Capitalism Versus Great Literature
Capitalism Versus Great Literature
An essay by Wolf Larsen
(Here I am mostly concerned with the ECONOMICS of writing, and how it affects our ability to pay our bills, and how ECONOMICS affects our ability to write what we want to write.)
There is an inherent contradiction between the capitalist system and the creation & dissemination of great literature. When the mind conjures up something great, something creative, something that will make wonderful literature the last thing on the mind should be money. But, the first thing on one's mind in a capitalist society is inevitably money-money-money! Will it sell?? How do I get some money to survive, to live better, to pay my bills, etc.
But what if money had nothing to do with it? What if you were assured a regular income regardless of whether your writing was commercial or not? And what if there was a great repository of literature that insured the survival of your literary works for posterity? Wouldn't that be nice?
What if it were possible to free literature from big business? Keep in mind that capitalism is only a passing phase in human development. Homo sapiens has been around for over 200,000 years. Capitalism has been around for a few hundred. Capitalism is not eternal. Capitalism brings endless war and plenty of social rebellion as well. Perhaps capitalism will bring about World War III and human extinction. Or perhaps, workers will get tired of stingy wages and throw capitalism and the ruling class in the garbage can.
Let us suppose that the human race reaches socialism. The work week is reduced to 30 hours, and many necessities like childcare and medical care are free, while other necessities like housing are affordable. In addition, publishing is no longer run on a profit basis.
So under socialism you put in your six hours of work a day, plus you have two days free to write all day. You have more time to write than ever! As the planned economy advances and becomes more productive, people receive better wages and work less hours as time goes on. (Under socialism everybody has the right to a job.) Eventually, the work week is reduced to 20 hours. Even more time to write! (And no, I'm not talking about Stalinism, although even under rotten Stalinism the standard of living improves for workers, and literacy rates go way up!)
So literacy increases under socialism. Plus, leisure time increases. Plus, the general population becomes more affluent. At present, half the world's population lives on less than two dollars a day. As these people become more prosperous under socialism, they will have more money to buy books. Hence, a larger audience for writers! Perhaps under socialism more writers will be able to live from their literature than ever before and quit the day job.
When the writer is no longer chained to commercial fiction writers become freer than ever to experiment and come up with ever new forms of writing! Why not? If you're not driven by profit and the necessity of making money from your writing, then you're free to write whatever you want! That's because you automatically have a paycheck coming in from your day job – were you work 30 hours a week (or less) for 40 hours of pay.
There is no reason to suppose as technology advances that the book as we know it becomes only one way to read a "book". Why not read off the wall? Project the words on a white wall and read that way? Why not turn reading into a 360° experience that surrounds the reader? Why not turn reading into both a visual and auditory experience? Perhaps reading can become mass events, with people reading together in an auditorium while modern dancers dance how the words make them feel, and musicians play as well? I don't see why mass readings can't be combined with mass orgies (involving mutual consent), especially if there are preventive inoculations for all STDs and infinite forms of birth control. In other words literature can become everything and anything! As the human race becomes more free – so will literature become more free!
As communications become more instantaneous, and as leisure time becomes more prevalent, and as people become less concerned with the struggle for survival, they will have more time and energy to concern themselves with culture. Why not millions of people in the world simultaneously writing a book together? And God knows how many forms that "book" could take! (Well God doesn't actually know, because there is no god.)
Of course, some of this has already been done on a less extensive scale – as you know it's called multimedia. But, when composers and modern dancers and general audiences and writers and musicians and filmmakers and the general public from different parts of the world all simultaneously create a literary work together it will truly be awesome!
The greatest literature of humanity is not in its past, but in its future. And you live at the time of the greatest changes in the literary world since the invention of the printing press. The freedom of literature from economic concerns is in its budding phase. And when literature frees itself from the chains of monetary considerations, that's when literature can truly become great and creative!
Something just occurred to me – why don't we writers set up an author's cooperative? With an author's cooperative we wouldn't need publishers at all. Nor would we need Amazon. The author's cooperative site could sell our books in e-book format for three dollars – two dollars for the author and one dollar for the author's cooperative. The one dollar for the author's cooperative would help maintain the website, the staff, etc. Two dollars for the author is okay because that's about all you get in royalties from a publisher for a book. Once the author dies the book could stay available on the site, and stored also in a special place for posterity. But once the author dies the price could be reduced to just one dollar.
Compared to writers in the past you are lucky – you have more options than any writer that has lived before you. With literary posting boards, with the Internet, with self-publishing and Amazon, with author's websites, with the possibility of bypassing even self-publishers and Amazon.com by letting your works be available to the general public via your website with payment by PayPal, the present looks a lot better for most writers than the past. But the future is far brighter, so tremendously bright for creative literary expression, unless the mushroom clouds destroy humanity first.
PLEASE NOTE: while I welcome debate and differences of opinion, please do not post "politics for the sake of politics" type of discussion, as the moderators won't like it. Try to keep comments related to literature. Thank you.
I'm not crazy, it's everybody else that's crazy!
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Pope of Eruke
Yeah looking back at all your posts, no offense, but you seem like a lunatic.
You see, what is sanity? Is sanity conformity? If everyone else that is conforming thinks your insane than perhaps it is the person who seems insane that is actually far more sane than anybody else. Does the status quo in literature and other things seem very sane?
Innovative people are often thought insane. Perhaps there is a relationship between mild insanity (or being unconventional) and inventing new things whether it be in science or literature or the arts. At any rate, trying to convince writers to write something imaginative and creative does seem insane. Perhaps it's a waste of time? Ha ha ha!
Somebody talked about going into a bookstore and seeing so many books. My response is: so many books, so little variety. So many published authors, but so few with imagination. Or originality.
I do not want to get into a political discussion for the sake of politics. But in relation to the arts and literature the era immediately following the October revolution brought a great flowering of creativity in Soviet art. Later, Stalin crushed this creativity.
The event of the October Revolution (1917) helped artists to think outside the box if you will, I wish I could explain better. I wish I were smarter. I welcome differences of opinion on this or anything else, but please keep the subject matter related to literature. So far so good, thank you guys for keeping the subject related to literature.
There are so many good writers who have nothing to contribute to literature, because they have nothing original or creative in their heads. It's not enough to master the craft of writing. I would argue that any advanced primate, with the proper training, can write a "good" book. If you're twice as smart as I am (which many of seem to be), but you have nothing new to contribute to literature, then why should I read you? Why should anybody read your literature? What's the point of reading something that resembles hundreds of books I've already read?
I hurt my foot on a very tough noun
Well, even if it's mockery, it's a beautiful mockery, and I don't mind.
And thank goodness somebody wanted to be creative!
I know there's creative stuff on this website, but you have to look for it I guess. Lots of good writers who are not very creative most of the time.
So much thank you's to this illiterate sky, actually that's my voice recognition software getting it wrong again, thank you to this illiterate guy – we more illiterate people like this on this literature website!
Actually, that's supposed to be we need more illiterate people like this on this literature website!
Or how about we more need people illiterate to be on this website of illiterature!
illiterature is to go really the way! Long really the way! All yeeeeaaahh!
The Wolf Larsen Manifesto
Quote:
Originally Posted by
illiterati
teasing, yes--but also tribute.
certainly those two aren't mutually exclusive.
Well, thank you! And thank you to the same crazy people for calling me insane, for that truly proves my sanity in a world filled with insanity, you see you have to be insane to be sane, so if you are sane you are clearly insane, and I wish to be both sane and insane in order to reach the greatest sanity and insanity at the same time!.!?, –) Yes? No?
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 “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!
