The death of literature:

[blazeofglory]

I am highly apologetic about this but to be honest to myself and the rest of readers, writers that this is staggeringly truer today than ever before. When I was a small boy literature was a separate entity, a something, a mode of writing that is distinguishable from the rest of other disciplines or journals. Today with more and more technicalities or mediums raiding the domain of literature or in fact surrogating for it, the chasm that was or for that matter created for centuries leveled up. Today journalism is not less pronounced. Just a decade or so ago we were taught that the language used in a piece of literature must have distinct features that set literature apart from journalistically jargonistic terms in point of fact and such apartness or something uniqueness of literature has died down. Now most creative writers choose to write with a journalistic fashion. Now journalistic idiosyncrasy or modality took precedence over literary fervors. Literature had distinctiveness, and those who want to be a literary writer must have commanded that peculiarity or fad. Or else he or she would be a second rated writer. The kind that can not run parallel to or match up literarily would gain no public round of applause or approval.

Now we are integrating and any blocks or barriers between literature and journalism are getting blurred and thru the massive use of the internet and journalism we feel that the unique world of literature unmixed, pure and unadulterated is dying out. It is submerging.

Having said this I do not mean that no literary pieces will die out and not that creativity is gone for ever, No. The point is one of style. There has been huge transformations when it comes to style and manner of writing today and it is being submerged into simple report writings or journalistic order. Simplicity is cherished not syntactically intricate sentence structures or unaccustomed words. Using simple and non-jargons we still can be marvelous. Now people have accesses to any piece of information and just at a click or strike an endless domain or realm will unroll up before us. And that is how a writer can be influenced in that course

[JBI]

I think I completely disagree. For instance, Hugh MacLennan, a Canadian novelist, in the late 30s wrote a novel Barometer Rising, written specifically to seem like a journalist's work, broken up in days, and even hours, and reported rather than narrated, creating a mode in Canadian literature known as documentary realism by critics. The sense of the journalism however, isn't everywhere, and it one mode.

News papers are nothing like novels. The art of words is very different than the craft of journalism. I see nothing journalistic in, for instance, the work of Wilson Harris, or Salman Rushdie.


Or are you implying the direct connection between contemporary events and literature? If so, I think there is to some extent a sense of the present, that is, the state of affairs today in the literature, but I don't think that is necessarily new. I think Zola proves that the best, where he is THE painter of contemporary events of his time, perhaps the most real realist, or "naturalist" as he dubbed himself.

[Amlóði]

Perhaps the reference to journalism alludes to the plain, forthright and unvarnished style of narration many latter-day writers seem to have adopted. Newspapers are most definitely not, as you said, anything like our preconceptions of the novel, but there is a certain directness in journalism that hearkens the simple frankness associated with many newer works of literature.

Slight tangent: what is our preconception of the novel? What is a novel? We live in an age where lines are blurred and everything is relative. Artfully arranged, a body of text in journal form could very well pass and succeed as a form of novel. The artful arrangement, the artfulness in and of itself, however, is what lends any piece of writing a seat under the heading of literature. Any writer can string words together on the page or screen, but it is the manner in which s/he does so in combination with the subject-matter and the tones and undertones and the nature of the reader and a thousand-thousand other factors that render such a string of words a work of literature, and not necessarily the opulence of diction and the (over)statement of style. Yes, simplicity is indubitably the latest literary caprice. Although this minimalistic fad may seem almost inglorious to some in comparison to the lyrical syntax and complex sentences of the past, it is certainly not without merit. There is music to be heard in modern prose if one listens in all the right places. What remains to be seen is whether or not the disciples of Simplicity will withstand the test of time as their artifice-valuing predecessors have.

[Mopey Droney]

As a young man who is very involved in literature I think you underestimate the fact that the new generations are not robots incapable of distinguishing a piece of journalism from a personal essay from a novel. Furthermore, and I don't know how old you are or when you were a little boy, as for mixing journalism and literature, I fail to see how that's some new phenomenon. Hemingway wrote in a style some at the time decried for being anti-literature, a "dumbing-down". Also consider how popular writers like Jane Austen and Charles Dickens remain among all generations, including mine and even younger ones. Shouldn't they help to keep any worries you have about the distinction of literature intact? Young people, after all, do not just read the literature of their own time. In fact, I think it's safe to say that most young people interested in literature are more interested in the literature of past times, as they feel safe in reading something that has been established as a classic, and antsy about reading an acclaimed novel written last year, the only preset gauge of its quality being the pages of Acclaim For This Novel on the first two pages, something that might inspire a little cynicism in this very self-conscious postmodern generation, who were raised on Pepsi ads that alluded to the fact that ads were uncool. You should put more trust in the younger and future generations. The internet will certainly change literature, but I don't see how it's destroying it. Does this site count as the internet? Does this site destroy literature? I'd like to think the internet will help keep literature alive, as will English classes and so forth. It's worth noting that a little over 10 years ago Franzen, Wallace and others were talking about how Television was going to destroy literature. But now both those authors are considered major literary success stories themselves! I just take this alarmist stuff with a grain of salt.

News papers are nothing like novels. The art of words is very different than the craft of journalism. I see nothing journalistic in, for instance, the work of Wilson Harris, or Salman Rushdie.Or the younger generation, Michael Chabon or Jonathan Safran Foer.

[blazeofglory]

All I said is not that art is dead. Art is and will be very much against the ravages of time and nothing can feed on it as long as human sensibilities do not die out and man still is man and not a robot. What exactly I want to put forth is today the kind of literature, purely literary is gone for good. We are in a different world today. In music we have remixes. In economics and commerce we have derivatives and in writings indeed we have concoctions of things. We write stories plotlessly , we compose poems unrhymed or discounting versifications s or meters , the musts just a few decades ago. We defy authority and convention. Let us look at a piece of writings through an uncoloured and seamless lens.

[Mopey Droney]

All I said is not that art is dead. Art is and will be very much against the ravages of time and nothing can feed on it as long as human sensibilities do not die out and man still is man and not a robot. What exactly I want to put forth is today the kind of literature, purely literary is gone for good. We are in a different world today. In music we have remixes. In economics and commerce we have derivatives and in writings indeed we have concoctions of things. We write stories plotlessly , we compose poems unrhymed or discounting versifications s or meters , the musts just a few decades ago. We defy authority and convention. Let us look at a piece of writings through an uncoloured and seamless lens.I can identify with this sentiment but I still have reservations. I think where you and I part ways comes in your conception of what is this "pure literature". While I share what I think is your slight apprehension for the postmodern word games of some one like Pynchon*, a lack of plot veiled in webs of ennui and cynicism, are the plotful works of Michael Chabon, Jonathan Foer, or Ben Fountain not literature? If not Fountain, who has a slightly reporterly style, then why old masters like Greene or Hemingway? Also I disagree that poetry in free verse is not literature. As for the remix, this is nothing new, really. What are we to make of the blues or jazz of 60 years ago, where riffs and rhythms were all shared and reappropriated rather than smacked with a limiting copyright? I think you are just much more conservative than I am in what constitutes "real literature".

*who I still, by the way, think is a creator of literature

[JCamilo]

Literary art is dead? That is bringing back memories, a regression of shorts, my past life back when Homer died. We had a meeting…

[Flat-chested Greek] Errr, Homer is dead! What we will do? Literature is dying before us!
[Some Greek dude] I am more interested to present reasons strong enough to proof that Zeus exist. Or not exist. I dunno.
[Bearded Greek] I dunno about Homer, but I have a trouble. He is dead, where should we burry him. About 34 cities, included Buenos Aires, are claiming to be the place where he was born.
[Frog creator Greek] Dang, why had Homer to be blind and not able to describe the exactly city where he was born. “There were whores”, geez! Which city in this plain world has no whores?
[Big-noise Greek] 34 cities? We must eliminate the cities to a reasonable number of cities. About 7 or 9.
[Flat-chested Greek] All right, let’s use only those cities nearby .After all, Homer can only be greek. The other are all barbarians and had no notion of politics and ethics.
[Persian woman disguised as Hairy Greek] Oh, shut up, you flat-chested freak.
[Fat Greek] Ok, I decided to call and assembly with all Greeks that can explain to me why Achilles cann’t reach the turtle. It is true democracy.
[Flat-chested Greek] That is a great idea, we have already talked about the death of Literature, it will die but we should organize such meetings more often.
[Persian woman disguised as Hairy Greek] I told you to shut yup, freak.

Ok, back to reality, Sleeping beauty true meaning is that Art never dies. Merely sleeps for while, until some prince passes by, messes with her. When Art awakens, she will have two new products. That is all.

[JBI]

I would say the art cannot die as long as people read, even classics - the classics themselves aren't dead, but keep being rethought, and reread, and recreated.