and innovation) in the same way as the Renaissance princes produced heirs: a merger of the aristocratic and the peasant... a merger of the inherited tradition of high art and the "low" or popular culture around one.

[Darcy88]

The Dionysian is complimented by the Apollonian. The wise know the difference between freedom and chaos.

[cafolini]

stlukesguild. I don't think you have an idea of how pedantic and flatulent your stuff is.
If you want to be a historical collector, be my guest. There is a lot to benefit from that. But your idea of knowledge cannot be based on a museum's basement.

[JCamilo]

Wolf,
the only person that is upset because his own opinion (or your own experience, as it seems you are very lucky to find genius of literature every day) is refused is you. Any argument others presented you dismiss as snobs or because they have been culturally dominated, or because they are an elite and you go and repeat some good-hearted incoherences.

You may think you are respecting other people opinions, but the right to have opinions do not make it right and is in fact a bit of disrespectuful if you just consider irrelevant all others say. There is nothing revolutionary in what you say, it is pure idealistic romanticism and like hillwalker pointed, you didnt invent anything, you are just repeating something old.

I am sure you will find another two genius before your next reply, but do not bother, i am sure if you were alive in XVI century, we would have discovered at least more 12 better writers than Shakespeare.

[OrphanPip]

Darcy posted a poem which appeared to have a strong element of homosexual desire. I stayed with that theme. Homoerotic sexuality is not crude. Homoerotic sexuality is beautiful! It's too bad we can't celebrated it more openly!

Your reaction, which is all too common, proves exactly one of my points that the literary world is extremely uptight, puritanical, and often engages in censorship. This is not a personal attack on you Darcy, it is an indictment of the powers that be in the literary world, and the powers that be in the literary world are tremendous obstacles to the creativeness of writers.

Perhaps your reaction is not much different than the reaction that many had to Lady Chatterley's Lover, Lolita, and many other books that were banned.

Again, I am not indicting you Darcy, I am indicting the literary world.

Ugh, please don't try and pass that off as an example of your open-mindedness to differing sexualities.

Besides there is an entire academic discipline (Queer Theory, which itself built out of sexuality studies from the 80s) dedicated to looking at the representation of sexuality and difference in literature.

Canons are relative to an extent, in that they depend on certain spheres of reference: a Western Canon needs to be built while looking at the influence within a Western context. This is why we can legitimately build genre canons, and there are established gay and lesbian literary canons that may or may not overlap with the mainstream English language canon.

Take a gay writer like Edmund White, who holds a faculty post at Princeton. His novels are explicitly sexual, and his personal views on sexuality would be fringe even for the gay community. Yet his books get reviewed in the New York Times, and one of his novels was included on Bloom's canon. Certainly, the sexual content of White's novels will keep him from being a mainstream best seller, but it hasn't stopped him from being a successful writer.

And then in the mainstream, you have an author like Michael Cunningham, who is a best seller and is gay. And then there is plenty of garbage produced merely for the consumption of the general gay readership, which is just as bad as heterosexual pulp romances.

It's like you're arguing against the 1950s.

[Darcy88]

stlukesguild. I don't think you have an idea of how pedantic and flatulent your stuff is.
If you want to be a historical collector, be my guest. There is a lot to benefit from that. But your idea of knowledge cannot be based on a museum's basement.

Please spare us Cafolini. SLG went paragraph by paragraph highlighting the many specific flaws in Wolf's essay. I was hoping someone with a fuller knoweldge of art than I possess would do precisely that.

Talk about flatulence. Lay off the beans Caf. Your comment that Shakespeare is not one of the greats was a fart for the ages.

[cafolini]

Please spare us Cafolini. SLG went paragraph by paragraph highlighting the many specific flaws in Wolf's essay. I was hoping someone with a fuller knoweldge of art than I possess would do precisely that.

Talk about flatulence. Lay off the beans Caf. Your comment that Shakespeare is not one of the greats was a fart for the ages.

Understood, Darcy. But "us," who is "us?" Speak for yourself.
I have a lot of knowledge of art that I don't need to use as a show of flaws of anyone. A man does not need a lot of knowledge of art to argue against a petition for postmodern art. And the man doesn't know that this is a world for the common man, who has little concern for things of the past or canons of the past. Marketting is the fine arts of today and it doesn't attend to any elite or aristocracy that led to the situations prior to 1945. Wolflarsen is only a little shortsighted as to the fact that the revolution he asks for has already happened and that modernism is already in a museum to never come back as canon. Not even the NeoThis or Neothat are coming back. Rennaissant modernism kicked the bucket.
The only danger in Wolflarsen words is that he praises individualism while it is no longer possible. The current is going more and more toward teamwork in every sphere.
Shakespeare to Venice, to cry nostalgia.

[Aspirational]

Oh, and somebody submitted a rather decent poem by Shakespeare for review:



I had some fun with that poem for ten minutes and this is what I came up with:

When we fly like disgrace through each other's eyes,
I all alone weep like falling nuclear missiles,
And trouble falls up to heaven like some skyscraper’s orgasm,
I look upon all the thousands of hallucinations of myself, and curse my brains,
Wishing me to be rich with millions of huge vaginas,
Featured like millions of McDonald's hamburgers rolling into Shakespeare's mouth,
Desiring this man's correct grammatical structure around my penis,
With what I most enjoy like a NASA rocket blasting through my brains
Yet in whose thoughts I feel the despisement of millions of pigeons,
Happy I think on his penis & anus & smile like a bisexual euphoria,
Like 365 days arising & crashing & breaking open,
From a sullen earth that sings all its billions of cadavers at Heaven's Gate,
For my sweet semen in a man's mouth is the greatest wealth of all things,
And let's lynch all the kings

Anybody else want to kick around some Shakespeare?

Can you really expect anyone to take you seriously after this? You've just demonstrated:

1. A complete lack of talent
2. A complete lack of understanding
3. A complete lack of respect (for someone clearly far beyond your ability to comprehend, much less match in writing)
4. A desire to pretend that you're furthering your own argument by demonstrating the above 3

It's almost as if you're not taking yourself seriously.

[Darcy88]

And the man doesn't know that this is a world for the common man, who has little concern for things of the past or canons of the past.

Say what?

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Understood, Darcy. But "us," who is "us?" Speak for yourself.
I'll throw my hat in with Darcy, so her use of "us" is completely valid.


I have a lot of knowledge of art that I don't need to use as a show of flaws of anyone. A man does not need a lot of knowledge of art to argue against a petition for postmodern art. And the man doesn't know that this is a world for the common man, who has little concern for things of the past or canons of the past. Marketting is the fine arts of today and it doesn't attend to any elite or aristocracy that led to the situations prior to 1945. Wolflarsen is only a little shortsighted as to the fact that the revolution he asks for has already happened and that modernism is already in a museum to never come back as canon. Not even the NeoThis or Neothat are coming back. Rennaissant modernism kicked the bucket.
The only danger in Wolflarsen words is that he praises individualism while it is no longer possible. The current is going more and more toward teamwork in every sphere.
Shakespeare to Venice, to cry nostalgia.
You know, StLuke's posts may be a little lengthy at times, but at least he's coherent.

[Darcy88]

I'll throw my hat in with Darcy, so her use of "us" is completely valid.

You know, StLuke's posts may be a little lengthy at times, but at least he's coherent.

I'm a guy. Thanks though, and I agree with what you insinuate at the end there.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Whoops, sorry about that Darcy. Gender noted. :D

[Aspirational]

The goal of writing should not be to sell books, but to write the most innovative and exciting literature imaginable.

According to whom? Artists must pay their rent and utilities as much as anyone else.

Look at all the endless varieties of music! It almost seems that there are as many kinds of music as there are drops of water in the ocean!

What a different story when you go to the bookstore! In the literature section of the bookstore you will find only novels, short stories, and poetry.

Hmmmm... last time I went to a book store I found Novels, Short Stories, Epic Poetry, narrative Poetry, Lyrical Poetry, Philosophy, Theology, Art Criticism, Literary Criticism, Biographies, Histories, Travelogues, Romances, Comic Books, Graphic Novels, Essays, Pornography, Children's Books, and I could go on and on. It seems that either your bookstore sucks or you don't know half as much about literature as you would have people think.

It’s fine to write novels, short stories, and poetry – but why not invent new forms of literature as well?

Again, it seems that you have little real experience with what varieties of literature are available. Baudelaire, Rimbaud and on through W.S. Merwin have been playing with varieties of "prose poetry". J.L. Borges made a career of blurring the boundaries between fiction and non-fiction, science fiction and philosophy, the short story and literary criticism, etc... There are plenty of writers who have pushed the capabilities of the book and various literary forms, but since when has pushing the boundaries or inventing new art forms been the central goal of art and the artist?

One of the reasons literature is so limited is that it is still shackled to the major publishing conglomerates and the universities.

Oh... and the visual arts and music are not equally "shackled" by those institutions that control the flow of money? When has this never been so? When, in you fantasy world, do you imagine that artists will not be beholding to those with the money?

Publishing houses have one and only one purpose: to make money. They are hostile to innovation in literature, because publishing innovative literature involves risk.

Hmmm... and yet they continue to churn out books by Anne Carson and Geoffrey Hill and other poets who cannot begin to make money on the level of the best-sellers. They continue to publish new translations of the Shanameh and Beowulf because of the mass audience for those works?

Contemporary literature of quality needs a home – and that home is not and cannot be the publishing conglomerates – because today’s publishing conglomerates are only concerned with money.

You haven't learned the first reality of art, have you? Art follows money. Artists need money as well as anyone else and the arts have always thrived where there has been a strong financial support for the endeavors of the artists.

By a young age Picasso had assimilated the “masters” of the past – and he went on to create new brazen works of art – he departed from the past – and created wonderful CONTEMPORARY masterpieces.

And what is your point? Don't start citing Picasso unless you think you know enough about him and his artistic development to engage in a real discussion. Picasso in no way rejected the art of the past. Of all the artists of the century he was the one probably the most indebted to the existence of the modern museums. Picasso, like any talented artist, developed his own unique voice. As with many of his Modernist peers he developed a language that was quite different from his immediate predecessors. He did not do so in order to be innovative... he did so because he recognized that the time he lived in demanded a different visual language from that he had inherited from his immediate predecessors. This language, however was quite definitely built upon the achievements of his predecessors.

Mozart also mastered traditional styles of classical music – and he went on to create music that at his time was INNOVATIVE.

What are the "traditional styles of classical music"? If you know so much about classical music you will know that the composers a generation or two before Mozart were working at the height of the Baroque era. By the mid-1750's the shift was underway toward "classicism"... less display of virtuosity, a clarity of form, balance, elegance, and an avoidance of extremes of emotion. Mozart inherited a style already fully developed by J.S. Bach's sons, Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, and Johann Christian Bach, as well as Joseph and Michael Haydn, Baldassare Galuppi, Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, Christoph Willibald Gluck, etc... Mozart has never been deemed as a great innovator, such as Beethoven, Wagner, and Stravinsky, but rather as a composer who took existing forms to the highest level within the language of the classical era. Great art is not always about innovation. J.S. Bach (perhaps the most important figure in Western classical music) was not a great innovator. Neither was Johannes Brahms or Richard Strauss, and yet all remain central figures of classical music.

Hence, the truly great masters of the recent past – in music (Stravinsky, Mahler), painting (Dali, etc.), sculpture (Rodin) – produced great works that were INNOVATIVE and hence FRESH and EXCITING.

Yet Mahler was deeply rooted in the music of Wagner while Rodin owed much to Michelangelo, Donatello, and even Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux. Brahms was quite likely one of the most conservative composers of the late 19th century, firmly rooted in the music of Beethoven and rejecting all the innovations wrought by Wagner... and yet Brahms' achievements equal or surpass those of any composer of the era. Again, innovation is not the sole measure of art.

In contrast, those that worship the past tend to produce works that are stale and flat.

That's true... but only in the sense that 95%+ of all art is mediocre at best, and so the majority of those firmly rooted in tradition achieve little of any worth... but then again the majority of those iconoclasts who rush headlong into the "new" achieve little more than novelties that are soon dated and rightfully forgotten.

There are those that argue that first you must learn tradition to be a great writer. By all means I agree you should read as much “great” literature as possible – both traditional and contemporary. But then some of these same people will go on to say “learn the rules before you break them.”

Most art schools, creative writing departments, and departments of composition push contemporary works of art and contemporary ideas as much as they push the traditional... indeed, probably moreso.

Forget learning the rules unless you plan to write a conventional essay or a guide to used car repair. In creative literature go ahead and unshackle yourself from all rules! SMASH any and all rules with a sledgehammer, a wrecking ball, or better yet with a pen or a paintbrush! Works of literature, music, painting, etc, should obey no conventional rules whatsoever. If you feel the urge to have rules invent your own! Look at Schoenberg’s 12 tone scale!

You really don't understand art, do you? All of these great innovators you speak of had the greatest understanding, respects, and profound love of the achievements of their predecessors. Any art school... any creative writing department is full of sophomoric iconoclasts who can rant about revolutions is the arts with the best of them... but will never achieve the least thing of merit for the simple reason that the great innovations in the arts have never been wrought by iconoclasts ignorant and disrespectful of art, but rather by those artists with the deepest love and understanding of the artistic tradition they have inherited. Schoenberg was fully aware of the tradition of classical music... to the point that he could write the most masterful music in the Romantic style he inherited at a young age. His innovations were structured greatly upon the achievements of Wagner and Mahler and Debussy stretching the possibilities of chromaticism. He was also deeply indebted to Brahms' chamber works. Schoenberg simply took these to the logical conclusion... creating a music that conveyed the manner in which the old order was fragmenting in the same way that Cubism and T.S. Eliot's fragments conveyed such. His goal was continue the Austro-Germanic tradition of classical music... not to destroy it.

Let’s take grammar for example. Obeying the rules of grammar is fine if you’re writing a conventional essay or a manual about car repair. However, when you’re writing creative literature you should write as freely as possible – without rules.

Why? When you break the traditional rules you are forcing the audience to go outside the inherited artistic language. The question become: "To what purpose?" Breaking the rules simply for the sake of breaking the rules results in little more than meaningless novelty.

Certainly, if the reader is lazy, ignorant, or simply close-minded he may choose not to apply himself to any literature that is different than what he is used to. Such a person may be more comfortable reading an airport novel or one of the works of the past “greats”.

This has been the argument of those who have embraced the extremes of the avant-garde for nearly a century: it is all the audience's fault. They're lazy, ignorant, and stupid... unlike myself, the genius visionary artist. It makes for a great defense mechanism... if your art is rejected it is because the audience is too moronic to recognize a profound artistic prophet.

At times, such a person may have an advanced degree and consider themselves highly cultured and learned, but all those years reading literature that is conventional can make it harder for that person’s brain to concentrate on and grasp anything that’s written in a new and innovative manner.

My God! We got an answer for everything. If the masses don't like your work, it's because they are but idiots and bumpkins. If the critics, and academics, and others educated in literature don't like your writing, it's because they have become so accustomed to the "conventional" (and what exactly is the "conventional" in literature?) and so they are blind to your genius. You can't lose.

There are people who look at a Jackson Pollock canvas and say, “My five year old can do a better job than that.” Of course, such people are ignorant of art. Instead of studying art (which they don’t) they take their prejudices (which are pro-representational and pro-realism) and from a position of ignorance and prejudice they proclaim everything that doesn’t conform to their ignorant and prejudiced misconceptions of art to be bad. In the world of literature it is even worse. Those who are ignorant, prejudiced, and close-minded stand in judgment of what is “good literature”.

Everyone comes to art carrying a degree of ignorance and bias. Art employs a language and a vocabulary that must be learned prior to our understanding it. The artist who intentionally breaks outside of the boundaries of the inherited artistic tradition... the inherited language and vocabulary of a given culture recognizes that this will result in making his or her work more challenging and less accessible. To do so without purpose is merely pretentious.

Should the writer create works of “literature” easily accessible to even the most ignorant and close-minded of readers? Sure, if he wants to make money or be accepted by the conservative world of academia.

But of course you are above making money... unlike virtually every artist in the whole of history.

Frankly, I am rather disappointed with English literature and have ironically found greater inspiration for my writing outside of literature in the other arts (painting, sculpture, architecture, music, modern dance, postmodern theater, etc.). Many of the past “greats” that are in the canon of English literature are not so “great” at all.

Frankly, I couldn't care less about your opinions. You have not proven yourself with regards to your critical acumen to an extent that I could take your criticism seriously, and you certainly haven't proven your own writing ability as worthy of standing alongside any of the "greats" that you are so quick to dismiss. Indeed, without getting into specifics, you are but making broad sweeping generalizations that have no value whatsoever.

Many of the “great works” of English literature in the canon were written by “gentleman” with disposable income. Not all of them were talented or had much to say. Is a writer/poet’s work “great” just because it’s included in the Norton Anthology and the professor taught it in your literature 101 class?

Again, meaningless generalizations: Many of the "great works" were written by rich guys. They can't have had anything worth saying, can they?

Of course, some “great” works of the past are better than others. Some of these gentleman of leisure in the canon had talent – in addition to the work ethic necessary to produce great literature – but not all of them.

Many... some... more meaningless generalizations. Anyone can play at this game: "The majority of modern poetry is boring". Who are the "majority"? Why are they boring... and to whom?

Literature has not even begun to reach its potential. In fact, literature will not even begin to reach its potential until all of humanity has ample food in its stomach and plenty of free time.

Spoken like a true prophet. We all eagerly await this glowing future in which poverty and hunger (and undoubtedly warfare and violence and disease) have all been eradicated and we are all basking of the glow of an infinity of artistic genius.

The seed of talent falls where it may. Most of those who have disposable income without having to work for it and thus have plenty of free time to write are inborn, have little or no work ethic, and are of mediocre abilities – like the president of my country George Bush. Besides, the outlook of the leisure class is often conservative, so it would not occur to them to write literature that is innovative.

More generalities and stereotypes. I won't even waste my time going into composers, artists, and writers who were born wealthy... let alone those who became wealthy through their own efforts and yet continued to create. But doesn't this entire thought go against your earlier notion that real art isn't the product of a desire to make money? By this standard might we not say that those rich guys who didn't need to work... and didn't need to write to make money... approached their writing from a higher ethical position?

Most people are so engaged in the struggle for survival that they do not have the time to create innovative literature. When humanity is freed from its bondage to an economic system that benefits only a privileged few than a shorter workweek for all will make it possible for more people to create great works of literature, painting, sculpture, etc.

In a different kind of economy huge amounts of money will not be wasted on maintaining a class of worthless bourgeois bums

God! What pretension! The middle-class are all but bums... unlike the artistic genius such as yourself who contributes so much to society... by... by... staring at your navel?

With more money available culture, literature, and the arts would flourish more than ever – because we could improve the quality of education – including teaching more art in the schools – and offering free higher education to all. In such a society, we could also give a modest living stipend to writers and artists. And since more diverse parts of humanity would be free to create great literature – instead of just a small privileged leisure class – literature will have more variety and innovation than ever.

I gotta find out just what you've been drinking.

Thus freed from their chains to market forces and academia writers would be free to create a new innovative literature. A general population with a reduced workweek would have more time to read a new revolutionary literature that’s constantly changing and evolving.

Yep... I really gotta find out what you've been drinking.

Hence, human civilization is constantly evolving, and as civilization evolves so will literature. And just as human civilization has not even begun to reach its full potential, so the same is true for literature and the other arts.

Art changes as the artists respond to the world in which they live. Art does not get better or worse. Certainly there are periods and cultures... even cities that have produced more works of artistic genius than others but art is not like science in the manner that the least medical student today knows more about disease and its treatment than the greatest doctors of the 1500s. Perhaps if art never changed... if the goals and standards remained ever stagnant, then we might expect later generations to build upon the achievements of earlier... and surpass them. But such is not the reality. Art, as you suggest, is ever changing and artist will forever struggle in attempting to come to terms with the world and the artistic traditions they have inherited.

The best contemporary writers of creative literature – those who write today and will be read a hundred two hundred a thousand years from now – will not be those who copy the past but instead those who CONTRIBUTE to the DEVELOPMENT of literature. The writers who will be read a thousand years from now will be those who helped literature to advance.

Again... the goal is not the development of art. Painters don't sit about pondering how they might contribute to the development of painting. Painting... art... develops as artists respond to the world they live in. Some will dig deeper into the traditions they have inherited, others will turn the traditions on their heads in order to best convey what it is they have to express.

Traditionalists will argue that it is preferable and natural that literature remain the most backward and conservative medium of the art world. (Compare literature’s snail-like advancement to the great innovations in painting, sculpture, and the other arts since the beginning of modernism in the late 19th Century.) However, there is nothing positive about literature’s relative backwardness compared to the other arts. Even classical music in the past 120 years has left the literary world behind in innovation, boldness, and creativity! How pathetic!

Your comparison is simply sad because all it does is suggest little grasp of the very real achievements of literature, and very little grasp of just how rooted in the whole of the tradition of painting and classical music modern and contemporary painting and music remain.

Look – the reason that literature is so backward compared to the other arts can be explained by several simple reasons. The first is money. For a writer to make enough money to support himself comfortably he has to sell A LOT of books. A painter, on the other hand, needs only a few appreciative buyers to support himself.

Please! Stop now, before you make yourself look more and more foolish. What do you know of the costs incurred by a painter? What do I need to be a poet? A pencil and a notebook... perhaps a computer in the corner of a tiny apartment somewhere. How much does it cost to rent the studio space and pay for the utilities needed in order to have a place to paint? How much do canvases and stretchers coast? Of course I can get around these costs if I have a woodshop and the proper tools. But still the wood and canvas and primer add up. And how expensive is oil paint? Go price some cadmium red on the internet. And what of frames? And then all I gotta do is sell the work... but how do I meet those wealthy patrons who can afford to buy a painting... and how much do I actually need to sell in order to make anything approaching a decent income from a day job?

Thus, it is easier for the painter to paint whatever he wants. The painter may have to deal with galleries – but he doesn’t have to deal with publishing corporations.

The galleries ARE the same as the publishing houses. They are there to make money. They only show that which they believe they have an audience for. In return for connecting the artist with the buyer the galleries take between 30%-50% of the market price.

The painter doesn’t have to consider entertaining a large reading audience primarily looking for cheap entertainment like the writer does.

No... the visual artist must entertain the wealthy collector. Some are looking for something to communicate their wealth and stability. Others are looking for something that communicates their willingness to take chances. Still others are but bored and looking for something that shocks... for but a moment. A very few have a real eye for art.

Another conservatising influence (yes I probably just made up a word – good! We writers should make up words more often) – another conservatising influence on the literary world is the whole prestige game. You get your work in certain prestigious “literary” magazines, get nominated for certain prestigious “literary” awards, etc. – and suddenly you’re considered a “great” writer/poet.

How does this differ from any other art form? If I am given a one-man show at certain prestigious galleries I will certainly be taken seriously by the art press and art collectors. If I am able to demand a certain price and I can get into the museums, my reputation is certainly assured (for at least my lifetime). If the Berlin Philharmonic performs my composition, I will suddenly be in demand. If I am recorded on Deutsche Gramophone with the London Philharmonic, I will assuredly be recognized as a leading figure in music.

The pages of many (not all) of the most prestigious literary magazines are filled with excrement masquerading as great literature that doesn’t even qualify as mediocre – it’s just plain bad, conservative, and bland.

And...? The art galleries are filled with equally excretory works as are the concerts of contemporary classical music.

The same is true for many “literary” awards. An “avant-garde” poet received a very large monetary award recently. I won’t name him here – but his work was so conservative, so dull, so devoid of innovation, so much like a zillion other poems you see everywhere that I don’t see how his poetry could be considered “avant-garde”. I guess for the people giving out the prestigious awards and the money anything that doesn’t rhyme is considered “avant-garde”.

Again with the generalities. By not naming this poet your complaint is meaningless and comes off as nothing more or less than petty envy.

It would be a great day for literature if all writers and poets started using the pages of the prestigious literary magazines as toilet paper. We don’t need the editors of the prestigious “literary” magazines to showcase great literature because they don’t even know what literature is – let alone great literature. The same can be said of those who give out prestigious “literary” awards – but maybe I shouldn’t say that – sometimes they actually give money to people who write good poetry!

More generalities and petty envy.

With the technology print-on-demand books that are not commercial can now be made available to the general public. For the first time ever the general public can purchase and read all kinds of works of literature that were never available before.

Technology is changing the game in how literature, music, film, and art are marketed. There is no profound revelation there. Most artists recognize this and struggle with trying to come to terms with the new technologies. The notion that this represents some Utopian future in which the artist will be in complete control of his or her endeavors is naive in the least.

Something you may want to ask yourself is – why do you write? Do you write to make money? Do you write for prestige and acclaim? Do you write with the opinions of others in mind? Or do you write because you have to create?

Gee! Thanks Wolf. I don't know what we would have done without you. I mean surely none of us who create works of art of any genre had even thought to ever sit down and ask ourselves just what our goals were.

If the reason that you write is that you have to create than money, prestige, and the opinions of others are all secondary. Creating innovative works of literature is probably not going to make you money or give you prestige and acclaim anytime soon. And like many others who were creative – like Gauguin, Mahler, Rodin, etc. – you will receive endless harsh attacks.

Gauguin did? I thought he was largely ignored and ended up dying in French Polynesia of a combination of syphilis, morphine, and a weak heart. Even then he was supported by the leading Parisian dealer, Ambroise Vollard. Mahler? His own music seems to have had responses. The public seems to have quite liked his music (to the point that by his death there had been over 260 performances of his symphonies across Europe and the US), but critics and many musicians and singers were resentful of his dictatorial conducting style which insisted on the highest standards. And Rodin? He struggled early on... as most artists do, but by mid-career he was awarded endless official and private commissions as well as awards and prizes. While still alive, his studio/home was officially converted into the Musée Rodin.

Let others make all the money from their airport novels, let others receive all the prestige and acclaim for their conventional banal “poetry”. Let others receive all the applause for their conservative traditional works written in “good taste”. Their work will wither into dust over time. A hundred years from now no one will be reading their novels, poems, and plays.

Nor will they be reading 95%+ of the stuff written by those aspiring to be "serious" writers revolutionizing literature. In the mean time, the artist/writer needs to pay rent and support his or her family.

Nearly everything ever painted, sculpted, or written in “good taste” later withered and died with time. “Good taste” is nothing more than what is in fashion at the time – and as time passes what was in “good taste” centuries ago becomes trivial.

Yesterday's "good taste" is today's "avant garde" and "shock art".

Many of the masters of the past in literature, painting, sculpture, and music were nothing less than innovators and revolutionaries in their time. Their work often caused controversy because they were not enslaved to tradition. They did not care about “good taste”. They could give a damn about the opinions of others.

Neither could they care the least about manifestos proscribing what art is... including your own.

Your force of will boggles me, especially considering that it was obvious after 2-3 paragraphs how much knowledge he has about the way art works, or indeed if he really cares about the truth (as opposed to the view he seems to be set in).



I have a lot of knowledge of art that I don't need to use as a show of flaws of anyone.

Well, you're not here for the purpose of not arguing, are you?


A man does not need a lot of knowledge of art to argue against a petition for postmodern art.

Yes, you're entitled to free speech, an opinion, blah blah. Unfortunately, opinions from "men with no knowledge of art" need not count for much to those who do. Such a petition is hardly likely to be taken seriously when it's so poorly informed.


And the man doesn't know that this is a world for the common man, who has little concern for things of the past or canons of the past.

Nah, not really. It's a world where distinction comes from abnormality. In any case, whilst you may have to contribute to "common society", I can't see why any such contribution needs to be made outside of the currently accepted types of language.


Marketting is the fine arts of today and it doesn't attend to any elite or aristocracy that led to the situations prior to 1945.

So first you argue against marketing and then you try to argue for it?


Wolflarsen is only a little shortsighted

You must be having a laugh. :skep:


as to the fact that the revolution he asks for has already happened and that modernism is already in a museum to never come back as canon. Not even the NeoThis or Neothat are coming back. Rennaissant modernism kicked the bucket.

Well, that kind of "revolution" happens all the time. Literature is dynamic. That doesn't quite conform to what WolfLarsen is asking for, i.e. a complete breakdown (rather than out-branching) of the structure of literature.


The only danger in Wolflarsen words is that he praises individualism while it is no longer possible.

Nah, there's no danger to WolfLarsen's words. They're perfectly harmless, as nothing will ever come of them. Though I agree with this particular sentiment: individualism in the sense WolfLarsen calls for it cannot exist, and never could.


The current is going more and more toward teamwork in every sphere.
Shakespeare to Venice, to cry nostalgia.

Actually, I don't understand your last line. It seems slightly irrelevant, especially when you include "Venice" in there. And no, whatever "the current" is doing in the financial world, art is still, and I cannot concieve any other situation, an individual sphere, but for the artists, not for the various commoners with grand ideas about how they could "deliver something new". Because people really don't like these new things. They like to see the old ones, furthered.

[WolfLarsen]

I can remember that in the dark ages of literature before the Internet you'd go to the bookstore and there would be a lot of commercial crap and also a lot of stuff in the canon that you had already read in high school and college and there would also be the prestigious literary magazines which really weren't very good. There wasn't much there in the sense of exciting innovative literature. It was certainly hard to find anyway. Sometimes there would be something exciting and innovative in one of these prestigious literary magazines, but most of the time it was just the same old conventional stuff.

So then I started looking at the less prestigious literary magazines, and frankly one of the best literary magazines I came across was something called **** Diary - I kid you not -that was the title! The writing in **** Diary was far more innovative and far better overall than the writing in the prestigious literary magazines, which of course I guess doesn't say much. But I was always overjoyed when a copy of **** Diary arrived in my mailbox. I love innovative literature!

And now we have the Internet. I think some of the other posters are right, the revolution has already started. We just might be entering the best period of literature in the history of man, at least up until now.

[Aspirational]

I can remember that in the dark ages of literature before the Internet you'd go to the bookstore and there would be a lot of commercial crap and also a lot of stuff in the canon that you had already read in high school and college and there would also be the prestigious literary magazines which really weren't very good. There wasn't much there in the sense of exciting innovative literature. It was certainly hard to find anyway. Sometimes there would be something exciting and innovative in one of these prestigious literary magazines, but most of the time it was just the same old conventional stuff.

So then I started looking at the less prestigious literary magazines, and frankly one of the best literary magazines I came across was something called **** Diary - I kid you not -that was the title! The writing in **** Diary was far more innovative and far better overall than the writing in the prestigious literary magazines, which of course I guess doesn't say much. But I was always overjoyed when a copy of **** Diary arrived in my mailbox. I love innovative literature!

And now we have the Internet. I think some of the other posters are right, the revolution has already started. We just might be entering the best period of literature in the history of man, at least up until now.

Maybe. But that has nothing to do with your "revolution", but rather, to do with cross-cultural divides being dissolved away (leading to more people with the necessary mindset to become great literary figures). These people will not write "innovative" literature, but rather further the current type of literature in its own right. As for your idea that the writing in the aforementioned "**** Diary" was far more "innovative" than that of prestigious literary magazines, that's an opinion you can back up because you're using your own definition of "innovative", but to say that it's "far better writing" merely shows lack of good taste.

Perhaps you would be on the right lines concerning literary analysis. I don't like the way it's done in the modern world. But as for the literature itself, I can find nothing to criticize and I think by definition that there can be nothing to criticize.

[WolfLarsen]

Good evening Mr./Mrs. Aspirational.

Good taste should be smashed into pieces with a wrecking ball.

Innovation, creativity, and imagination! That's what we need more of in literature! The very problem with literature in the past is that there have been too many works of good taste. Good taste is usually conforming to the stale swamp of the status quo.

Today the Impressionists are considered to be artists of good taste, but back in their day the critics said otherwise. Pablo Picasso, particularly his revolutionary work The Women of Avignon, was criticized as being especially vulgar. Vulgar can be good! WE NEED MORE VULGAR IN LITERATURE!

Oh, did I use incorrect English?

I'm sorry, I just don't give an immaculate conception.

(Nothing personal.)

Oh, and happy new year Mr./Mrs. Aspirational!!

[hillwalker]

Good taste should be smashed into pieces with a wrecking ball...

...Oh, did I use incorrect English?
I'm sorry, I just don't give an immaculate conception.

This seems to sum up your mindset, Wolf. You're not really aiming to be innovative - you just want to rub our faces in the sh1t whilst pretending you're some pioneering spirit sent to save us all.

I will always defend your right to express your opinions and to write in any way you wish.
'Incorrect English' - did I miss something?
But that doesn't mean we have to agree that it's excellent writing when it's plainly not.

Happy 2012 to you also.

H

[JCamilo]

Plus, the story only shows the problem is how to search, not the absence of options. He just had to look somewhere else (as far it still show the prejudice, as hundred of stabilished canons are extremely inovatives when they came out, as far as libraries do not represent the canon...)...

And of course, the excess of information of internet probally only make things worst. But such is life.

[WolfLarsen]

Hilwalker's latest comment appears to try and skillfully turn the discussion away from a debate on literature to a personal attack on a fellow poster. It's interesting how his quote leaves out what I said about the Impressionists being considered crude by the critics of their day. Of course TODAY'S critics on the other hand would say that these works are in good taste. In other words "good taste" is merely the conservative bias of the status quo. And that is exactly why "good taste" does not matter. It is far more important to be creative and innovative. We need more creative and innovative literature! The more the better!

Notice how camilo brings the subject back to one of his major concerns: that we're arguing too much about the canon. Although he disagrees with me he does not attack me personally. Maybe some people can learn from him.

Oh, and best wishes for the new year too Hillwalker.

[hillwalker]

I'm not attacking you, Wolf. I'm attacking your methodology - poor taste isn't innovative when it's all been done before. Rabelais anyone - writing in the 16th century???

If what you are promoting was truly original then I'd applaud your attempts, but it isn't. Shock jocks tend to mask their lack of imagination by outrageous behaviour and language. I think you have more intelligence than to take such a dead-end path.

H

[Scheherazade]

~

R e m i n d e r

Please discuss the topic at hand, not each other.

Posts containing personal and/or inflammatory comments will be removed without further notice.

~

[osho]

I'm not attacking you, Wolf. I'm attacking your methodology - poor taste isn't innovative when it's all been done before. Rabelais anyone - writing in the 16th century???

If what you are promoting was truly original then I'd applaud your attempts, but it isn't. Shock jocks tend to mask their lack of imagination by outrageous behaviour and language. I think you have more intelligence than to take such a dead-end path.

H

Hill here the topic is not about innovativeness. It is all about resilience and variety. Wolf’s appeal is to take literature on a revolutionary track whereas you have chosen the old classic path. Maybe posterity wants something different. Today’s world is rather different and today’s world does not choose the language of Shakespeare and Milton. They are text-messaging and their style of writing will not pedantic which you may expect of them. What is more Literature comes from migrants and colonial countries too and now your sense of purism has gone awry and the center cannot hold. I mean the old dictums of Britain and America cannot satisfy us. English literature comes from Africa and India and that is why you must be ready to give it a certain degree of liberty. Think twice H

[MANICHAEAN]

Might I be permitted to attach below a poem by Dylan Thomas, which one might consider to be relevant to the way this thread is evolving. There is always an element of frustration in any writer, seriously trying to break through onto new terrain. The reading of existing authors can only take you so far. Then you either clone, adapt other people's modes into your own, or aim for a "breakthrough !"

I'm not defending the language used in the case which has been made for the prosecution, but look behind the facade and ask yourself whether the essential objective of the aim is commendable.

On Lit Net we are all expected to fight our corners, but it's not as if we are maidens of impeccable virtue going out on a blind date with Rod Stewart.

Regards
** * * * * * * * M.

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,*
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

[WolfLarsen]

Osho and Manichaean both make some excellent points. Manichaean picked out an excellent poem that is very relevant to the topic at hand, and it's interesting that his choice of poem would appeal to both those want innovation literature, as well as to those who celebrate tradition. After all, here is a poet from the canon urging us to continue our struggle. Both sides would like this poem.

I find it rather ironic that here I am arguing for endless innovation in literature when at the moment I'm writing in a traditional style. I believe that conventional writing can be useful under certain circumstances. I want to write about the real world for a change, and simple realism seems to me the best way to write about the real world. However, I still love to see innovative writing, particularly when it's not dull.

I want to relate something about family dinners when I was a child. Half of my family are immigrants. During my childhood I loved these family dinners. We didn’t eat turkey like most Americans on Thanksgiving and Christmas, we ate something else from my mother's country which I thought was far tastier. But more importantly everybody at these family get-togethers seemed to have their own opinion about everything. But even though these family get-togethers were rather loud it was a very loud kind of fun. Everybody disagreed on everything but everybody was in their own way respectful of everybody else. Everybody laughed a lot. And everybody enjoyed their wine. It was kind of like a fun debate society where everybody got their say and everybody had lots of fun and nobody got mad at each other and everybody even though kind of loud still managed to be relatively polite, although certainly we didn't kiss each other's asses either. People could be rather blunt, but not in a rude sort of way.

Osho ‘s post makes a lot of sense about the contributions to English literature from people who are not of an Anglo-Saxon background. For better or worse our primary language might be English, which in some cases is the language of our conquerors. In other cases writers may choose English because it is (unfortunately) the most important language of the world.

We all need to express ourselves as writers. We all want to use words to create wonderful things. You have to make use with what you have. What I have is English. I speak some other languages but I don't dominate them to the extent that I dominate English, so I write in English. But then again even if the international language was different, perhaps we'd still be screwed. An earlier comment I made about what a shame it is that French is no longer the international language could be off the mark, as there are some Parisians who seem to think that nobody outside Paris knows how to speak French. Regardless of language snobbery is everywhere.

Anyway, I'll stop there before I get too long-winded. But I like what Osho said about English literature becoming more international and cosmopolitan than it already is. The more international and cosmopolitan English literature becomes the better it will be.

[hillwalker]

Hill here the topic is not about innovativeness. It is all about resilience and variety. Wolf’s appeal is to take literature on a revolutionary track whereas you have chosen the old classic path. Maybe posterity wants something different. Today’s world is rather different and today’s world does not choose the language of Shakespeare and Milton.

I don’t recall going on record saying that I object to innovation (or indeed a revolutionary track) in literature – but I'll admit I'm guilty of confusing the two. I certainly don’t consider myself old-school - I'm not a fan of classic literature in particular. My objection was to the premise that variety can only flourish if good taste and standards of quality in writing are treated with contempt. Bad is the new good.

But since this thread seems to be heading towards a vituperative argument about individual opinions I’ll say no more on the matter. Live and let live.

H

[Darcy88]

Literature, past and present, is rife with innovation AND with the vulgarity you call for Wolf. You are arguing against the wind. I really think your thesis says more about your own writing than it does about literature in general. Sounds like you want no standard whatsoever. Its the only conclusion I can arrive at considering that ANYTHING of quality, even if its vulgar and grammatically unorthodox, is accepted by the readers who have what you disdainfully call "taste."

I'm late for work. So late I'll have to run. I'll be back later to expose more of your errors.

[WolfLarsen]

Darcy spoke of standards. The standards of the publishing conglomerates and their endless subsidiaries are based on economic potential. Quality is irrelevant to the publishing conglomerates. They are also for the most part allergic to innovative literature, because publishing innovative literature is economically risky. Manuscripts are evaluated and published according to their economic potential.

There are exceptions to this. But for the most part that's how it works. It's all about the money. Publishing conglomerates are no different than the conglomerates in any other field. Publishing for the six sisters is an economic activity, not a creative one. The only standard is money.

The Internet is our savior. Thanks to the Internet we don't need the publishing conglomerates anymore. The purpose of the publishing conglomerates is to produce cheap thrills in the form of airport novels, sort of like the reading version of watching television. Sort of like the reading version of junk food. Is there really much difference between the big publishing corporations and McDonald's, Burger King, Taco Bell, White Castle, etc.?

It's all about money. The only standard is money.

Have a nice evening. Hope you arrived on time for work.

[Drkshadow03]

The Internet is our savior. Thanks to the Internet we don't need the publishing conglomerates anymore. The purpose of the publishing conglomerates is to produce cheap thrills in the form of airport novels, sort of like the reading version of watching television. Sort of like the reading version of junk food. Is there really much difference between the big publishing corporations and McDonald's, Burger King, Taco Bell, White Castle, etc.?



You know, for someone shouting a call for originality and innovation it's rather ironic that you're reaching for the tired old metaphor of comparing commercial fiction to fast food that has literally proliferated these forums hundreds of times, usually employed by the snobbish establishment types protecting the "good" unassailable literary canon from the likes of Harry Potter, Stephen King, and Twilight.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Hill here the topic is not about innovativeness. It is all about resilience and variety. Wolf’s appeal is to take literature on a revolutionary track whereas you have chosen the old classic path. Maybe posterity wants something different. Today’s world is rather different and today’s world does not choose the language of Shakespeare and Milton. They are text-messaging and their style of writing will not pedantic which you may expect of them. What is more Literature comes from migrants and colonial countries too and now your sense of purism has gone awry and the center cannot hold. I mean the old dictums of Britain and America cannot satisfy us. English literature comes from Africa and India and that is why you must be ready to give it a certain degree of liberty. Think twice H

And as I walked through the valley of discourse clouded over in a vale of pedantry and pettiness, lo the mists lifted, and before stood me, like Goya's Goliath looming over all man, the largest straw man I've ever seen, so massive I could barely see the barn-sized head! 'Twas a sight!



The Internet is our savior.

He's right. Why, just today a friend showed me a website that lets one rate women's breasts.

[Darcy88]

And as I walked through the valley of discourse clouded over in a vale of pedantry and pettiness, lo the mists lifted, and before stood me, like Goya's Goliath looming over all man, the largest straw man I've ever seen, so massive I could barely see the barn-sized head! 'Twas a sight!
.

Excellent. :nod:

And Wolf.... sure, many of the monster publishing houses are the literary equivalent of Mcdonalds and KFC. But you ignore the smaller publishers who are akin to gourmet restaurants, turning out quality books for readers with taste. Even Penguin publishes the innovative literature of the past, regardless of its political or moral deviance.

Its like contemporary music. Turn on a tv or radio and you will hear only commercial trash, noise devoid of art. Sony and Geffen go for what sells and saturate us with it. But there are also smaller independent labels signing great underground bands. Even if these bands don't get top 40 airplay some of them still manage to gather legions of fans.

You are taking specifics and making them absolutes. If you want to sell a million books then yes, your work better conform, better be fluffy and without edge. But if your goal is to be read by the select group of astute literature lovers out there then all you have to do is write quality work. You can add as much vulgarity and defy as many conventions as you want, so long as its of quality it will succeed, if not immediately then eventually.

You have these sweeping statements utterly lacking substantiation. "The canon contains many mediocre works!" Which are those? "There are writers on the internet better than Shakespeare!" Show us.

[JuniperWoolf]

I'm a bit annoyed at myself for reading the entire OP. You've got to try to be more concise and stop repeating yourself because your goal in writing it is buried in completely useless rehashing. I'm not talking about whether your points are "good" or not, but that entire essay could have easily been efficiently conveyed in three or four paragraphs.

Then again, maybe that was your great "innovation" going over my head.

[Darcy88]

Also, I don't understand why you feel we need more vulgarity. Why cheapen sex? Why devalue a gold coin into pennies? One need not be a prude to value some measure of modesty and decorum. There's a reason people make love in private. Splash sex everywhere and it loses its sacred dimension and is no longer special.

[WolfLarsen]

Somebody requested something more concise than the essay. Well here you go:

THE WOLF LARSEN MANIFESTO

1. All great Writers should gather at the entrances of the major publishing houses and urinate on their doorsteps!

2. All great Poets should use the pages of the country’s most prestigious literary magazines as toilet paper!

3. All contemporary “poets” that rhyme should be castrated at once!

4. Poetry and prose should be immoral and blasphemous! If your poetry shocks and offends religious extremists, puritanical feminists, politicians, black nationalists, white supremacists, and everybody else than you’re probably doing something right! The paintings of Picasso, the symphonies of Mahler, and the sculptures of Rodin shocked and offended many people too! The last thing the world needs is more boring polite “literature”!

5. If you write prose just like ten thousand other writers than why bother writing? Garbage men contribute far more to society than “writers” and “poets” that write like everybody else! No two authors or poets should read even remotely alike!

6. From this day forward the words Poet, Writer, Sculptor, Playwright, Painter, Composer, and all other Artists should appear in capitals. After all, some guy named god who doesn’t even exist appears in capitals and since Artists are greater than god than words like Poet and Artist should be capitalized.

7. There is no god as written in the bible. Rather, every Human Being that lives on earth is a god because Humans are the most creative animals on the planet. Therefore, Artists are gods!

8. Who cares about the rules of grammar? Take a baseball bat and SMASH the rules of grammar into pieces! Language must obey the wishes of the Writer. The Writer should take language and mold it and reshape it as he sees fit just like a Sculptor.

9. Poets and Writers need to look at the rest of the art world and learn. Poetry and fiction currently appear to be the most backward mediums of the art world. Painting has raced forward like a fast car, jazz music has run forward like a rabbit, even classical music in the last hundred years has left the writing world behind in both innovation and boldness. Writing and poetry are progressing forward at a crawl – just like a snail. All Poets and Writers should think of themselves as wrecking ball operators – we must SMASH the literary world as we know it into bits with a bold and revolutionary writing!

10. The system we live under has nothing to offer but endless wars, prisons, poverty, homophobia, racial and gender discrimination, class oppression, anti-sex puritanism, and human extinction from nuclear war. The literary establishment has nothing to offer us but airport novels, censorship (in the form of political correctness), pretentious “literary” magazines filled with hack “poetry” that sometimes even rhymes, and the never ending boring banal “well-polished” “well-crafted” “literary” fiction whose main purpose seems to be to help insomniacs fall asleep. Bartok’s symphonies don’t help people fall asleep! Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring caused a riot when it was first played! Jackson Pollock’s paintings can hardly be considered sleepy! Poetry and literature must become explosive, chaotic, alive, exciting, dynamic, etc. – just like the times we live in!

11. More than anything else remember there is no one else like you on the entire planet! So why should you write like everybody else? Write like nobody else writes! If you’re not creative than why should future generations bother reading your writing? Every Writer should be his own literary movement! Every Writer should be his own literary revolution!

[Darcy88]

This would have been timely 150 years ago. Now its just trite and a little sad.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Somebody requested something more concise than the essay. Well here you go:

THE WOLF LARSEN MANIFESTO

1. All great Writers should gather at the entrances of the major publishing houses and urinate on their doorsteps!

2. All great Poets should use the pages of the country’s most prestigious literary magazines as toilet paper!

3. All contemporary “poets” that rhyme should be castrated at once!

4. Poetry and prose should be immoral and blasphemous! If your poetry shocks and offends religious extremists, puritanical feminists, politicians, black nationalists, white supremacists, and everybody else than you’re probably doing something right! The paintings of Picasso, the symphonies of Mahler, and the sculptures of Rodin shocked and offended many people too! The last thing the world needs is more boring polite “literature”!

5. If you write prose just like ten thousand other writers than why bother writing? Garbage men contribute far more to society than “writers” and “poets” that write like everybody else! No two authors or poets should read even remotely alike!

6. From this day forward the words Poet, Writer, Sculptor, Playwright, Painter, Composer, and all other Artists should appear in capitals. After all, some guy named god who doesn’t even exist appears in capitals and since Artists are greater than god than words like Poet and Artist should be capitalized.

7. There is no god as written in the bible. Rather, every Human Being that lives on earth is a god because Humans are the most creative animals on the planet. Therefore, Artists are gods!

8. Who cares about the rules of grammar? Take a baseball bat and SMASH the rules of grammar into pieces! Language must obey the wishes of the Writer. The Writer should take language and mold it and reshape it as he sees fit just like a Sculptor.

9. Poets and Writers need to look at the rest of the art world and learn. Poetry and fiction currently appear to be the most backward mediums of the art world. Painting has raced forward like a fast car, jazz music has run forward like a rabbit, even classical music in the last hundred years has left the writing world behind in both innovation and boldness. Writing and poetry are progressing forward at a crawl – just like a snail. All Poets and Writers should think of themselves as wrecking ball operators – we must SMASH the literary world as we know it into bits with a bold and revolutionary writing!

10. The system we live under has nothing to offer but endless wars, prisons, poverty, homophobia, racial and gender discrimination, class oppression, anti-sex puritanism, and human extinction from nuclear war. The literary establishment has nothing to offer us but airport novels, censorship (in the form of political correctness), pretentious “literary” magazines filled with hack “poetry” that sometimes even rhymes, and the never ending boring banal “well-polished” “well-crafted” “literary” fiction whose main purpose seems to be to help insomniacs fall asleep. Bartok’s symphonies don’t help people fall asleep! Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring caused a riot when it was first played! Jackson Pollock’s paintings can hardly be considered sleepy! Poetry and literature must become explosive, chaotic, alive, exciting, dynamic, etc. – just like the times we live in!

11. More than anything else remember there is no one else like you on the entire planet! So why should you write like everybody else? Write like nobody else writes! If you’re not creative than why should future generations bother reading your writing? Every Writer should be his own literary movement! Every Writer should be his own literary revolution!
12. The more exclamation points, the better!

[Bewlay Brother]

Somebody requested something more concise than the essay. Well here you go:

THE WOLF LARSEN MANIFESTO

1. All great Writers should gather at the entrances of the major publishing houses and urinate on their doorsteps!

2. All great Poets should use the pages of the country’s most prestigious literary magazines as toilet paper!

3. All contemporary “poets” that rhyme should be castrated at once!

4. Poetry and prose should be immoral and blasphemous! If your poetry shocks and offends religious extremists, puritanical feminists, politicians, black nationalists, white supremacists, and everybody else than you’re probably doing something right! The paintings of Picasso, the symphonies of Mahler, and the sculptures of Rodin shocked and offended many people too! The last thing the world needs is more boring polite “literature”!

5. If you write prose just like ten thousand other writers than why bother writing? Garbage men contribute far more to society than “writers” and “poets” that write like everybody else! No two authors or poets should read even remotely alike!

6. From this day forward the words Poet, Writer, Sculptor, Playwright, Painter, Composer, and all other Artists should appear in capitals. After all, some guy named god who doesn’t even exist appears in capitals and since Artists are greater than god than words like Poet and Artist should be capitalized.

7. There is no god as written in the bible. Rather, every Human Being that lives on earth is a god because Humans are the most creative animals on the planet. Therefore, Artists are gods!

8. Who cares about the rules of grammar? Take a baseball bat and SMASH the rules of grammar into pieces! Language must obey the wishes of the Writer. The Writer should take language and mold it and reshape it as he sees fit just like a Sculptor.

9. Poets and Writers need to look at the rest of the art world and learn. Poetry and fiction currently appear to be the most backward mediums of the art world. Painting has raced forward like a fast car, jazz music has run forward like a rabbit, even classical music in the last hundred years has left the writing world behind in both innovation and boldness. Writing and poetry are progressing forward at a crawl – just like a snail. All Poets and Writers should think of themselves as wrecking ball operators – we must SMASH the literary world as we know it into bits with a bold and revolutionary writing!

10. The system we live under has nothing to offer but endless wars, prisons, poverty, homophobia, racial and gender discrimination, class oppression, anti-sex puritanism, and human extinction from nuclear war. The literary establishment has nothing to offer us but airport novels, censorship (in the form of political correctness), pretentious “literary” magazines filled with hack “poetry” that sometimes even rhymes, and the never ending boring banal “well-polished” “well-crafted” “literary” fiction whose main purpose seems to be to help insomniacs fall asleep. Bartok’s symphonies don’t help people fall asleep! Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring caused a riot when it was first played! Jackson Pollock’s paintings can hardly be considered sleepy! Poetry and literature must become explosive, chaotic, alive, exciting, dynamic, etc. – just like the times we live in!

11. More than anything else remember there is no one else like you on the entire planet! So why should you write like everybody else? Write like nobody else writes! If you’re not creative than why should future generations bother reading your writing? Every Writer should be his own literary movement! Every Writer should be his own literary revolution!

I liked your essay a lot more than this.

Prose and poetry should be immoral and blasphemous? No problem against either of those, but the way you say it promotes doing it for the sake of it which is the WORST TYPE OF ART POSSIBLE. There is NOTHING worse than an "artist" who gets off on shock value. You might as well say that Lady Gaga is as good or better than David Bowie. Even though the talent and creativity disparity between Bowie and Gaga is larger than the difference between [Marlon Brando+Al Pacino+Tom Hanks+Jimmy Stewart] and [Keanu Reeves].



The system we live under has nothing to offer but endless wars, prisons, poverty, homophobia, racial and gender discrimination, class oppression, anti-sex puritanism, and human extinction from nuclear war.

I see an interesting omission from this list. Here, I just threw together a quick little poem for you. Tell me what you think.


Cause and effect, and I speak not of a birth defect
I am referring to the result of selfishness and neglect
Overflowing humanity - the life you select!

I prefer a dance with circumstance
The unheard voices would agree with my stance
The conscience cradling lies desensitize the muffled cries
And isolate killing with formality from morality
The morally abject yet politically correct genocide
The constant deprivation of life to maintain pride plus the unbridled ride
Gives birth to the trampled and worthless race

A living entity is meant to be
No matter what you choose the classification on the dog tag to be


I have an idea of what your opinion will be. I hope I'm wrong.

[WolfLarsen]

Somebody asked me about shock value. The thing is let's suppose the artist or writer is just doing his thing, that is he is creating his art. He may not find it his work particularly shocking. What he is doing is creating art or literature.

Later when others are viewing his painting or reading his literature they criticize the piece saying it is too shocking, or that he is just seeking shock value. But on the contrary the artist or writer maybe just trying to express himself. And maybe the problem is that a conservative viewer of a painting or a conservative reader of a work of literature has an adverse reaction because that conservative reader is simply to sexually repressed or uptight. That conservative reader seeks to impose his conservative view upon the writer, which is just plain wrong! The writer must be free to express himself! This is a problem that artists and writers have had over and over again, the freedom to express themselves!

At other times the writer or artist may simply want to rebel against certain puritanical or conservative aspects of the literary and artistic worlds. The literary world is quite conservative and puritanical, the literary world tries to impose a straitjacket upon the writer. Literature is wonderful, but the literary world itself is a rancid swamp filled with puritans who scream "shock value! Shock value!" whenever a piece of literature doesn't conform to their conservative point of view. I am of course talking about the literary world in general, and not about any particular individual.

Wolf Larsen

[WolfLarsen]

I've been asked by some posters to name specifically some poets whom I enjoy. The following are some innovative poets who I have enjoyed reading. All or virtually all of them are of the modern and postmodern periods.

The early poetry of Andrei Codrescu

all poetry by Russell Edson

the poem Political Intelligence by A. J. M. Smith

the poem Vision by Harry Crosby

Kitchen Poem by Francis Scarfe

Residence on Earth by Pablo Neruda

all poetry by Anne Sexton

all poetry by Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Rilke

all surrealist, dada-ist and Cubist poetry by any poet

sometimes works claiming to be postmodern are quite interesting, as long as they're not boring

the poem Yelu Apoki by Luo Zhicheng

the poem Apocalypse and Resurrection by John Bayliss

One Night Away from Day by John Digby

most poetry by October Paz, as long as it's translated decently, which sadly is often not the case

the poet Frank Lima

the poem Daybreak by Bert Meyers

the poem "I Am Writing You from a Distant Land" by Henri Michaux

A Can of Fish by Xia Yu Lying

the poem Homage to Hieronymus Bosch by Thomas McGreevy

the poetry of Edouard Roditi

the poetry of Yves Bonnefoy

SIX WAYS OF EATING A WATERMELON by Luo Qing

[Bewlay Brother]

Somebody asked me about shock value. The thing is let's suppose the artist or writer is just doing his thing, that is he is creating his art. He may not find it his work particularly shocking. What he is doing is creating art or literature.

Later when others are viewing his painting or reading his literature they criticize the piece saying it is too shocking, or that he is just seeking shock value. But on the contrary the artist or writer maybe just trying to express himself. And maybe the problem is that a conservative viewer of a painting or a conservative reader of a work of literature has an adverse reaction because that conservative reader is simply to sexually repressed or uptight. That conservative reader seeks to impose his conservative view upon the writer, which is just plain wrong! The writer must be free to express himself! This is a problem that artists and writers have had over and over again, the freedom to express themselves!

At other times the writer or artist may simply want to rebel against certain puritanical or conservative aspects of the literary and artistic worlds. The literary world is quite conservative and puritanical, the literary world tries to impose a straitjacket upon the writer. Literature is wonderful, but the literary world itself is a rancid swamp filled with puritans who scream "shock value! Shock value!" whenever a piece of literature doesn't conform to their conservative point of view. I am of course talking about the literary world in general, and not about any particular individual.

Wolf Larsen

Do your political views always influence what you write this much?

You have so much hatred for people who don't agree with you.

You didn't say what you thought of the poem I posted. Something tells me that it could be the most beautifully written poem ever but if it was negative about abortion than you would hate it regardless.

On the other hand, you'd probably like a mediocre poem if it glorified the barbaric and selfish act of abortion. I can entertain the argument that abortion is a necessary evil. That it is something that could, and should have been avoided, but wasn't. That is okay. There are a lot of things that happen because of human fault. But the people who herald abortion as some triumph in liberty or womens rights are inhumane.

The same goes for the whole gay thing. Lots of heterosexuals that are so hellbent on gay rights actually dehumanize gays. Have you ever watched Glee? It is a terrible show. You probably love it though because it tries so hard to push buttons. The show has no artistry at all. Well there is a character called Kurt, and he is one of the worst human beings you will ever see. And it has nothing to do with his sexuality. He is rude, belligerent, disrespectful, hateful, doesn't respect women, etc. In all honesty, he is so messed up that I really believe if he was in charge of the world he would have concentration camps for heterosexuals with signs saying "Sodomy Will Let you Free". Now there is nothing wrong with having an awful character, but they try and pass him off as a great beautiful person. Why? Because he is gay. Since he is gay, he is inherently superior and beautiful - more so than other human beings. One of the biggest parts of being an adult human being is that you are held responsible for your ACTIONS, and people base their opinion of you off of your ACTIONS. You deprive them of this human element just as you would if you called them "faggot".

Another way people unknowingly dehumanize gays is they think they are just that - gays. They aren't human beings who just happen to be gay. No. They are simply homosexuals - no more and no less. Glee does this too. All of Kurt's conflicts and breakthroughs hinge on him being gay. They are more than just homosexuals. They are people.

It is similar to people who voted for Obama SOLELY FOR THE FACT that he is black. They are just as bad as someone who didn't vote for Obama SOLELY FOR THE FACT that he is black. See a pattern?

Also I see you complain so much about Capitalism. So you'd rather have Collectivism? Do you have any idea how many people Collectivism has killed? Collectivism clashes with human nature irreparably. I don't see how anyone could seriously want to try it again.

[WolfLarsen]

The post by Bewlay Brother has nothing or little to do with this thread, and I ask him to please post that kind of stuff elsewhere. Thank you.

And now to move on. Earlier I commented that I came across some works on the Internet by relatively unknown writers whose work was far more creative than anything I read in 16 years of formal education (I have a BA in English literature). Other posters asked to read these works. I asked Benjamin Miller the author of "A Story about a Tree" for permission to post this story on this thread, and he was nice enough to agree.

A Story About A Tree
by Benjamin Miller


There was a tree once. You wouldn’t know about it. It was a long time ago in a place that doesn’t really exist. Yes, it was a fine tree. Sometimes it would sing songs no one ever heard. Sometimes it would fall when no one was around, but it would always get back up again. I would ask people if they knew the tree I was talking about. They would be strangers in coffee shops, or perhaps homeless people on the subway. Some would give me a funny look, while others stared off into nothingness remembering some tree they met at a party somewhere, or maybe in a doctor’s office. Still, no one seemed to have ever known my tree.

This led me to believe I was the only one who knew my particular tree. Being a rational person, I realized it was all in my head. That is when the headaches started…

I remember, quite fondly, the broken chair I was dancing on, in my apartment, when I came to know I was dying. The tree in my head began to press against my skull a little. Tiny drops of maple blood dripped out of my nose and onto my beloved chair. The blood filled one of its cracks and I wondered what the difference between the chair and I was.

I had to put those thoughts aside. There wasn’t enough room for both a maple tree and Buddhism in my head. I got a straw and sucked the words delicately out of my ear. I put them in a clear Tupperware in the fridge for later. I was careful not to mix these existential questions with things I had been wondering about the history of income tax. See if you mix the two it ruins the taste of both.

I found a piece of grassy floor and took a seat. I was going to die because of this maple tree. Even as I thought this, parts of my memories were showing signs of maple tree. For example, my brain seemed to be telling me that a giant pancake taught my kindergarten class, when in fact…. I guess it might have been a pancake. “Curse this maple tree,” I thought, “they’re not supposed to grow this fast.”

It just so happens that my mother’s uncle is a lumberjack and my grandmother’s cousin is a brain surgeon. I figured, maybe, if I could get them to mate, the offspring could save my life. So I reached into my pocket and withdrew my hand, a clean glistening new model. It was the latest in telecommunication. I pressed my thumb up to my ear and my pinkie up to my mouth and I spoke the secret code only telephone operators and other people know. I then sung the number for my mother-uncle lumberjack. There was a short pause as thousands of moments lined up in the past to make this one possible.
“Will cut trees for peas,” came an old gruff voice.

“Actually, I need you to have sex with someone,” I quickly rebuked as my forehead began to reach a new level of throbtasticness.

I could hear him on the other end weighing both Freud and his mother. Luckily, Freud hadn’t exercised in quite a while and so won out in the thigh region, though his mother had very large breasts. He asked what any good Freudian would ask after being abruptly propositioned “Will there be peas?”
“If by peas, you mean the story needs to progress, than yes there will,” I reasoned, slightly irate from the growing pain.

He seemed to agree the story had somewhere to be and he best help me get it there or there’d be no peas in the afterlife. This was good enough. Now all I needed was the brain surgeon and some mood lights and I’d be set. Luckily, my grandmother’s cousin lived in a box just outside my building so she would be easy to get.

If you’re wondering what a brain surgeon is doing living in a box it’s quite simple really. Most people had replaced their brains with more practical things. It would usually be a flag, or just more skin colour, but sometimes a sports team would do. Anyway, brain surgeons were practically obsolete.

I stepped outside my building expecting weather or something, but there was only a story teller’s express decision not to deal with it. As I walked across the front lawn, my neighbours asked me how I was doing. I set up a stage quickly and began to act out the maple’s presence on my mind. Unfortunately, the bastards didn’t stay for the second act. They muttered something about “who has time to care?” and ran off to televisions. My pride slightly wounded, I approached my favourite brain surgeon’s box.
“How are you doing?” I asked politely.

I looked closer to find she had age dripping out of scars all along her sandpaper body. Her eyes were glazed over jade. Her clothes were on the wrong side of a thin line between high fashion and garbage she had found in my bin. “I am well and yourself?” I could see she was reading chapter 48 of the classic “How to Be.”

“If you’re not too busy, would you mind very much conceiving a child for me?” I purposefully dropped a pea out of my pocket at this point to get her brain salivating.
She checked her schedule and replied, “I don’t see why not.”

Everything was coming together as I had hoped. I instructed her to wait in my apartment. She would be free to touch anything except a maple-bloody, broken chair which would give her a Buddhist brain rash if she wasn’t careful. We then went our separate ways. I headed towards a giant caterpillar, the new eco-friendly public transit, which was destined for the mood light grove on the other side of town. I boarded. I scanned the caterpillar for that one golden point farthest away from the nearest breathing thing. I found such an adequate bit of caterpillar. I lovingly kept my eyes sacred by not touching anyone else’s. That’s when it began.

I could see numbers counting down in front of me. They weren’t counting down in order. The maple was evicting my soul and it was giving a deadline. What a bastard. I began to cry a lovely breakfast condiment. This drew the attention of the other passengers. All of my hard work avoiding humanity for nothing. I accidentally established a basic minimal human connection with another passenger. This excited and surprised him so much that he died of a heart attack. This only made everyone else more curious. Plus the maple was starting to replace all of my ex-lovers with bushes. Deeply disturbing.

Everything was getting much darker and more cramped. All the other passengers seemed to get closer. I thought I was imagining it, but it turned out I was on the wrong caterpillar. This one wasn’t going to the mood light grove, it was cocooning itself. I looked around desperately for a way out, but could not find one. I had to act fast. I picked up the corpse of the human connection victim and began to use him as a shovel. The caterpillar was quick, but I had more to lose. Finally, I saw the light of afternoon and leapt for all I was worth. I landed on the ground, did an unnecessary barrel roll, then stood up just in time to see the caterpillar complete its cocoon and explode. Mother Nature’s little fireworks show. I saw some respectable fireflies walk by muttering racial slurs under their breath as they passed.

My late great friend lay dead beside me. It was a good thing too, the grove was almost entirely downhill. I fashioned him into a Randian toboggan and rode him all the way there. As I approached the grove, I forgot everything I knew about food engineering—which I had spent three hundred years studying—and could only think about how much I hated termites. The numbers continued to count down. I managed to stick my fingers down my throat and cause the oozy, thoughtful mass of distractions to project from my mouth onto the side of the road.

I ran into the grove and attempted to pick out the mood lights that would most likely lead to cavorting. I found a lovely pair of reds which smelled of Buicks and settled on those. I paid nature’s landlord for the bulbs and tried to hail a taxi. Unfortunately, I could only think of planting my feet in the ground and standing still. This proved to be a problem, and all of the sudden I felt much sympathy for the plight of trees who dreamt of one day being an Olympic sprinter. I made a mental note to check with my constitutional lawyer what was being done to rectify the situation.

No taxies came, so I started running. I ran clear across town and made it back to my apartment without being a bystander in more than three crimes (my moral limit). I arrived just as the sun began to tiredly tell the sky off. I breathlessly climbed the 47 1/3 stairs to my floor, sweating rich Canadian syrup all the way up.

I swung the door open just in time to see my two convenient lovers dressed as purple rabbits, one atop another. The shock of my entrance caused the one on top to have a bit of a full body spasm. I could tell through the bunny mask this disappointed the one on the bottom. There was no need for the mood lights after all. I turned my back as they cleaned themselves off. I plugged the mood lights in. Decidedly, I’m not going to wait for cavorting to have mood. I was satisfied with the red.

“Now what?” Asked the lumberjack.
“Now we wait,” said the brain surgeon, ever the medical professional.
I didn’t want to be a bad host so I went into the kitchen looking for a festive thought. I scanned the existentialist rack, nothing. I skimmed the German idealist drawer, nothing. Then I saw a bottle of something I had purchased on vacation:
This world will be better for our children.
“ahhh, a vintage,” I thought.

I walked back in my living room to find my guests discussing the similarities between shrubs and political ad campaigns. I handed them each a glass and we toasted the tree-brain-cutter-to-be.
“You realize it will take nine months,” the surgeon said after a satisfied gulp.

I had forgotten to factor that into the equation. The numbers were counting down increasingly quickly, and increasingly sporadically. Additionally, it was getting much harder to ignore the branches growing out of my scalp. I began to hyperventilate, but this only helped the tree. I began to shout a series of unrelated truisms hoping common sense could cure reality. Unfortunately, as a rule, it can’t. I started yelling things that didn’t make any sense. A chorus of monkeys typing on computers surrounded us. I just hoped God was in one of those machines.

“Time is irrelevant,” I eventually shouted. Just like that, Father Time, who had been watching with an amused look on his face in the corner of the room, started to cry like a hurt school boy and leapt out the nearest window. Three ticks later, the baby popped out and grew into a perfect plot device.
Anyway, it turns out that the tree was just looking for a local park and had accidentally ended up on my brain. We removed it carefully and everyone was relieved. Well, except Father Time… he had issues.

Copyright 2011 by Benjamin Miller

[Darcy88]

Wolf you refute yourself by posting your favourite poets, many of whom have achieved great literary success. And I could add to your list of innovators. The list would go for miles.

Its not being puritanical and conservative when others dislike having penises and vaginas and semen shoved in their faces. Its called decency. Its called valuing sex as a sacred thing. Vulgar writing can be great writing, but we don't need all writing to be so.

I guess I should stop posting in this thread. Nothing that I say seems to have any impact on you.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Do your political views always influence what you write this much?

You have so much hatred for people who don't agree with you.

You didn't say what you thought of the poem I posted. Something tells me that it could be the most beautifully written poem ever but if it was negative about abortion than you would hate it regardless.

On the other hand, you'd probably like a mediocre poem if it glorified the barbaric and selfish act of abortion. I can entertain the argument that abortion is a necessary evil. That it is something that could, and should have been avoided, but wasn't. That is okay. There are a lot of things that happen because of human fault. But the people who herald abortion as some triumph in liberty or womens rights are inhumane.

The same goes for the whole gay thing. Lots of heterosexuals that are so hellbent on gay rights actually dehumanize gays. Have you ever watched Glee? It is a terrible show. You probably love it though because it tries so hard to push buttons. The show has no artistry at all. Well there is a character called Kurt, and he is one of the worst human beings you will ever see. And it has nothing to do with his sexuality. He is rude, belligerent, disrespectful, hateful, doesn't respect women, etc. In all honesty, he is so messed up that I really believe if he was in charge of the world he would have concentration camps for heterosexuals with signs saying "Sodomy Will Let you Free". Now there is nothing wrong with having an awful character, but they try and pass him off as a great beautiful person. Why? Because he is gay. Since he is gay, he is inherently superior and beautiful - more so than other human beings. One of the biggest parts of being an adult human being is that you are held responsible for your ACTIONS, and people base their opinion of you off of your ACTIONS. You deprive them of this human element just as you would if you called them "faggot".

Another way people unknowingly dehumanize gays is they think they are just that - gays. They aren't human beings who just happen to be gay. No. They are simply homosexuals - no more and no less. Glee does this too. All of Kurt's conflicts and breakthroughs hinge on him being gay. They are more than just homosexuals. They are people.

It is similar to people who voted for Obama SOLELY FOR THE FACT that he is black. They are just as bad as someone who didn't vote for Obama SOLELY FOR THE FACT that he is black. See a pattern?

Also I see you complain so much about Capitalism. So you'd rather have Collectivism? Do you have any idea how many people Collectivism has killed? Collectivism clashes with human nature irreparably. I don't see how anyone could seriously want to try it again.
And, lo, when I thought I had seen the largest straw man imaginable, then came a giant, a giant that made the Goliath seem small and pitiful, so large its ankles were shrouded in the highest clouds!

Seriously, though, what does this have to do with ANYTHING? This was definitely one of the weirdest and most amusing posts I've read on LitNet. I think someone has some issues to work out.

[WolfLarsen]

Darcy,

I encourage you to add to the list of innovators.

And I can't help but wondering if I'm the only one who had to discover these innovators on my own. 16 years of formal education and nobody discussed these innovators. Nobody assigned their work. 16 years of formal education (with a BA in English literature) and it was ALL conventional literature that was assigned.

I graduated from university a firm traditionalist. But when I realized there was so much great innovative stuff out there I became disenchanted with the shortcomings of formal education. Hopefully others were assigned innovative works in their high schools and universities.

And if the list of innovators goes on and on how come we see so little innovative work in the prestigious literary magazines? The answer is there appears to be plenty of innovative literature but so very little of it appears in the prestigious literary magazines.

Today's young writers are so lucky to have this thing called the Internet. I went through the entire stacks of the poetry sections of the main Manhattan circulating library and the main Brooklyn Public Library looking for innovative poets. The library staff thought I was nuts. What was interesting for me was that a good half of the best innovative poets I encountered were out-of-print, which is an indictment of the traditional publishing industry.

Of course, there are small publishers that do the best they can to publish innovative literature until they get bought up by the big publishing conglomerates and become something called imprints. Then they just become servants to corporate greed.

I encourage everyone to post the names of innovative poets and the TITLES of innovative poems and other works on this thread. Please remember for copyright reasons you cannot publish the entire poem on this thread. If you wish to put part of the poem (like one line or two) please consult the rules of this site before doing so.

But please tell us what innovative poets and writers you like!

[OrphanPip]

I don't know if I'm amused by the Glee analysis or not. I don't like Glee, but your reading of the character of Kurt is pretty flawed. Kurt is often treated as an unsympathetic character on the show when he is acting badly. It is easy to twist the reading of the character to mean anything because Glee, quite frankly, is poorly written and relies heavily on archetype to work its plots. The characters fit roles, jocks, pageant queens, cheerleaders, sassy black girl. And all of them act like horrible people when the plot calls for it, and they are treated sympathetically when the plot calls for it. Also, Murphy is in general not very coherent with his messages to begin with, Glee is not a moralizing gay rights campaigning show, like it is often portrayed as. More often than not Kurt is just used as a prop for making jokes about campness or gay stereotypes. The show is a musical comedy after all.

Plus, Ryan Murphy wouldn't be a heterosexual dehumanizing gays with his show, he would be a gay man dehumanizing gays.

[B. Laumness]

Somebody requested something more concise than the essay. Well here you go:

THE WOLF LARSEN MANIFESTO

1. All great Writers should gather at the entrances of the major publishing houses and urinate on their doorsteps!

2. All great Poets should use the pages of the country’s most prestigious literary magazines as toilet paper!

3. All contemporary “poets” that rhyme should be castrated at once!

4. Poetry and prose should be immoral and blasphemous! If your poetry shocks and offends religious extremists, puritanical feminists, politicians, black nationalists, white supremacists, and everybody else than you’re probably doing something right! The paintings of Picasso, the symphonies of Mahler, and the sculptures of Rodin shocked and offended many people too! The last thing the world needs is more boring polite “literature”!

5. If you write prose just like ten thousand other writers than why bother writing? Garbage men contribute far more to society than “writers” and “poets” that write like everybody else! No two authors or poets should read even remotely alike!

6. From this day forward the words Poet, Writer, Sculptor, Playwright, Painter, Composer, and all other Artists should appear in capitals. After all, some guy named god who doesn’t even exist appears in capitals and since Artists are greater than god than words like Poet and Artist should be capitalized.

7. There is no god as written in the bible. Rather, every Human Being that lives on earth is a god because Humans are the most creative animals on the planet. Therefore, Artists are gods!

8. Who cares about the rules of grammar? Take a baseball bat and SMASH the rules of grammar into pieces! Language must obey the wishes of the Writer. The Writer should take language and mold it and reshape it as he sees fit just like a Sculptor.

9. Poets and Writers need to look at the rest of the art world and learn. Poetry and fiction currently appear to be the most backward mediums of the art world. Painting has raced forward like a fast car, jazz music has run forward like a rabbit, even classical music in the last hundred years has left the writing world behind in both innovation and boldness. Writing and poetry are progressing forward at a crawl – just like a snail. All Poets and Writers should think of themselves as wrecking ball operators – we must SMASH the literary world as we know it into bits with a bold and revolutionary writing!

10. The system we live under has nothing to offer but endless wars, prisons, poverty, homophobia, racial and gender discrimination, class oppression, anti-sex puritanism, and human extinction from nuclear war. The literary establishment has nothing to offer us but airport novels, censorship (in the form of political correctness), pretentious “literary” magazines filled with hack “poetry” that sometimes even rhymes, and the never ending boring banal “well-polished” “well-crafted” “literary” fiction whose main purpose seems to be to help insomniacs fall asleep. Bartok’s symphonies don’t help people fall asleep! Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring caused a riot when it was first played! Jackson Pollock’s paintings can hardly be considered sleepy! Poetry and literature must become explosive, chaotic, alive, exciting, dynamic, etc. – just like the times we live in!

11. More than anything else remember there is no one else like you on the entire planet! So why should you write like everybody else? Write like nobody else writes! If you’re not creative than why should future generations bother reading your writing? Every Writer should be his own literary movement! Every Writer should be his own literary revolution!

Has this text been written by a young student? It is so juvenile and full of clichés.

[stlukesguild]

I encourage you to add to the list of innovators.

And I can't help but wondering if I'm the only one who had to discover these innovators on my own. 16 years of formal education and nobody discussed these innovators. Nobody assigned their work. 16 years of formal education (with a BA in English literature) and it was ALL conventional literature that was assigned.

Wolf... I serious question whether you really read all you suggest you were "forced" to read because I have a hard time with your notion of "conventional literature". From my experience with literature, the greatest of the old and the new masters were anything but "conventional". I can't imagine reading Dante's Comedia, Cervantes' Don Quixote, Sterne's Tristram Shandy, Blake's Poems, Rousseau's Confessions, Whitman's Leaves of Grass, Melvilles, Moby Dick, or any number of other "classics" and not being stunned by the absolute audacity of the writers. "Conventional"? Do you even know what the word means?

As for your list of "innovative" poets... some are not bad: Andrei Codrescu, Pablo Neruda, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Rilke, October Paz, Henri Michaux, Yves Bonnefoy... You might enjoy Cesar Vallejo, Rafael Alberti, Antonio Machado, Federico Garcia Lorca, Boris Pasternak (as poet), Marina Tsvetaeva, Fernando Pessoa, Charles Wright, Louis Zukofsky, Samuel Beckett, J.L. Borges, Italo Calvino, Paul Celan, Geoffrey Hill, Anne Carson, etc...

Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath are both overrated... along with a majority of the "confessional" poets IMO. Of the Surrealists/Cubists/da-da poets Apollinaire, Breton, Eluard and a few others are interesting... but can't rival their Symbolist predecessors... nor what was going on at the same time in Spain.

I can't see what your complaint is with regard to your never having been exposed to these writers in 12 years of public school and 4 years working toward a BA in English Literature. Grade school is rarely the place for the exploration of contemporary literature, and your focus upon English Literature was not likely to result in an exploration of a great many writers outside of the English language. Seriously, my college studies of World Literature included Neruda, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Rilke, Apollinaire, and many others...

[Bewlay Brother]

And, lo, when I thought I had seen the largest straw man imaginable, then came a giant, a giant that made the Goliath seem small and pitiful, so large its ankles were shrouded in the highest clouds!

Seriously, though, what does this have to do with ANYTHING? This was definitely one of the weirdest and most amusing posts I've read on LitNet. I think someone has some issues to work out.

I don't think I'm guilty of any strawman arguments. I went ahead and specified what he said about being "immoral and blasphemous" about never to do it just for shock value, and he pretty much responded saying that it is never done "just for shock value" it is just that there are always retarded and prudish and evil conservatives who dismiss it as that because of their ignorance. That made it pretty clear he is pretty damn radical about it.

Sorry if it was a bit discursive though. I'll admit I was beating around the bush.

I think Wolf is a phony. I bet he loves anything that ridicules religion, conservatives, and rich people, but anything that ridicules his beliefs he well, dismisses it and the writer as simply a religious fool, a close-minded prudish conservative, or a filthy rich person (who obviously trampled over 50 orphans to get where he is). I bet he is one of those ultra politically-correct people.

He really should keep his politics out of his writing. Not even so much because politics in general choke art. His political views are so sophomoric that they makes him sound like a pretentious and hyper 10th grader. Also my God are they ridiculously slanted and bigoted. It really seems like he thinks conservatives are demonic and liberals are brilliant artistic angels. (of course he knows for a fact there is nothing greater or more powerful than man.)

[Bewlay Brother]

Has this text been written by a young student? It is so juvenile and full of clichés.

No man. You missed it. You missed the point. He said that God doesn't exist and that us humans are Gods. That proves he is truly a free thinker.:banana:

Also come on you saw all of the problems with society he listed. He nailed it! Capitalism is the worst thing that has ever happened to society. Did you know that not everybody has the same amount of money? How can things get worse than that? Collectivism doesn't cause problems like that.

Also have you seen Lady Gaga? How she always wears crazy stuff? She is such a genius! She is doing what has never been done before and she is so courageous!

[Bewlay Brother]

I don't know if I'm amused by the Glee analysis or not. I don't like Glee, but your reading of the character of Kurt is pretty flawed. Kurt is often treated as an unsympathetic character on the show when he is acting badly. It is easy to twist the reading of the character to mean anything because Glee, quite frankly, is poorly written and relies heavily on archetype to work its plots. The characters fit roles, jocks, pageant queens, cheerleaders, sassy black girl. And all of them act like horrible people when the plot calls for it, and they are treated sympathetically when the plot calls for it. Also, Murphy is in general not very coherent with his messages to begin with, Glee is not a moralizing gay rights campaigning show, like it is often portrayed as. More often than not Kurt is just used as a prop for making jokes about campness or gay stereotypes. The show is a musical comedy after all.

Plus, Ryan Murphy wouldn't be a heterosexual dehumanizing gays with his show, he would be a gay man dehumanizing gays.

Ehhh. Glee has had like 10 episodes about gay rights and all of that stuff. I don't care if Ryan Murphy is gay that is irrelevant. The only time sexuality is relevant is... well... you know. Also I was mostly using Glee so I could avoid generalizing too much.

Nice avatar!

[Darcy88]

It is similar to people who voted for Obama SOLELY FOR THE FACT that he is black. They are just as bad as someone who didn't vote for Obama SOLELY FOR THE FACT that he is black.

What an atrocious post. This part in particular made my BS-detector flash red and blare its siren. There is no logic or sense to this whatsoever. The abortion stuff I can humour. You had me open-minded until this. Ridiculous. UGH. And I despise the present occupant of the White House just so you know.

[Bewlay Brother]

What an atrocious post. This part in particular made my BS-detector flash red and blare its siren.

Okay explain more. Why is one case of letting skin color influence your opinion/judgement of someone not as bad as the other?

There is no logic or sense whatsoever in despising any judgement of someone for their skin color?

[JuniperWoolf]

This was definitely one of the weirdest and most amusing posts I've read on LitNet.

No kidding. Cue the rant about a character from a television musical? What the hell?

[Bewlay Brother]

Well I will clarify a little. I suppose if someone didn't look at any candidate whatsoever and just went to vote, and just thought "hmm I'll vote for him because I'd like to have a black president" - that is different. There are different motivations for that.

However if someone is "serious" about voting and doesn't even consider the other candidate because they want to vote for the black one, then yes, that is discriminatory and just as bad.

[Darcy88]

Okay explain more. Why is one case of letting skin color influence your opinion/judgement of someone not as bad as the other?

There is no logic or sense whatsoever in despising any judgement of someone for their skin color?

If you look at the history of the treatment of African Americans in the United States and then say what you are saying now, the absurdity leaps out with a blinding supernova-like flash. I can't believe I even have to explain this. How is negative bias different from positive bias? Really?! Comparable to racism is voting for a representative of a long-suffering, long-segregated group that not 50 years ago hadn't the remotest chance of assuming the presidency? Ok then. I'm done. This thread is wearing on me. Your odious additions to it are like the further spreading of an already vile rash.

[Bewlay Brother]

If you look at the history of the treatment of African Americans in the United States and then say what you are saying now, the absurdity leaps out with a blinding supernova-like flash. I can't believe I even have to explain this. How is negative bias different from positive bias? Really?! Comparable to racism is voting for a representative of a long-suffering, long-segregated group that not 50 years ago hadn't the remotest chance of assuming the presidency? Ok then. I'm done. This thread is wearing on me. Your odious additions to it are like the further spreading of an already vile rash.

Let's get one thing straight. I am talking about the ISOLATED ACT of voting for someone solely based on THE COLOR OF THEIR SKIN. Obviously the person who doesn't vote for Obama because he is black has a better chance of being a bad person than the person who does it for the opposite reason. That is because they have a much better chance of being actively racist. You have morphed my statement into a battle of KKK vs someone wanting a black president. You are misrepresenting me. The isolated act of voting for someone solely based on THE COLOR OF THEIR SKIN is equally bad both ways.

And what does slavery matter? There have been many different races that have been victim to much worse enormities than slavery. I'm not going to insult your intelligence by getting specific, but many of them happened to be predominately white. Yes maybe not in America, but that does not matter. We are talking about humanity after all.

It is a bad path to go down. You are still rationalizing discrimination.

[JuniperWoolf]

Also I was mostly using Glee so I could avoid generalizing too much.

So you want to think in terms of stereotypes, but you know that if you actually employ stereotypes in this discussion you'll get your a$$ handed to you so you use a television show which is really a collection of stock characters as the basis of your argument? That's really, really, really stupid.


Nice avatar!

Since most of your beef is with gay culture, can we assume that this comment on a David Bowie avatar is your attempt at a douchey jab?

[Darcy88]

What does that matter? There have been many different races that have been victim to much worse enormities than slavery. I'm not going to insult your intelligence by getting specific, but many of them happened to be predominately white. Yes maybe not in America, but that does not matter. We are talking about humanity after all.

I'll admit that it is not just as bad. Normally when I say what I said in that post I say "almost". It is still a bad path to go down. You are still rationalizing discrimination.

I'm a glutton for punishment....

What the African slaves had to endure in America is perhaps unrivalled in terms of harshness and degradation throughout the history of mankind, excepting the holocaust of course. Maybe you are not aware of how they were captured, shipped, kept, hunted, lynched. You must not be. Predominantly white? Oh please do elaborate. I could use a chuckle.

I'm rationalizing discrimination? If I were American I may have voted for Obama just because he's black. Am I racist? No. I'm white myself. My friends and family are white. Most of the people I admire are white. But a black man getting elected president of the United States is a beautiful, significant thing.

[Darcy88]

And what does slavery matter?

Need I even retort? I should delete my last response. You slew yourself with this statement.

[Bewlay Brother]

So you want to think in terms of stereotypes, but you know that if you actually employ stereotypes in this discussion you'll get your a$$ handed to you so you use a television show which is really a collection of stock characters as the basis of your argument? That's really, really, really stupid.



Since most of your beef is with gay culture, can we assume that this comment on a David Bowie avatar is your attempt at a douchey jab?

You obviously aren't a very big David Bowie fan. The Bewlay Brothers is the greatest song ever written, and it just happens to be by, David Bowie.

I have written 6 short stories about experiencing David Bowie music.

You should watch The Man Who Fell to the Earth. It stars David Bowie and is much better than the labrinth.

And my beef with homosexuality? Seriously?

[JuniperWoolf]

You obviously aren't a very big David Bowie fan. The Bewlay Brothers is the greatest song ever written, and it just happens to be by, David Bowie.

I have written 6 short stories about experiencing David Bowie music.

You should watch The Man Who Fell to the Earth. It stars David Bowie and is much better than the labrinth.

Okay good, it seemed like a dick move.



And my beef with homosexuality? Seriously?

Seriously what? You're going to have to address the first half of my post, because you seem to want to discuss reality as it appears on television which is just a waste of everyone's time.

Also I could respond to your beef against abortion but I've already spent a lot of my litnet time writing a pretty decent reply to anything you might say, here (http://www.online-literature.com/forums/blog.php?b=11371).

[Darcy88]

And what does slavery matter?

No one should even engage Bewlay anymore. He actually said this. I know, hard to believe. But there it is.

[Bewlay Brother]

I'm a glutton for punishment....

What the African slaves had to endure in America is perhaps unrivalled in terms of harshness and degradation throughout the history of mankind, excepting the holocaust of course. Maybe you are not aware of how they were captured, shipped, kept, hunted, lynched. You must not be. Predominantly white? Oh please do elaborate. I could use a chuckle.

I'm rationalizing discrimination? If I were American I may have voted for Obama just because he's black. Am I racist? No. I'm white myself. My friends and family are white. Most of the people I admire are white. But a black man getting elected president of the United States is a beautiful, significant thing.

You have no damn clue about enormities of mankind. I'm proud of you knowing about the Holocaust, but there are many genocides worse than that even.

The concept of not treating human beings differently because of their skin color is larger than any catastrophe. Am I being idealistic? Yes. But there is nothing wrong with that.

"But a black man getting elected president of the United States is a beautiful, significant thing." - you are misrepresenting my argument. I never contested this. Your side of the argument right now is defending discrimination of whites because blacks have been mistreated in the past. You are not defending "a black man being president of the US a beautiful thing" because I never opposed that.

It is a bad path to rationalize discrimination. What if a man had his wife and daughters raped and dismembered by 6 black man? Would he be any less justified to resent black people than you are by voting for someone solely because they are black? Using your logic, he is more justified, as he has been negatively affected by that specific race worse than the average person voting for Obama (for being black).

If the need to not discriminate hinges on whether or not someone has been hurt in the past, then really you are getting away from humanity.

[Darcy88]

And what does slavery matter? There have been many different races that have been victim to much worse enormities than slavery. I'm not going to insult your intelligence by getting specific, but many of them happened to be predominately white. Yes maybe not in America, but that does not matter. We are talking about humanity after all.

It is a bad path to go down. You are still rationalizing discrimination.

The odd thing is that at one point you had it read "what does that matter?" Then you edited it to "what does slavery matter?" Did someone slip me a dose of some hallucinogen earlier? Is ignorance and insensitivity on so staggering a scale even possible? Apparently.

[Bewlay Brother]

No one should even engage Bewlay anymore. He actually said this. I know, hard to believe. But there it is.

You jerk. Way to take something completely out of context.

[Bewlay Brother]

The odd thing is that at one point you had it read "what does that matter?" Then you edited it to "what does slavery matter?" Did someone slip me a dose of some hallucinogen earlier? Is ignorance and insensitivity on so staggering a scale even possible? Apparently.

That is because originally the second paragraph was the first paragraph. I added a first paragraph, and I needed to specify slavery because it would have been confusing otherwise.

Since blacks are allowed to discriminate more than whites because of slavery, then Jews also should be able to discriminate much much more than blacks. And then Kulaks. And then Chinese. And so on and so on and so on.

[Bewlay Brother]

Okay good, it seemed like a dick move.



Seriously what? You're going to have to address the first half of my post, because you seem to want to discuss reality as it appears on television which is just a waste of everyone's time.

Also I could respond to your beef against abortion but I've already spent a lot of my litnet time writing a pretty decent reply to anything you might say, here (http://www.online-literature.com/forums/blog.php?b=11371).

I'm talking about the people who are guilty of what I was talking about. Dehumanizing gays. There are people guilty of that. Not everyone who is pro-gay marriage is guilty of that. Like me for instance. There are many who are, and those are the people I was talking about. Kurt and the makers of Glee are guilty of it, so I talked about them.

[Darcy88]

You have no damn clue about enormities of mankind. I'm proud of you knowing about the Holocaust, but there are many genocides worse than that even.

The concept of not treating human beings differently because of their skin color is larger than any catastrophe. Am I being idealistic? Yes. But there is nothing wrong with that.

"But a black man getting elected president of the United States is a beautiful, significant thing." - you are misrepresenting my argument. I never contested this. Your side of the argument right now is defending discrimination of whites because blacks have been mistreated in the past. You are not defending "a black man being president of the US a beautiful thing" because I never opposed that.

It is a bad path to rationalize discrimination. What if a man had his wife and daughters raped and dismembered by 6 black man? Would he be any less justified to resent black people than you are by voting for someone solely because they are black? Using your logic, he is more justified, as he has been negatively affected by that specific race worse than the average person voting for Obama (for being black).

If the need to not discriminate hinges on whether or not someone has been hurt in the past, then really you are getting away from humanity.

How many barns did you have to raid to gather enough straw to stuff together this straw-man? You are completely disregarding the context. Black people were so marginalized in the US that it sent shockwaves when a black woman went to sit at the back of a bus. Think about that.

It is the inverse of racism to elect a black man president solely based on his skin colour. If someone voted for Obama out of hatred for the white race, then yes, that is discrimination. But I'm sure many of those who voted for Obama were happy too when they voted for Clinton.

I shouldn't even be answering you. You said "what does slavery matter." You need say no more.

[Bewlay Brother]

The odd thing is that at one point you had it read "what does that matter?" Then you edited it to "what does slavery matter?" Did someone slip me a dose of some hallucinogen earlier? Is ignorance and insensitivity on so staggering a scale even possible? Apparently.

Blacks were considered 3/5ths a human being.

The Nazis stopped burning them and buried them instead because they figured it cost too much to buy the gasoline to burn thousands of them at a time.

So that must give Jews so so so so so much leeway when it comes to discriminating! They can practically walk up to a German and spit in their face! Hell, maybe even more!

[Darcy88]

That is because originally the second paragraph was the first paragraph. I added a first paragraph, and I needed to specify slavery because it would have been confusing otherwise.


No, sorry. That explanation does not cut it, especially since you continue to attempt to downplay the horror of African enslavement in America. When I read one description of how the slaves were transported in the hulls of the ships, in spaces so small they could not turn over, FOR WEEKS, many of them going insane as a result, I literally felt the urge to vomit.

[Bewlay Brother]

How many barns did you have to raid to gather enough straw to stuff together this straw-man? You are completely disregarding the context. Black people were so marginalized in the US that it sent shockwaves when a black woman went to sit at the back of a bus. Think about that.

It is the inverse of racism to elect a black man president solely based on his skin colour. If someone voted for Obama out of hatred for the white race, then yes, that is discrimination. But I'm sure many of those who voted for Obama were happy too when they voted for Clinton.

I shouldn't even be answering you. You said "what does slavery matter." You need say no more.

The context I said "What does slavery matter?" was the equivalent of me saying "What does slavery matter?" when having an argument with someone about what the best song from the Beatles was. It is completely irrelevant because we are talking about humanity, which is not influenced by bad things have happened because bad things have always happened and always will happen so if bad things that happened influenced humanity than humanity would be one ****ed up and obsolete thing.

I'll admit that it is not just as bad. Usually when I say that I say "almost". I forgot this time. It is still a bad path to go down though.

[Darcy88]

Blacks were considered 3/5ths a human being.

The Nazis stopped burning them and buried them instead because they figured it cost too much to buy the gasoline to burn thousands of them at a time.

So that must give Jews so so so so so much leeway when it comes to discriminating! They can practically walk up to a German and spit in their face! Hell, maybe even more!

What are you on about now? Oh, the Jews suffered more so the Blacks can't complain? Really?! You are vampirically draining from me what little faith in humanity I still have.

[Bewlay Brother]

What are you on about now? Oh, the Jews suffered more so the Blacks can't complain? Really?! You are vampirically draining from me what little faith in humanity I still have.

You are saying that blacks suffered more than whites so whites can't complain and discrimination of whites isn't as bad.

Discrimination is bad. Period. If you altered how "bad" something was each time a catastrophe happened, there would be no sense of humanity left.

The difference is I am looking at the whole picture while you think you are special because you care about other people being tortured and hurt. That doesn't make you special. You are expected to care. The important thing is to not allow things to happen again, and rationalizing discrimination is not a good pathway.

God you're so dense. I was clearly mocking your line of thinking. How did you miss that?

So what is your opinion of abortion? You know, since 1/3rd of all potential blacks in America are aborted? More black babies have been aborted since 1972 than blacks died during slavery. Why the selective outrage? Oh yeah, they weren't born yet, so what do they matter?

The essence of humanity is not something affected by catastrophes. It is beyond that dimension. If every enormity affected the essence of humanity than there would be nothing of it left.

I'll admit that it is more understandable to vote for a black president because they are black as it is to not vote for them because they ARE black, but only because it is understandable for a human being to act out of emotion. However if you can stand back and look at the way things SHOULD be, which in this circumstance there is no reason not to, people really SHOULDN'T judge someone based on their skin color. That is wrong.

For example, let's say that some guy had his daughter raped and murdered by 6 black men. Should that father resent or mistrust all black people because of that? No. But would I be more understanding if he did as opposed to someone who has never had any harm done to him by a black person? Absolutely. Ideally, if you can help it, skin color should not come into play either way.

This is what I am saying. Please see that because you seem to have distorted my message, or maybe I did a very bad job explaining myself.

And you know it was a bush-league move of you to take my "What does slavery matter?" out of context. There is no reason for you to do that to me.

[JuniperWoolf]

Oh yeah, they weren't born yet, so what do they matter?

Again, here go you (http://www.online-literature.com/forums/blog.php?b=11371).

[Bewlay Brother]

Again, here go you (http://www.online-literature.com/forums/blog.php?b=11371).

I didn't mean that argument and knew it was a low-blow. I was very angry. I've calmed down a bit now. I don't like it when people misrepresent what I am saying, which that guy was very guilty of doing.

The only people who I think are inherently inhumane or whatever when it comes to abortion are the people who parade it as a triumph in liberty and woman rights. There are people like that, and they make me sick. Look at the motives for murder and the motives for abortion, and the reactions the murderer and the person who had an abortion has. They are completely different in every way. That is because it is a lot different. However the people who can look at such an unfortunate thing and come away with the conclusion that it is a proclamation of liberty and "the woman doing what she wants with HER body!" ... All I can say is that they have a terrible disconnect.

They are who I was talking about.

I agree with most everything you said in what you linked me to, except for this:


Whether the woman in question falls into any of the above-mentioned reasons to get an abortion or if there is some other reason, the fact remains that it is her body. She is the one who is going to have to endure all of the pain and suffering of the labour process and the pregnancy. Denying her the right to choose how to operate her own body is to deny her the most basic of human freedoms.

No, the most basic of human freedoms is being able to live in the first place. I don't see how you can argue that.

[Alexander III]

Belaway and Darcy - you are both talking about two different things....10 posts in and none of you have yet to undersatnd that the other has understood nothing of what you were saying.

@Belaway, yes voting a man based on skin color, is wrong, does not matter if he is whte black green or red, a moral man votes for the best men, not the one with his favorite color.

But Obama was undoubtedly the best man at the time. So your argument is mostly irelevent in fact, tough in theory it makes sense.

@Darcy, everyone agrees that the fact that a black man could get elected president considering America's history is a beautifull thing. Also if you think what the americans did to the affricans is one of the worst acts of human history, you are ignorant in said departmen. It is a typical act of human history. Genocide, slavery, brutality are common troughout all of history.

But yes in the context of America, it is nice to see a nation progress so far in such little time.

Also Obama is not black, he is half-black. Huge difference. The day a man with the complexion of terry crews becomes president, that will be a day to rejoice.

[JuniperWoolf]

No, the most basic of human freedoms is being able to live in the first place. I don't see how you can argue that.

Nah, many people have exercised their feedom by choosing to die. Choice is liberty, not life.

I guess that someone could argue "is the choice to kill liberty?" Well, I guess it is technically, but that's taking "freedom" too far for social animals like humans. We live in large groups so there are trade-offs: I don't want my family or friends to be slaughtered, so I give up some freedom for that not to happen. Someone might also compare killing to abortion, and say that if freedom doesn't extend to murder then why should it to abortion which some might consider comparable. In that case, I'd refer them to my other arguments and point out that to equate abortion to killing is to radically oversimplify a complex social issue.


The only people who I think are inherently inhumane or whatever when it comes to abortion are the people who parade it as a triumph in liberty and woman rights.

Actually that annoys me, too. I don't think that a young girl who just chose to have her father's baby aborted wants to be congratulated for her bravery and hear about how she's struck a blow for civil rights.

[Drkshadow03]

I encourage you to add to the list of innovators.

And I can't help but wondering if I'm the only one who had to discover these innovators on my own. 16 years of formal education and nobody discussed these innovators. Nobody assigned their work. 16 years of formal education (with a BA in English literature) and it was ALL conventional literature that was assigned.

Wolf... I serious question whether you really read all you suggest you were "forced" to read because I have a hard time with your notion of "conventional literature". From my experience with literature, the greatest of the old and the new masters were anything but "conventional". I can't imagine reading Dante's Comedia, Cervantes' Don Quixote, Sterne's Tristram Shandy, Blake's Poems, Rousseau's Confessions, Whitman's Leaves of Grass, Melvilles, Moby Dick, or any number of other "classics" and not being stunned by the absolute audacity of the writers. "Conventional"? Do you even know what the word means?

As for your list of "innovative" poets... some are not bad: Andrei Codrescu, Pablo Neruda, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Rilke, October Paz, Henri Michaux, Yves Bonnefoy... You might enjoy Cesar Vallejo, Rafael Alberti, Antonio Machado, Federico Garcia Lorca, Boris Pasternak (as poet), Marina Tsvetaeva, Fernando Pessoa, Charles Wright, Louis Zukofsky, Samuel Beckett, J.L. Borges, Italo Calvino, Paul Celan, Geoffrey Hill, Anne Carson, etc...

Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath are both overrated... along with a majority of the "confessional" poets IMO. Of the Surrealists/Cubists/da-da poets Apollinaire, Breton, Eluard and a few others are interesting... but can't rival their Symbolist predecessors... nor what was going on at the same time in Spain.

I can't see what your complaint is with regard to your never having been exposed to these writers in 12 years of public school and 4 years working toward a BA in English Literature. Grade school is rarely the place for the exploration of contemporary literature, and your focus upon English Literature was not likely to result in an exploration of a great many writers outside of the English language. Seriously, my college studies of World Literature included Neruda, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Rilke, Apollinaire, and many others...

Not to mention a BA in English is only 12 classes over a 4 year period, so that averages out to be 3 classes a year. How much can a person really cover in so short a time period in their courses? Not to mention I remember having a discussion with Mortalterror a little while ago on Lit Net in which he asserted that many people he knows with BAs in English spent too much time reading contemporary work in their courses, while getting little to no background in the older classics. So Wolf's claim that students are forced to only spend their time with the Old Masters doesn't match up well with everyone else observations.

[Bewlay Brother]

Nah, many people have exercised their feedom by choosing to die. Choice is liberty, not life.

I guess that someone could argue "is the choice to kill liberty?" Well, I guess it is technically, but that's taking "freedom" too far for social animals like humans. There are trade-offs: I don't want my family or friends to be slaughtered, so I give up some freedom for that not to happen. Someone might also compare killing to abortion, and say that if freedom doesn't extend to murder then why should it to abortion. In that case, I'd refer them to my other arguments and point out that to equate abortion to killing is to radically oversimplify a complex social issue.

of, pertaining to, or forming a base; fundamental: a basic principle; the basic ingredient.

This is the definition of basic. I have no idea how you can seriously be arguing that being able to live is not the basic human freedom. It was what you deprive with abortion, no matter which semester. They are destined from a natural biological action to have life, and then someone goes ahead and exterminates them.

Actually that annoys me, too. I don't think that a young girl who just chose to have her father's baby aborted wants to be congratulated for her bravery and hear about how she's struck a blow for civil rights.

I guarantee you that 5 years after her abortion she isn't going to be reminiscing about her "bravery".

[JCamilo]

Not to mention a BA in English is only 12 classes over a 4 year period, so that averages out to be 3 classes a year. How much can a person really cover in so short a time period in their courses? Not to mention I remember having a discussion with Mortalterror a little while ago on Lit Net in which he asserted that many people he knows with BAs in English spent too much time reading contemporary work in their courses, while getting little to no background in the older classics. So Wolf's claim that students are forced to only spend their time with the Old Masters doesn't match up well with his observations.

The bigger question is that of course a single teacher is biased. A single school. Or single Academy. But if you look to hundred academies, curses, teachers is just an illusion to consider all of them have the same bias (which obviously would cease to be bias).

One could easy make a case for: This place does not teach enough african literature. This does not teach woman literature. This does not teach popular literature. This that and that. But as student you can opt the kind line you will follow and form yur own bias.

All his list proved is that his argument does not follow: several of those authors are marginal authors and are widely studied. Baudelaire for example, thanks to Walter Benjamin use of the author is almost pop to exaustion in social studies. I find hard to believe he is ignored, I just remember to see some guy impressing a girl with a few verses of Muse Malade, which the girl was impressed just because it was Baudelaire. Of course, most people has just a general notion about Le Fleurs and not all rest, but obviously in studies dedicated to French literature or even in France, Baudelaire must be as pop as coca-cola.

[Darcy88]

Belaway and Darcy - you are both talking about two different things....10 posts in and none of you have yet to undersatnd that the other has understood nothing of what you were saying.

@Belaway, yes voting a man based on skin color, is wrong, does not matter if he is whte black green or red, a moral man votes for the best men, not the one with his favorite color.

But Obama was undoubtedly the best man at the time. So your argument is mostly irelevent in fact, tough in theory it makes sense.

@Darcy, everyone agrees that the fact that a black man could get elected president considering America's history is a beautifull thing. Also if you think what the americans did to the affricans is one of the worst acts of human history, you are ignorant in said departmen. It is a typical act of human history. Genocide, slavery, brutality are common troughout all of history.

But yes in the context of America, it is nice to see a nation progress so far in such little time.

Also Obama is not black, he is half-black. Huge difference. The day a man with the complexion of terry crews becomes president, that will be a day to rejoice.

That is simply not true. American slavery was especially brutal. For instance, in Ancient Greece a slave was more akin to a farm-hand, he or she was not dehumanized and brutalized as the African slaves in America so often were. And when you consider that there was another century post-abolition of rank discrimination, so bad that, like I said, the mere act of a woman moving to the back of a bus sent shockwaves, the tragedy of the Africans' experience in America is thus seen to have been far-reaching and immense.

The differences between Barack Obama and John McCain lay mostly in rhetoric. The greatest difference between them was that one represented a race that had endured centuries of abuse and discrimination. To want to see that once enslaved, once lynched, once grossly discriminated against race assume the presidency is neither racist nor wrong. Like I said and Bewlay conveniently ignored, many who voted for Obama were likely happy when they voted for Clinton.

And Bewlay, I did not take you out of context. The context is that you think what the African Americans endured was nothing in the larger view of things. You say things like slavery should not alter us. Its not just slavery. Its discrimination. Blacks couldn't even vote in the early 1960s. There are many people alive today who can remember that time. I suppose if they rejoiced at Obama's electoral victory and felt happy that a black man had become president you would call them racists. Even if, like me, they were white.

[stlukesguild]

That is simply not true. American slavery was especially brutal. For instance, in Ancient Greece a slave was more akin to a farm-hand

Ummm... I think you seriously need to brush up on your history. The brutality of American slavery was in no way unique. Look to the Brutality of the Romans, the various "Barbarian" tribes, the Vikings, the Chinese during the An Lushan Rebellion to say nothing of Mao, the Mongol Invasions, the Russian Civil War, the Crusades, the Inquisition, the Holocaust, the Witch Hunts, Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, Expulsion of Germans after World War II, Armenian Genocide, Aztek Human Sacrifices, Rwandan and Darfur genocide, etc... Some involved greater losses of life; some less, but this is not the issue. All revealed the darkest side of humanity and its willing participation in brutality and the dehumanization of "others". Yes, the experience of slavery and the subsequent institutionalized racial discrimination in the US had a profound impact that is still being felt. Do you imagine the experience is any less for the Native Americans, the Jews of post-WWII Europe, the Chinese post-Mao, etc...?

The differences between Barack Obama and John McCain lay mostly in rhetoric. The greatest difference between them was that one represented a race that had endured centuries of abuse and discrimination. To want to see that once enslaved, once lynched, once grossly discriminated against race assume the presidency is neither racist nor wrong.

You seem to be employing some rather slippery logic here. Employing race as the determining factor in an election or in hiring or in accepting a student to a university is "racist" regardless of whether it is done in order to rectify past racist policies. One does not rectify a past bias by reversing it in the present. One rectifies it by eliminating such biases altogether. To have voted for Obama based solely upon the color of his skin (And I might note that I did vote for him) would most certainly be "racist" and "wrong". Indeed, I might add it would amount to stupidity as well. The election of the President of the United States is far too important a matter to be left to a preference for a certain skin color, hair style, or religion. The President of the United States is not merely some symbolic figurehead. If he were, then surely I would say go ahead... elect the black guy simply because you wish to prove to the world how far we have come as a nation. But such is not the case. The proper way of electing the President is to consider which individual, regardless of race, gender, gender preference, religion, political party, etc... will likely prove the best leader for the nation as a whole.

By the way... slightly off topic, eh?

[Darcy88]

I consider the position to be precisely that - a symbolic figurehead. Also, people who voted for Obama likely also voted for Clinton, who was white.

The Africans were seized and taken across the sea, shackled to a foreign land, forced to drudgery, considered less than human, discriminated against for centuries, as a matter of policy up until a few decades ago. For centuries. And I would also consider it a positive development were a Jew elected Chancellor in Germany, an aboriginal elected Prime Minister in Canada.

Many of the atrocities you mention are centuries or even millennia old. The suffering of African Americans is still fresh in the national consciousness.

Maybe the logic is weak, but I don't see how anyone could be faulted for acting here out of emotion, for caring most for the symbolism of a Black man becoming president.

And yes, very off topic.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

I think Bewlay Brother dwarves some kudos for actually arguing pretty coherently, really, considering that first rant.

[Calidore]

I think Bewlay Brother dwarves some kudos for actually arguing pretty coherently, really, considering that first rant.

"Dwarves"? That's a heck of a malaprop. Can I ask what your other train of thought was that crashed into this one? :-)

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

:lol: No, it's just the stupid autocorrect on my iPad, which I'm very close to turning off. Though, I think "dwarves" makes it more interesting than "deserves."

[Bewlay Brother]

Darcy... serious question.. do you know who Josef Stalin was?

Oh and Darcy, you know there is still slavery going on in Africa right now as we speak, and it is blacks enslaving blacks.

[Darcy88]

Darcy... serious question.. do you know who Josef Stalin was?

Can't say I do. Who was he?

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Maybe I spoke too soon.

[Darcy88]

Darcy... serious question.. do you know who Josef Stalin was?

I'm waiting to be enlightened. Names sounds Russian. 19th century novelist perhaps? I really like Dostoevsky and Gogol. Maybe I'll check this Josef Stalin fellow out.

[osho]

I'm waiting to be enlightened. Names sounds Russian. 19th century novelist perhaps? I really like Dostoevsky and Gogol. Maybe I'll check this Josef Stalin fellow out.

Dostoevsky and Gogol are really great literary thinkers and I always got fascinated by these gigantic personality .

[JuniperWoolf]

I have no idea how you can seriously be arguing that being able to live is not the basic human freedom. It was what you deprive with abortion, no matter which semester. They are destined from a natural biological action to have life, and then someone goes ahead and exterminates them.

1. It's trimester, not semester.
2. You wonked up the quote tags.
3. What are you trying to argue? I thought you said that you agreed with my points.


I guarantee you that 5 years after her abortion she isn't going to be reminiscing about her "bravery".

No ****.

[OrphanPip]

Saying a fertilized egg has a "destiny" to have life is a bit trite (they are alive, but so are bacteria and cockroaches, the relevant question is if they are persons). First of all, an embryo may or may not actually have the potential to be a human being, they may lack necessary genetic components to form a viable human being, while still being viable at earlier stages of development. Secondly, the majority of pregnancies end in miscarriage. Third, a potential to be something which has rights does not imply that thing in itself has rights.

[cafolini]

Saying a fertilized egg has a "destiny" to have life is a bit trite (they are alive, but so are bacteria and cockroaches, the relevant question is if they are persons). First of all, an embryo may or may not actually have the potential to be a human being, they may lack necessary genetic components to form a viable human being, while still being viable at earlier stages of development. Secondly, the majority of pregnancies end in miscarriage. Third, a potential to be something which has rights does not imply that thing in itself has rights.

Careful. You are cutting it too far outside of ecosystem. There occur no things in themselves.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Darcy, please tell me you're just jerking Bewlar's chain be saying you don't know who Stalin is. . . .

[WolfLarsen]

The posts of Bewlay have nothing to do with the topic at hand, and have nothing to do with literature as well. Why not just ignore his posts? I think his posts would be better suited for some right-wing neo-Nazi posting board. It certainly isn't the kind of stuff that belongs in a discussion about literature.

A different poster, one whose posts are far more relevant to the topic, was kind enough to give a list of some writers and poets that he felt were innovative. I wish to thank him. Others may also wish to share with us the names of writers and poets who they feel are innovative, particularly of the modern and contemporary periods. Other members of the site might enjoy reading those poets and writers very much. (As I said before unless you have permission from the copyright holder please refrain from posting an entire work, just list titles, as posting an entire work that is not yet part of the public domain is against copyright rules. Thank you.)

A different poster brought up the subject of sexuality and literature. I believe that the time has come to end censorship in literature. Writers and poets need greater freedom of creativity. Sexuality is an extremely important part of human nature. To censor sexuality in literature is to impede the creative process, and the creative process is key to creating great literature.

Censorship of sexuality in literature may come in endless forms. It may be of the politically correct variety of censorship, which is a relatively new form of censorship. It may be of the religious extremist variety of censorship, which of course is a very old form of censorship. It may come from the government.

We need to understand that sexuality is natural. Sexuality has a natural place in literature. We should not be censoring it.

[cafolini]

The posts of Bewlay have nothing to do with the topic at hand, and have nothing to do with literature as well. Why not just ignore his posts? I think his posts would be better suited for some right-wing neo-Nazi posting board. It certainly isn't the kind of stuff that belongs in a discussion about literature.

A different poster, one whose posts are far more relevant to the topic, was kind enough to give a list of some writers and poets that he felt were innovative. I wish to thank him. Others may also wish to share with us the names of writers and poets who they feel are innovative, particularly of the modern and contemporary periods. Other members of the site might enjoy reading those poets and writers very much. (As I said before unless you have permission from the copyright holder please refrain from posting an entire work, just list titles, as posting an entire work that is not yet part of the public domain is against copyright rules. Thank you.)

A different poster brought up the subject of sexuality and literature. I believe that the time has come to end censorship in literature. Writers and poets need greater freedom of creativity. Sexuality is an extremely important part of human nature. To censor sexuality in literature is to impede the creative process, and the creative process is key to creating great literature.

Censorship of sexuality in literature may come in endless forms. It may be of the politically correct variety of censorship, which is a relatively new form of censorship. It may be of the religious extremist variety of censorship, which of course is a very old form of censorship. It may come from the government.

We need to understand that sexuality is natural. Sexuality has a natural place in literature. We should not be censoring it.

There are some very "creative" churches of sex. Some claim that De Sade was the only revolutionary ever.

[Darcy88]

Darcy, please tell me you're just jerking Bewlar's chain be saying you don't know who Stalin is. . . .

Of course I know who he is. I'm well read. He wrote Fathers and Sons right? See I know.



A different poster brought up the subject of sexuality and literature. I believe that the time has come to end censorship in literature. Writers and poets need greater freedom of creativity. Sexuality is an extremely important part of human nature. To censor sexuality in literature is to impede the creative process, and the creative process is key to creating great literature.

Censorship of sexuality in literature may come in endless forms. It may be of the politically correct variety of censorship, which is a relatively new form of censorship. It may be of the religious extremist variety of censorship, which of course is a very old form of censorship. It may come from the government.

We need to understand that sexuality is natural. Sexuality has a natural place in literature. We should not be censoring it.

You really think literature as a whole is censored for sex these days? The Lady Chatterly Obscenity Trial was back in 1959 man. Its old news. Tropic of Cancer is one of my favourite books. Did you just step out of a cryo-chamber? The 50's are long gone.

What you want is sex, sex, sex raining down, thrusted upon us at every turn, rendered as ubiquitous and banal as red brick. You would rape our sense of decency. You sneer at those who regard sex as something more than a crude animalistic urge, those for whom to the act is attached some higher almost spiritual meaning.

Our culture is over-sexed. I turn on a television and see soft-core porn playing on every channel. I walk outside in the summer-time and fancy myself in ancient Sparta.

[Alexander III]

Of course I know who he is. I'm well read. He wrote Fathers and Sons right? See I know.

Considering the clear lack of historical prespecive you showed before, I don't think any of us would have been particularly suprissed had you not know who stalin was.

[Darcy88]

Considering the clear lack of historical prespecive you showed before, I don't think any of us would have been particularly suprissed had you not know who stalin was.

Whatever. I've heard scholars state that the form of slavery the African Americans endured was perhaps the most brutal in all history. I can think of few example of such large numbers of people being shipped to other continents and kept in drudgery and discrimination for centuries. I'm sure there are some but it is not "typical" as you in your superior intelligence and historical perspective state.

[WolfLarsen]

Darcy said:

You really think literature as a whole is censored for sex these days? The Lady Chatterly Obscenity Trial was back in 1959 man. Its old news. Tropic of Cancer is one of my favourite books. Did you just step out of a cryo-chamber? The 50's are long gone.

What you want is sex, sex, sex raining down, thrusted upon us at every turn, rendered as ubiquitous and banal as red brick. You would rape our sense of decency. You sneer at those who regard sex as something more than a crude animalistic urge, those for whom to the act is attached some higher almost spiritual meaning.

Our culture is over-sexed. I turn on a television and see soft-core porn playing on every channel. I walk outside in the summer-time and fancy myself in ancient Sparta.

Darcy is mistaken. He clearly does not understand what I'm saying.

I feel that no one has a right to impose their sexual Puritanism on others, and I feel that this is especially true or should be especially true in the world of literature. Who is Darcy or anyone else for that matter to say what should be allowed in literature and what shouldn't? The most important thing here is not to put obstacles in the creative spirit of the writer or poet or painter or sculptor.

Not every writer or poet or painter or sculptor shares Darcy's opinions about sexuality. I defend Darcy's right to write whatever he chooses. But I also defend the right of poets and writers and painters and sculptors to be more free in their creative endeavors.

The important thing is absolute freedom for the writer or poet, whether it be in sexuality or otherwise, provided that the writer is not espousing neo-Nazi filth, which is a different matter entirely.

Darcy's insistence that we live in a literary world free of sexual censorship is incorrect. It is true that sexual censorship in the literary world (and in society in general) loosened during the sexual revolution. However, it seems that since the 1980s the pendulum is swinging the other way. Ihe literary world (and society in general) is becoming more puritanical. This sexual Puritanism, in my opinion, is having a negative impact upon the literary world in the form of censorship.

This censorship takes many different forms, including that of political correctness. But whether this censorship derives from political correctness or religious extremism or government intervention censorship is censorship. It is ugly. It has no place in the literary world. We should defend the right of writers and poets and sculptors and painters to create whatever they shall choose.

[Darcy88]

Darcy said:


Darcy is mistaken. He clearly does not understand what I'm saying.

I feel that no one has a right to impose their sexual Puritanism on others, and I feel that this is especially true or should be especially true in the world of literature. Who is Darcy or anyone else for that matter to say what should be allowed in literature and what shouldn't? The most important thing here is not to put obstacles in the creative spirit of the writer or poet or painter or sculptor.

Not every writer or poet or painter or sculptor shares Darcy's opinions about sexuality. I defend Darcy's right to write whatever he chooses. But I also defend the right of poets and writers and painters and sculptors to be more free in their creative endeavors.

The important thing is absolute freedom for the writer or poet, whether it be in sexuality or otherwise, provided that the writer is not espousing neo-Nazi filth, which is a different matter entirely.

Darcy's insistence that we live in a literary world free of sexual censorship is incorrect. It is true that sexual censorship in the literary world (and in society in general) loosened during the sexual revolution. However, it seems that since the 1980s the pendulum is swinging the other way. Ihe literary world (and society in general) is becoming more puritanical. This sexual Puritanism, in my opinion, is having a negative impact upon the literary world in the form of censorship.

This censorship takes many different forms, including that of political correctness. But whether this censorship derives from political correctness or religious extremism or government intervention censorship is censorship. It is ugly. It has no place in the literary world. We should defend the right of writers and poets and sculptors and painters to create whatever they shall choose.

I'm done responding to you on this issue. All I say goes in one ear and out the other.

Actually never mind. You took the effort to respond and so shall I.

Wolf if you write brilliant prose or poetry chalk full of sexual content then it will get published and read. If you cheapen and demean sex, reduce it to no more than another mere animal function wholly divested of sanctity, placing it on the same unhallowed plane as defecation, as you did in that poem you posted earlier, people won't respond warmly. Maybe its not puritanism but decency and taste that is the true object of your gripe.

Of the contemporary literature I've read, which admittedly is not much, I've found sex freely depicted. I do not see evidence of the kind of extensive censorship you speak of.

And as far as society goes.... come out from under your rock! Sex is everywhere, its unavoidable, your utopia has arrived.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

The posts of Bewlay have nothing to do with the topic at hand, and have nothing to do with literature as well. Why not just ignore his posts? I think his posts would be better suited for some right-wing neo-Nazi posting board. It certainly isn't the kind of stuff that belongs in a discussion about literature.
First, all perspectives should have a voice in a discussion of almost anything. Have conservatives never written good literature?

Plus, I hardly think his voice is representative of a far right-wing mentality, much less a neo-Nazi mindset--and, fankly, i wonder if you even know what that means.


A different poster, one whose posts are far more relevant to the topic, was kind enough to give a list of some writers and poets that he felt were innovative. I wish to thank him. Others may also wish to share with us the names of writers and poets who they feel are innovative, particularly of the modern and contemporary periods. Other members of the site might enjoy reading those poets and writers very much. (As I said before unless you have permission from the copyright holder please refrain from posting an entire work, just list titles, as posting an entire work that is not yet part of the public domain is against copyright rules. Thank you.)

A different poster brought up the subject of sexuality and literature. I believe that the time has come to end censorship in literature. Writers and poets need greater freedom of creativity. Sexuality is an extremely important part of human nature. To censor sexuality in literature is to impede the creative process, and the creative process is key to creating great literature.

Censorship of sexuality in literature may come in endless forms. It may be of the politically correct variety of censorship, which is a relatively new form of censorship. It may be of the religious extremist variety of censorship, which of course is a very old form of censorship. It may come from the government.

We need to understand that sexuality is natural. Sexuality has a natural place in literature. We should not be censoring it.
Do you have any particular contemporary examples of literature that has been censored or suppressed?

Of course I know who he is. I'm well read. He wrote Fathers and Sons right? See I know.
:lol:

[Bewlay Brother]

The posts of Bewlay have nothing to do with the topic at hand, and have nothing to do with literature as well. Why not just ignore his posts? I think his posts would be better suited for some right-wing neo-Nazi posting board. It certainly isn't the kind of stuff that belongs in a discussion about literature.

A different poster, one whose posts are far more relevant to the topic, was kind enough to give a list of some writers and poets that he felt were innovative. I wish to thank him. Others may also wish to share with us the names of writers and poets who they feel are innovative, particularly of the modern and contemporary periods. Other members of the site might enjoy reading those poets and writers very much. (As I said before unless you have permission from the copyright holder please refrain from posting an entire work, just list titles, as posting an entire work that is not yet part of the public domain is against copyright rules. Thank you.)

A different poster brought up the subject of sexuality and literature. I believe that the time has come to end censorship in literature. Writers and poets need greater freedom of creativity. Sexuality is an extremely important part of human nature. To censor sexuality in literature is to impede the creative process, and the creative process is key to creating great literature.

Censorship of sexuality in literature may come in endless forms. It may be of the politically correct variety of censorship, which is a relatively new form of censorship. It may be of the religious extremist variety of censorship, which of course is a very old form of censorship. It may come from the government.

We need to understand that sexuality is natural. Sexuality has a natural place in literature. We should not be censoring it.

There we go. Boom. You don't agree with it so that is the end of it. Though if it was something you agreed with, you would be all over it. You are a phony. You don't care about truly being "controversial" but only ridiculing people you don't agree with.

[Bewlay Brother]

Whatever. I've heard scholars state that the form of slavery the African Americans endured was perhaps the most brutal in all history. I can think of few example of such large numbers of people being shipped to other continents and kept in drudgery and discrimination for centuries. I'm sure there are some but it is not "typical" as you in your superior intelligence and historical perspective state.

Drudgery and discrimination? They would much rather be here in America right now than Africa.

[Darcy88]

Drudgery and discrimination? They would much rather be here in America right now than Africa.

My response to that is to say that I will not dignify it with a response.

[WolfLarsen]

Not to mention a BA in English is only 12 classes over a 4 year period, so that averages out to be 3 classes a year. How much can a person really cover in so short a time period in their courses? Not to mention I remember having a discussion with Mortalterror a little while ago on Lit Net in which he asserted that many people he knows with BAs in English spent too much time reading contemporary work in their courses, while getting little to no background in the older classics. So Wolf's claim that students are forced to only spend their time with the Old Masters doesn't match up well with everyone else observations.


There certainly is plenty of contemporary literature taught in college literary courses. However, much of that work, while often quite good, lacks innovation and experimentation. I think that there should be some conventional contemporary literature, but at the same time there should be innovative literature in these courses as well. What is often being left out of the courses is the contemporary INNOVATIVE literature.

In an earlier post I posted the work of a relatively unknown author (with his prior permission) whose work I discovered on the Internet. I believe his work to be more creative than ANYTHING I read in 16 years of formal education with a BA in English literature. This is certainly not the first time that I discovered on the Internet excellent innovative works by unknown authors.

Perhaps the best writing in the history of the human race is being written right now, or perhaps the best writing of the human race does not find its way into any canon, because the tastes of those who decide what goes in the canon might be far too conservative. The canon may contain some very good works of literature, some others that are not so good, but does the canon have the greatest works of literature written by man? I doubt it.

We've already heard the word "good taste" repeated over and over again like some mantra. "Good taste" is nothing more than the prejudices of the status quo. Certainly, until he made big, Pablo Picasso's work was not considered to be in "good taste". His paintings were considered vulgar. And certainly he is not the only one.

Each generation of artists and writers must fight against the haughty connoisseurs of "good taste". For the guardians of "good taste" new and bold does not fit their definition of "good taste".

This does not mean that I don't think there is a place for conventional writing. At the moment I myself happen to be writing in a conventional manner.

But there is no correct manner of writing. There is no such thing as "good taste". If people wish to do so let them write in a conventional manner one day and a completely innovative manner the next day. Let there be as many creative writing styles as there are poets and writers in the world.

[Darcy88]

There is no such thing as "good taste".

Oh but there is. Its a preference for quality. It accepts the vulgar and the new be they a worthy read but rejects whatever is of poor quality. That story you posted was interesting but its silly to say its better or more creative than every work in the canon. I realize that the poetry establishment has become somewhat more conservative as of late, placing greater emphasis on rhyme for example. But I walk into a library or a book store and am confronted with a veritable tide of outstanding innovative literature, many works laden with sex, politics, amorality. Like I said, these sentiments of yours would have been timely 150 years ago. I suppose it might not be a bad attitude for an artist to have, whether it reflects the reality or not. But don't take rejection as cause to condemn the entire world of literature. Maybe, just maybe it has to do with the quality of your writing and not with the conservative puritanical censorship you imagine to pervade the literary world.

[JuniperWoolf]

They would much rather be here in America right now than Africa.

That doesn't work. If the ancestors of the descendants of slaves had never been enslaved, those ancestors would have lived completely different lives with different people around them. They would have engaged in coitis with different people, and at different times in their ovulation cycles and sperm production. They would have had different children, and because millions of people would be different the world itself would be different, you can't know if it would be better or worse for hypothetical people in that scenario or if we're better off with this reality. Furthermore, America would be a completely different place. Everything contributed or done, big or small, by a person who is the descendant of a black slave would never have been done, and that adds up to a lot. Not just the big names, American has been affected by it's black population in many ways - look at the color of many of the soldiers in the Vietnam war for example, that whole situation would have certainly gone differently. You can't make a judgement about the quality of that hypothetical, alternate-reality America. You're saying, "this reality is better than what would have been if black Africans weren't enslaved," but there's no way in hell you would ever possibly be able to know that. That's outside of our field of vision.

[Alexander III]

That doesn't work. If the ancestors of the descendants of slaves had never been enslaved, those ancestors would have lived completely different lives with different people around them. They would have engaged in coitis with different people, and at different times in their ovulation cycles and sperm production. They would have had different children, and because millions of people would be different the world itself would be different, you can't know if it would be better or worse for hypothetical people in that scenario or if we're better off with this reality. Furthermore, America would be a completely different place. Everything contributed or done, big or small, by a person who is the descendant of a black slave would never have been done, and that adds up to a lot. Not just the big names, American has been affected by it's black population in many ways - look at the color of many of the soldiers in the Vietnam war for example, that whole situation would have certainly gone differently. You can't make a judgement about the quality of that hypothetical, alternate-reality America. You're saying, "this reality is better than what would have been if black Africans weren't enslaved," but there's no way in hell you would ever possibly be able to know that. That's outside of our field of vision.

far to many if's.

Most likley had they not been taken from affrica, their descendants of now would be virtual slaves to ather africans.

Irony, humanity if full of it.

[Bewlay Brother]

Thank you Mutatis for sticking up to me. I was starting to feel alienated and it is obvious that many people here are like talking to brick walls. Not you though.

Darcy:

You know what I said is true. You don't care about the truth or truly probing the essence of humanity and life. All you care about is trying to prove just how much you care about black people. I'm not impressed. I expect such things. How about you go past the most simplistic layer of the topic at hand?

And Darcy, do you know what I like to do on Saturdays? If I have no other plans?

I love to go to Dunkin Donuts and get a dozen of donuts but four boxes. Then I put three donuts in each box. I then go to miscellaneous places. Barnes and Noble, Tj Max, the YMCA, and I look for a nice wholesome Africian-American family. I then go to them and say, "Hey man, me and my family are about to go on a road trip and we couldn't finish these donuts and we don't want the car to smell like donuts. Do you want the rest?"
Normally they say yes. Now Darcy, do you know why I do this? I do it so I can prove to them that I am NOT a racist.

Now I know what you are thinking. What good will that do? Only like three families will know i'm not a racist! You see the thing is, you may not agree with everything I say - but you have to agree with evolution and homeostasis. You see, since blacks have been hunted and maimed and beaten by white people for their entire existence, they have evolved an uncanny ability to describe all of the queasy nuances of the caucasion face. I figure that when African-Americans will get together, they will talk about my acts of beauty, and describe my face. I predict that by 2025 72% of African-Americans on the east coast will know that, in fact, THIS FACE loves them!

My goodness. Sometimes I just feel like I am one with humanity itself. This is one of those times. I'm talking about paradigm-shattering, take-no-prisoners compassion. I aspire to be you Darcy.

[cafolini]

far to many if's.

Most likley had they not been taken from affrica, their descendants of now would be virtual slaves to ather africans.

Irony, humanity if full of it.

Even when it is true that most of the slaves that came to America were bought by negro importing businesses, from other Africans that had taken them POW's, that has nothing to do with the nature of slave life in USA.
The American civil war was not truly fought for the liberation of many slaves, although Lincoln would claim it. It was mainly fought for the monopoly of textiles in the midst of the industrial revolution. Lincolm's claim was true as the beginning of a consequence of the civil war.
It was not until the 1930's that the true political currents of slave liberation came to stage. And in the south we were in the 1960's and seventies before the lynchings stopped considerably, not fully.
What does all of this business of how the slaves arrived to America has to do with slavery in America and what it developed into and how the problem was resolved? Vestiges of stupid racism?

[JuniperWoolf]

Most likley had they not been taken from affrica, their descendants of now would be virtual slaves to ather africans.

Or an infinite number of other possible scenarios. That's the fun of the chaos theory. African slavery in America is actually a huge chunk of modern history. If it had never happened, who the hell knows what the world would be like? America would be completely different, and America is a huge global powerhouse. The whole world would be different.

[Alexander III]

Or an infinite number of other possible scenarios. That's the fun of the chaos theory.

Your the fan of logic and reason here - look at it from the point of view of probability. The majority would be contempory slaves in africa. it can't be denied.

[Bewlay Brother]

That doesn't work. If the ancestors of the descendants of slaves had never been enslaved, those ancestors would have lived completely different lives with different people around them. They would have engaged in coitis with different people, and at different times in their ovulation cycles and sperm production. They would have had different children, and because millions of people would be different the world itself would be different, you can't know if it would be better or worse for hypothetical people in that scenario or if we're better off with this reality. Furthermore, America would be a completely different place. Everything contributed or done, big or small, by a person who is the descendant of a black slave would never have been done, and that adds up to a lot. Not just the big names, American has been affected by it's black population in many ways - look at the color of many of the soldiers in the Vietnam war for example, that whole situation would have certainly gone differently. You can't make a judgement about the quality of that hypothetical, alternate-reality America. You're saying, "this reality is better than what would have been if black Africans weren't enslaved," but there's no way in hell you would ever possibly be able to know that. That's outside of our field of vision.

You are right about the second half. Blacks have helped make America a great place. It is unfortunate that for a lot of the help they didn't really have a choice. That is in the past though. We have moved past that embarrassing and depraved era, and today all of America is better because of it - including the descendants of slaves. It is terrible that it happened but luckily society has been mature enough to move forward, been progressive, and not harbored ill will against people because of acts they did not commit, or warped their grasp of humanity because of hand-picked enormities.

People like Darcy... oh boy. He has that platform of his, that feeble perspective of the grand scheme of things. It is up in the sky somewhere, a castle on a plot of land. Weighed down by the gravity of progress, he falls down to lowly hateful America. He despairs, but realizes that in his hands he is still grasping clumps of soil, from when he was holding on for dear life. He holds onto these clumps. They never leave his sight. He tries so hard to make a garden out of them.

I hope to hell he doesn't succeed. I like people. I know how easy corruption comes though, and how disgusting they can be. I've seen personalities get flesh-eating diseases. Scores and scores of them. It is a hard thing to watch happen. I'm glad they aren't armies though, which would be Darcy's utopia.

[Alexander III]

That is in the past though. We have moved past that embarrassing and depraved era, and today all of America is better because of it

Is it really - I mean if you prioritize a civilization over the individual, slavery is extremley beneficial. I mean almost all of the great civilizations were founded upon a bedrock of slavery - human history without slaver, would meant that most civlizations would not have been able to rise and culture as we know it might have never existed, for what created art and philisophy and culture was the fact that slavery meant there were also lots who did not need to work and could dedicate time otherwise, to the pursuit of culture.

Just sayin...

dont blame other for being narrow minded and then proccede to shoot out cliche blanket statments without much tought to what was said.

[JuniperWoolf]

Your the fan of logic and reason here - look at it from the point of view of probability. The majority would be contempory slaves in africa. it can't be denied.

That's not mathematically correct. To discuss the minute points of ecological chaos theory would take a really long *** time but I'll give you one obvious example of a very large, observable change. What we're talking about happened a long time ago, when the world's population was quite low. If we were to go into the world's genetic tree, those people who's offspring would have been changed because of African slavery would be the starting branches for billions of people, and those are people, variables abound. People cause things, great social changes. Imagine if Hitler had never been born, or if Gandhi had never been born, or ANY huge social changer (Bush, Kim Jong-Il, Thatcher, Nelson Mandela, Stalin, the list goes on forever). How could you be sure that there wouldn't have been another huge social changer in that massive group of billions of people who would have existed in the hypothetical scenario in which black slavery in America never happened? It's a solid bet that there would have been at least a couple and that's all you need to change the world, one Shakespeare or one Alexander of Macedonia. Not to mention the fact that a few of the big names in our reality would never have been born, Martin Luthor King for example. How would the world change then? Hell, the reproduction of the slave owners would have been altered as well, not as much time for ****ing if you have to pick your own damn cotton. Some white Americans who you might not even think connected to anything at all might never have been born, and other people would have taken their place, people who would have been raised under different conditions and who would make completely different decisions. And then remember the medium and the multitudes of small effects as well, they really add up. I'm telling you, society and the world would be completely different in ways nobody can possibly predict.

That's why Bewlay's suggestion that people are "better off" because of black slavery doesn't hold water. There is no way in hell that you can predict a thing like that.

[Bewlay Brother]

Is it really - I mean if you prioritize a civilization over the individual, slavery is extremley beneficial. I mean almost all of the great civilizations were founded upon a bedrock of slavery - human history without slaver, would meant that most civlizations would not have been able to rise and culture as we know it might have never existed, for what created art and philisophy and culture was the fact that slavery meant there were also lots who did not need to work and could dedicate time otherwise, to the pursuit of culture.

Just sayin...

I'm talking about America. Of course mankind isn't past slavery. It is going on right now for crying out loud. However now, America is past it, and the people that keep bringing it back up to utilize it display the most phony type of humanity.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkvRYg2ZmY0&feature=youtu.be

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3cGfrExozQ&feature=related

[hillwalker]

BB - I was bemused by your Dunkin' Donuts story - not sure that being non-racist and patronising both count as being a 'good citizen'.

But apologies, we're not all on here to give you a hard time. Honest. Welcome to LitNet - and you just happen to have wandered onto the 'thread from Hell'

:-)

H

[WolfLarsen]

I guess some people here are bored of literature then?

What does this discussion have to do with literature?

If you look at Bellway's first post and some of his commentaries in his other posts you'll see what is purpose is: to hijack a thread on a literary site and use it to promote his white supremacist ideas.

I really don't think that Bellway's white supremacist ideas belong on a website about literature. Why doesn't he post this nonsense on some white supremacist posting board?

Even if I'm mistaken and Bellway's posts are not some kind of white supremacist whitewash of slavery his posts still have nothing to do with literature. Whatever Bellway is on about it certainly is not literature. He is on the wrong website.

[hillwalker]

I guess some people here are bored of literature then?
Seems so - but not Me
What does this discussion have to do with literature?
Absolutely nothing

I'm not taking sides, Wlof - merely making an observation. And I think you'll see he spells his name Bewlay.

H

[Bewlay Brother]

I guess some people here are bored of literature then?

What does this discussion have to do with literature?

If you look at Bellway's first post and some of his commentaries in his other posts you'll see what is purpose is: to hijack a thread on a literary site and use it to promote his white supremacist ideas.

I really don't think that Bellway's white supremacist ideas belong on a website about literature. Why doesn't he post this nonsense on some white supremacist posting board?

Even if I'm mistaken and Bellway's posts are not some kind of white supremacist whitewash of slavery his posts still have nothing to do with literature. Whatever Bellway is on about it certainly is not literature. He is on the wrong website.

Talk to me. Or am I a subhuman to you? Is everyone a subhuman to you? I don't see you talk directly to anyone.

Point out to me what I have said that is racist.

And my satire about Dunkin Donuts had much more to do with literature than any of your nauseatingly trite, unlearned, and sophomoric babbling sessions.

My satire about Dunkin Donuts was rather out there too. People will probably read it and just have a confused look on their face. I thought you loved things like that and that was what you wanted! Oh but of course not, because it isn't about something you agree with.

For you to call me a white supremacist is a bold faced lie. White supremacy is the belief that whites are inherently superior to other races. There is absolutely no justification for that accusation, except of course the fact that you are a phony and you don't give a damn about innovation or originality or edginess all you care about are cheerleaders for your very myopic underdeveloped views of humanity and life.

And whitewash? I'm putting things in perspective. Humanity is a different dimension. It is not affected by enormities of any side or size because if that were the case, humanity would be maimed past the point of any recognition. Sorry that I don't waste my energy and time relentlessly trying to prove just how much I care about black people, because that is not an accomplishment. You are SUPPOSED to care about all people equally based on their actions and personality and intentions and hundreds of thousands of other things before skin color comes into play. The difference is that I actually take this seriously, rather than politically like you. I would blow my brains out if I looked at this world through eyes such as yours.

Saying that slavery was not the worst atrocity of all-time isn't whitewashing. It is fact. And I pointed out that fact to show how absurd it is to believe that what bad thing happened to a particular race in the past should have any affect on how they are treated today. It would be much more reasonable to accuse people like you of whitewashing things like the Holocaust by likening something that wasn't 1/10th as bad. Actually that is exactly what I am going to do. You whitewash the Holocaust because you don't give a damn about homosapien suffering. You only care about manipulation and self-indulgence, and slavery is a much sexier thing for you to manipulate. Oh and bro, before you say it, white supremacists HATE Jews. I must really be the black sheep of my white supremacy family.

[Alexander III]

That's not mathematically correct. To discuss the minute points of ecological chaos theory would take a really long *** time but I'll give you one obvious example of a very large, observable change. What we're talking about happened a long time ago, when the world's population was quite low. If we were to go into the world's genetic tree, those people who's offspring would have been changed because of African slavery would be the starting branches for billions of people, and those are people, variables abound. People cause things, great social changes. Imagine if Hitler had never been born, or if Gandhi had never been born, or ANY huge social changer (Bush, Kim Jong-Il, Thatcher, Nelson Mandela, Stalin, the list goes on forever). How could you be sure that there wouldn't have been another huge social changer in that massive group of billions of people who would have existed in the hypothetical scenario in which black slavery in America never happened? It's a solid bet that there would have been at least a couple and that's all you need to change the world, one Shakespeare or one Alexander of Macedonia. Not to mention the fact that a few of the big names in our reality would never have been born, Martin Luthor King for example. How would the world change then? Hell, the reproduction of the slave owners would have been altered as well, not as much time for ****ing if you have to pick your own damn cotton. Some white Americans who you might not even think connected to anything at all might never have been born, and other people would have taken their place, people who would have been raised under different conditions and who would make completely different decisions. And then remember the medium and the multitudes of small effects as well, they really add up. I'm telling you, society and the world would be completely different in ways nobody can possibly predict.

That's why Bewlay's suggestion that people are "better off" because of black slavery doesn't hold water. There is no way in hell that you can predict a thing like that.


Like I said before it is all if's - all we have for certain is the concrete present, and the concrete present is that America as a nation would not be as it is now if not for the bennefits of slavery. Like all civilizations before it.

[BienvenuJDC]

And Darcy, do you know what I like to do on Saturdays? If I have no other plans?

I love to go to Dunkin Donuts and get a dozen of donuts but four boxes. Then I put three donuts in each box. I then go to miscellaneous places. Barnes and Noble, Tj Max, the YMCA, and I look for a nice wholesome Africian-American family. I then go to them and say, "Hey man, me and my family are about to go on a road trip and we couldn't finish these donuts and we don't want the car to smell like donuts. Do you want the rest?"
Normally they say yes. Now Darcy, do you know why I do this? I do it so I can prove to them that I am NOT a racist.

Now I know what you are thinking. What good will that do? Only like three families will know i'm not a racist! You see the thing is, you may not agree with everything I say - but you have to agree with evolution and homeostasis. You see, since blacks have been hunted and maimed and beaten by white people for their entire existence, they have evolved an uncanny ability to describe all of the queasy nuances of the caucasion face. I figure that when African-Americans will get together, they will talk about my acts of beauty, and describe my face. I predict that by 2025 72% of African-Americans on the east coast will know that, in fact, THIS FACE loves them!

My goodness. Sometimes I just feel like I am one with humanity itself. This is one of those times. I'm talking about paradigm-shattering, take-no-prisoners compassion. I aspire to be you Darcy.

OK....you asked. I find this post to be very racist!!


It also seems that several people have brought up about you (Bewlay Brother)...and I am addressing you. You are not subhuman, but it seems that you are acting in such a manner.

There is a reason that I have not posted on this thread. It is because the topic didn't really interest me. I'd suggest that you do the same.

Wolf, I am sorry that this is off topic. Maybe I'll try to follow this thread a little and offer something to put it back on topic. BTW, I enjoyed your two poems. You've got some wit about you.

[Bewlay Brother]

What I am talking about is much closer to substance and literature than anything you have said Wolf. The whole "oh yeah it really makes me feel good and like a genius and a great person when people are so courageous and brave to say bad stuff about God and did you know that the burden is on proving it exists and not to prove it doesn't? Like there could be a tapioca monster and you couldn't prove there isn't! Oh boy. That is such an amazing argument. I'm so brilliant. Oh I started so young. I remember when I was in 5th grade the teacher was teaching all this lame algebra stuff and I raised my hand and said 'why do we have to learn this if we are never going to use this in the real world? Oh boy she was stunned. She knew at that moment how brilliant I was. Such resilience! Such free-thinking!" thing ran out of steam infinity years ago.


OK....you asked. I find this post to be very racist!!


It also seems that several people have brought up about you (Bewlay Brother)...and I am addressing you. You are not subhuman, but it seems that you are acting in such a manner.

There is a reason that I have not posted on this thread. It is because the topic didn't really interest me. I'd suggest that you do the same.

Wolf, I am sorry that this is off topic. Maybe I'll try to follow this thread a little and offer something to put it back on topic. BTW, I enjoyed your two poems. You've got some wit about you.

I was satirizing Darcy and the fallacy of white guilt.

Also even if I was being serious, it wouldn't be racist. I don't think half of you guys have any idea what the hell racism is. Racism isn't a "gotchya" phenomenon. It is endlessly deep-rooted. Even if the post was serious, there would still be absolutely NOTHING in it to suggest a hatred for black people.

[WolfLarsen]

Once again I would like to encourage Bewlay to find someplace else that's more relevant to whatever it is he's talking about. Because whatever this Bewlay is on about it certainly is not literature.

I would like to thank Bewlay in advance for finding another place to post whatever it is he's talking about.

[BienvenuJDC]

I guess that is the problem with satire. When out of context it is hard to interpret. I'm not going to take sides without reading more, and right now I just don't have the time. (or maybe the interest either)

[Bewlay Brother]

It does not mean anything if several people have accused me of being a racist. It just means a lot of people are horribly and hopelessly wrong. Such a thing is hardly even an anomaly. Many people didn't see anything wrong with having a slave back in the day. Now many people are completely oblivious to the subconscious belittling of others based on race or dehumanization based on sexuality. I treat people based on who they are. We are all humans. Nothing else comes into the equation. If a man is homosexual and is disrespectful to women I will spit in his face. I'd do the same if he was straight. If a man is black and he refuses to work and runs around stabbing people I will consider him, for the time being, a menace to society. The same goes for if he is white. I do have sympathy for people born into the ghetto and have some ideas to improve that situation, and it has nothing to do with welfare or urging them to blame others for their shortcomings. I think it is much closer to racism to act like blacks nowadays need help from the government to succeed and that they shouldn't be held accountable for their actions, as if they are subhuman. They deserve blame when they mess up. Everybody does. One of the biggest things about being an adult human being is to be judged, good or bad, by your actions - and it disgusts me to see blacks and homosexuals deprived of that.

Blacks are human beings that happen to be black. To people like Darcy and wolf, blacks are African-Americans.

Gays are human beings that just happen to like members of the same gender. To people like Darcy and wolf, gays are just that - gay. All of their livelihood derives from the fact that they are, yes, you guessed it, gay.


Once again I would like to encourage Bewlay to find someplace else that's more relevant to whatever it is he's talking about. Because whatever this Bewlay is on about it certainly is not literature.

I would like to thank Bewlay in advance for finding another place to post whatever it is he's talking about.

You are a coward and a simpleton and a hateful foolish little boy. I am basing this completely off of your thoughts and opinions and personality. I wish you could grant blacks and gays the same courtesy, or God forbid - the rich and the religious!

I posted satire. It was much better literature than anything you have been babbling about in the most adolescent of ways. Also it was rather unorthodox too. It offended someone as well! You should be foaming at the lips right now based on your essay, but you don't even regard it as literature? Oh and why? Because it isn't something you agree with! Because it doesn't parade your views! You are a phony and the biggest imposter of art or art appreciation I have ever seen.

Do you have any defense? It is quite clear you don't give a damn about what you were preaching. You only give a damn about cheerleaders for your opinion, or something to quench your most immature and pathetic desires for shock value and the risque.


I guess that is the problem with satire. When out of context it is hard to interpret. I'm not going to take sides without reading more, and right now I just don't have the time. (or maybe the interest either)

Does it really take time to take a side in this issue? Let us summarize.

1. Wolf has essay going on and on and on and on and on about how writers need to be more creative! Write things in different ways! And be controversial! Test boundaries! Say things not everybody agrees with!

2. I post satire of white guilt.

3. Wahhhh you are a white supremacist! You aren't talking about literature you are a white supremacist wahhhhh!! Of course I won't even talk directly to you because I'm so damn above you!

[Alexander III]

You are a coward and a simpleton and a hateful foolish little boy. I am basing this completely off of your thoughts and opinions and personality. I wish you could grant blacks and gays the same courtesy, or God forbid - the rich and the religious!


wow, wow, easy there buddy. I know you have a lot in you, but maybe its best to watch some porn have a lovley little wank; and only then come back and argue on the forum, you will find post-masturbation your arguments are not fermenting with angst and pussing with anxiety. They will be clearer, and to the point, all the other nastinnes and slimley bubling angst and pertyrbation shall not find their way and corrupt your arguments.

When I used to do some rethric back in highschool, I would always masturbate in the bathroom prior, your arguments become far more clear and appealing to the audience. Its a good and effective tip.

[Drkshadow03]

There certainly is plenty of contemporary literature taught in college literary courses. However, much of that work, while often quite good, lacks innovation and experimentation. I think that there should be some conventional contemporary literature, but at the same time there should be innovative literature in these courses as well. What is often being left out of the courses is the contemporary INNOVATIVE literature.

In an earlier post I posted the work of a relatively unknown author (with his prior permission) whose work I discovered on the Internet. I believe his work to be more creative than ANYTHING I read in 16 years of formal education with a BA in English literature. This is certainly not the first time that I discovered on the Internet excellent innovative works by unknown authors.

Perhaps the best writing in the history of the human race is being written right now, or perhaps the best writing of the human race does not find its way into any canon, because the tastes of those who decide what goes in the canon might be far too conservative. The canon may contain some very good works of literature, some others that are not so good, but does the canon have the greatest works of literature written by man? I doubt it.

We've already heard the word "good taste" repeated over and over again like some mantra. "Good taste" is nothing more than the prejudices of the status quo. Certainly, until he made big, Pablo Picasso's work was not considered to be in "good taste". His paintings were considered vulgar. And certainly he is not the only one.

Each generation of artists and writers must fight against the haughty connoisseurs of "good taste". For the guardians of "good taste" new and bold does not fit their definition of "good taste".

This does not mean that I don't think there is a place for conventional writing. At the moment I myself happen to be writing in a conventional manner.

But there is no correct manner of writing. There is no such thing as "good taste". If people wish to do so let them write in a conventional manner one day and a completely innovative manner the next day. Let there be as many creative writing styles as there are poets and writers in the world.

Well, maybe you just don't have good taste. You seem to be confused about what this term means. When people speak of "good taste" they aren't necessarily talking about the tastes of those in civilized high society or academia. They don't just mean it in the sense of decorum; Mr. Reynolds walking up to Mr. Joseph at a dinner party and whispering into his ear, "Ah, Joseph, the way you handled Maryanne's inappropriate talk of divorce was in good taste." Or "those people who don't like wine lack good taste." When someone says you have bad taste in relation to the arts it can also mean they're telling you that you like bad writing instead of good writing, you like tacky dull paintings instead of good moving paintings, etc.

It's hard to take someone seriously who is claiming that some surrealist story they found on the internet is more creative than anything they've read in the last 16 years of formal education. Not to mention why is creativity the only characteristic of art being considered? Why not skill? My story can be creative as hell, full of all sorts of surrealist ideas; it doesn't mean it's any good or more specifically the writing on the prose level is any good.

I haven't seen too many people here say they aren't open to the idea of good experimental fiction. What I have seen is a lot of people say, "Oh, I read a lot of those writers from your list of innovative writers and they're good, but not better than Shakespeare, Dante, Milton, etc." To accuse them of being enthralled by the preaching of academia and they only like these works better because they're supposed to like them is a conversation nonstarter; there would be no possible way for them to disagree with you because any time they would try to make the case for an older author you could always just claim, but you only think that because you're supposed.

[Bewlay Brother]

wow, wow, easy there buddy. I know you have a lot in you, but maybe its best to watch some porn have a lovley little wank; and only then come back and argue on the forum, you will find post-masturbation your arguments are not fermenting with angst and pussing with anxiety. They will be clearer, and to the point, all the other nastinnes and slimley bubling angst and pertyrbation shall not find their way and corrupt your arguments.

When I used to do some rethric back in highschool, I would always masturbate in the bathroom prior, your arguments become far more clear and appealing to the audience. Its a good and effective tip.

No man Wolf is a different animal. I'm not doing this out of frustration. I'm just saying the truth. This Wolf guy is the absolute rectum of mankind. I'll say that now and I'll say that after I take a time machine and bang Faye Dunaway circa 1967. If someone like him had power he would do worse things than slavery.

On top of that, he is just so horribly trite too.

He has like a 5k word essay going on and on about how writing should be more innovative and risque. Then I do exactly that, and so I'm a "white supremacist!"

He is a lost cause. Darcy proved lots of redeeming qualities and the presence of a brain. He is only guilty of getting acute-minded because of the pure horror of slavery, so other things that would normally help in opinion-making were disregarded. That is fine.

Wolf though, he has absolutely nothing of value in the way he goes about life. He doesn't take being a homosapien seriously.

I don't care if my posts to Wolf seem angsty. Such belligerent inhumanity deserves backlash even if most people don't sense turmoil until their are torches and pitchforks. This is a problem because sirens don't have any effect on tyrants.

[OrphanPip]

Alex's stress relief regiment aside, he has a valid point about not getting too worked up about Wolf.

Anyway, what we're really seeing emerging here is an argument about who has the right to determine the truth or meaning, with respect to elusive categories of discrimination.

BB is echoing a rather conventional argument, but one that is problematic. Let's go back to the conception of the question that it is wrong for someone to vote for a black president because they are black. A fairly common discourse that emerged during Obama's election which implicitly, in a rather cowardly way, critiques the legitimacy of African American political choice and the legitimacy of Obama's election itself. However, where does the idea that people voted for Obama because he was black even come from. Let's not act like politicians are blank slates and we judge them merely by their policies, we also care about their cultural origins and ties to communities because we understand this effects their political actions. Even if someone voted for Obama simply because he was black, which is a rather tenuous fantasy to begin with, then we should also consider how this may reflect someone voting for someone they think has a greater tendency to have their best interest at heart. Darcy brought up the history of discrimination in America, this has left a legacy of distrust amongst African Americans which is fully justifiable. If you have grown up seeing generations of non-black elected officials not act in your best interest, might it not be a rational political choice, in terms of likely political policy to support someone black? There is nothing about voting for Obama because he is black that implies someone thinks that black people are not competent, that they are voting against a white candidate, or that they are not considering aspects of rational political action.

As to people who support gay rights dehumanizing gays, or people who support affirmative action dehumanizing blacks, that just strikes me as a rhetorical attempt to silence political voice one disagrees with. The implication that these actions are dehumanizing relies on a the appropriation of the motives of others, such that you are defining the thoughts and beliefs of people you whose minds you have no access to. It is a bizarre strategy, often deployed in conservative political rhetoric. That and the so-called reverse-racism argument, which is itself very flawed.

[hillwalker]

Alex's stress relief regiment aside, he has a valid point about not getting too worked up about Wolf.

I find ignoring his existence works best. That's why I jumped ship from this petulant thread some months back (at least it seems to have been going on for months). It's not about inviting innovation in literature, it's about onanistic ego-tripping to a captive audience.

H

[Bewlay Brother]

Alex's stress relief regiment aside, he has a valid point about not getting too worked up about Wolf.

Anyway, what we're really seeing emerging here is an argument about who has the right to determine the truth or meaning, with respect to elusive categories of discrimination.

BB is echoing a rather conventional argument, but one that is problematic. Let's go back to the conception of the question that it is wrong for someone to vote for a black president because they are black. A fairly common discourse that emerged during Obama's election which implicitly, in a rather cowardly way, critiques the legitimacy of African American political choice and the legitimacy of Obama's election itself. However, where does the idea that people voted for Obama because he was black even come from. Let's not act like politicians are blank slates and we judge them merely by their policies, we also care about their cultural origins and ties to communities because we understand this effects their political actions. Even if someone voted for Obama simply because he was black, which is a rather tenuous fantasy to begin with, then we should also consider how this may reflect someone voting for someone they think has a greater tendency to have their best interest at heart. Darcy brought up the history of discrimination in America, this has left a legacy of distrust amongst African Americans which is fully justifiable. If you have grown up seeing generations of non-black elected officials not act in your best interest, might it not be a rational political choice, in terms of likely political policy to support someone black? There is nothing about voting for Obama because he is black that implies someone thinks that black people are not competent, that they are voting against a white candidate, or that they are not considering aspects of rational political action.

As to people who support gay rights dehumanizing gays, or people who support affirmative action dehumanizing blacks, that just strikes me as a rhetorical attempt to silence political voice one disagrees with. The implication that these actions are dehumanizing relies on a the appropriation of the motives of others, such that you are defining the thoughts and beliefs of people you whose minds you have no access to. It is a bizarre strategy, often deployed in conservative political rhetoric. That and the so-called reverse-racism argument, which is itself very flawed.

We are past the comment you are trying to argue. Remember that it was only a by-the-way comment. It is clear that liberals didn't vote for Obama because he is black. If anything, they did so because he is a black liberal. The same people despite black conservatives, call them self-loathing, and do everything they can to discredit them.

I only satirized white guilt because Darcy and Wolf are both very guilty of that.

Please stop trying to accuse me of generalizing. I've always been careful not to say "All etc etc etc". I'm talking about people guilty of what I am talking about, and then other times I am talking about concepts, etc. Also there was the whole farce just to prove clear as day to everyone how much of a phony Wolf is.

And I'm not trying to say I know what people are thinking when I say they dehumanize or belittle people. I'm basing that observation off of their actions.

Why shy away from calling blacks black? That is the color of the skin, is it not? Is there something embarrassing about that? Is there a particularly jarring effect when you hear that word? Are they like infants and need to be protected by the caring white man from the naysayers and bad people out to get them? There is no logic to it. Blacks are black. That is their skin color. Not all blacks in America are from Africa. There is absolutely no logic at all to just with a broad brush call all blacks in America "African-American".

And people like Wolf are almost always heavily heavily in favor of welfare and everything like that. They push for dependency for blacks at any point they can. This is belittling. They will never criticize a black for his actions. It is always someone else's fault. For their juvenile perspectives, they think this is the height of humanity. The thing is that one of the biggest part about being an adult human being is being judged, good or bad, by your actions. They deprive them of this.

I don't feel like explaining the whole gay thing again. It is similar though.

You see, I am talking about people like Wolf now. Not everybody. I don't do that. I know most people are in the middle somewhere and nothing dangerous. They aren't guilty of it. Unlike lots of you, I am not so quick to call someone a white supremacist or a racist or a bigot who hates gays or anything so harsh so quickly.

The accusations of me being prejudiced towards gays or a white supremacist were 50x times worse than what I said to Wolf. My opinion of him was based on his thoughts and personality, etc. His opinion of me was based on the fumes stemming from the fact I wasn't cheerleading his opinion.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Holy ****ing ****, this has been one of the most entertaining threads ever! I hope you stick around Bewlay Brother, you definitely get things going. Careful with the insults, though, you'll get some super-scary infraction points for that.

Now excuse me while I go watch some porn and have a lovley little wank. :lol:

[Bewlay Brother]

I find ignoring his existence works best. That's why I jumped ship from this petulant thread some months back (at least it seems to have been going on for months). It's not about inviting innovation in literature, it's about onanistic ego-tripping to a captive audience.

H

Hmmm you know what I just realized? This whole time I've been acting like I need to prove how much of a phony Wolf is. I never thought that maybe you all already have come to that conclusion? I mean come on, it is pretty obvious!


Holy ****ing ****, this has been one of the most entertaining threads ever! I hope you stick around Bewlay Brother, you definitely get things going. Careful with the insults, though, you'll get some super-scary infraction points for that.

Now excuse me while I go watch some porn and have a lovley little wank. :lol:

If I don't get banned I'll definitely stick around. I like the people here, even if I don't agree with them. Well, I do not like Wolf. He is a terrible human being. Though Darcy seems fine to me. The person with the Bowie avatar is cool too, but it will take me at least a month to get over the fact that he/she implied I wasn't a fan of David Bowie. I love David Bowie more than any man has ever loved another man.

And if I do get banned, I will be furious if Wolf isn't too. A baseless bigoted accusation of being a white supremacist is much worse than a precise explanation of faults that has a basis in reality.

[smerdyakov]

It's not about inviting innovation in literature, it's about onanistic ego-tripping to a captive audience.

Hill, you're a gas man. I had to look onanism up. Best word I've learned in ages. Hell of a word! :)

[Bewlay Brother]

Hill, you're a gas man. I had to look onanism up. Best word I've learned in ages. Hell of a word! :)

+1

I was going to say same thing. Man!

[OrphanPip]

Jun implied you weren't a Bowie fan, not I.

And I didn't accuse anyone of being racist or anti-gay.

[B. Laumness]

Yes, the thread is entertaining. Thanks to BB (or should I say SP?). I’m listening to Hunky Dory; I hadn't listened to it for a long time; it was one of my favorite albums, though.

[Bewlay Brother]

Jun implied you weren't a Bowie fan, not I.

And I didn't accuse anyone of being racist or anti-gay.

Oh damn. I apologize for that. It turns out it is JuniperWoolf who I was thinking of, and I was also wrong to say that she accused me of being bigoted towards gay. She actually said that I have a beef with gay culture. I wouldn't quite say that, but there is a huge difference between gay culture and homosexuality. I can see where she got that idea, either way.

[hillwalker]

Hill, you're a gas man. I had to look onanism up. Best word I've learned in ages. Hell of a word! :)

See? That's why it's called the Literature Network. Your own on-line thesaurus :-)

H