Capitalism Versus Great Literature

[WolfLarsen]

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.

[kev67]

This reminds me of New Grub Street by George Gissing. That was about a group of people all trying to make a living out of writing. Some refused to compromise their art and lived in penury. Others agonised over the compromises in quality they had to make to earn a living. Others did not agonise. That book was written in the 1880s/90s, but I suspect it must be harder to earn a living solely from writing these days than it was then. Whenever I go into a bookshop, I see so many books I would like to read but will never have the time to. To get your book read, you would have to force some superb writers out of the way.

[cacian]

(Well God doesn't actually know, because there is no god.)

hear hear

So under socialism you put in your six hours of work a day, plus you have two days free to write all day.

I thought we are already under that. work home work home. a socialist despotism run societies. two day free to write.
oh wow. I am most humble at that.
the idea that someone else sets rules for you to be is degenerate if not crazy.

So literacy increases under socialism

no it would not. socialism is ignorant. it does not read it dictates.

The greatest literature of humanity is not in its past, but in its future

I disagree firmly. literature is ongoing. there is not future or past it is self renewing and day to day based.

With an author's cooperative we wouldn't need publishers at all.

publishing should be courtesy of writing it should be automatic. one should publish what one writes.
that is literature. no rules or boundaries about what to write and how to write. writers should have the freedom to exercise their writing skills by exercising the right to publish. the two go hand in hand. the public then decides what they want to read.
Literature does not spoon feed. it is engages the mind to think for itself.

[Pope of Eruke]

Yeah looking back at all your posts, no offense, but you seem like a lunatic.

[tonywalt]

Yeah looking back at all your posts, no offense, but you seem like a lunatic.

That's his (only) niche. Check him out on youtube - most interesting.

[WolfLarsen]

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?

[illiterati]

FRIENDSHIP UNICORNISM: A MANIFESTO

Under friendship unicornism, each person will have her own individual unicorn, as many as she wants.

When she wants to symbolize her friendship with another person and/or unicorn, she will break the unicorn in two, giving half into her true friend’s keeping, and keeping half for herself.

There is no inherent contradiction in the implied ownership of a friendship unicorn and friendship unicornism itself, qua system of economics. This is because there will be a recessed panel on each half of a friendship unicorn, which opens onto a tiny room inside the unicorn; inside the tiny room, there is another, smaller unicorn, also with a recessed panel; also containing a tiny room with another, tinier unicorn; and so on, ad infinitum.

Under friendship unicornism, the size difference in nested unicorns will not represent a fundamental inequality, because each person will also have installed, through a perfectly safe surgical operation, in her spinal cord a machine that allows her to increase or decrease her size at will.

Nor will the miniaturization, voluntary or involuntary, of a person, for the purpose of equalizing the size economics of nested unicorns, represent a fundamental inequality of persons, because each person’s miniature and/or gigantic self will be coexistent with her regular-size self.

This will be possible because, under friendship unicornism, each person will also have a time machine, which allows her to freeze, accelerate, or slow down time at will, and therefore to exist contemporaneously with her own smaller or more gigantic self(ves).

Under friendship unicornism, no one will have to work anymore. Everyone will have jobs and careers, but the nature of careers, under friendship unicornism, will be like having an orgasm forever. Because they have more time, everyone, under friendship unicornism, will be an artist of exceptional talent. He or she will have tiny Shakespeares implanted in his or her cerebellum, whom he or she may consult at will—mostly to disagree with, and cluck about the backwardsness of Shakespeare’s aesthetic principles, since he or she will be personally an artist whose achievements and talents and unicorns surpass those of Shakespeare by a factor of at least seven.

Under friendship unicornism, everyone—including plants and animals and rocks and seaweed—will also be an artist, and Shakespeare will be translated by tiny scientists who have miniaturized their bodies, but not their brains, to achieve literary-scientific brilliance, into the body-form of animals and plants and seaweed and mythical creatures; and those tiny unicorn-Shakespeares and seaweed-Shakespeares and so forth will themselves be miniaturized and surgically implanted in all the individual seaweed beings and unicorn beings and sentient rocks etc.

Under friendship unicornism, I will split my unicorn in two, offering half to Wolf Larsen, to symbolize our commitment to aesthetic principles. And also friendship.

[WolfLarsen]

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!

[Pope of Eruke]

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!

You are mad!

[illiterati]

teasing, yes--but also tribute.

certainly those two aren't mutually exclusive.

[WolfLarsen]

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!

[Pope of Eruke]

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 agree with you, up to a point, creativity is good and your overarching 'concept' makes sense to me. I am new here and when I first looked at one of your threads I was very interested, but as I went back and looked at your previous 'works' it was all a bit much, it seems to me you took some interesting ideas and then took them to a point where it just becomes overly self-indulgent waffle that, for me, isn't really interesting to read. It doesn't strike me as terribly original either, in some ways it's like reading a poor impression of beatnik poets from the 50s. It also seems, to me, that your writing is extremely vulgar just for the point of being shocking, not very interesting in my opinion, and it's been done before (During times when it actually was new and interesting, back to the 50s again, as an example). So although there are interesting elements, it's not as innovative as you think it is (Though what do I know right? It's just my opinion...)

I also think that you argument is a complete contradiction, you want to people to be new and fresh by writing what exactly? What you want them to write? Hmmm... No I don't think that is literally what you want, but tell me this. Why should you be the judge of what people are allowed to write? People will write what they want to write that's fine. Sure some of it might be similar, but so what? These traditional 'forms' of books that you seem to hate so much are 'traditional' for a reason. Whether you mean they are un-original in their content, or in their style. In terms of their content, maybe, but I'm certain you could still find something you want to read and maybe it is true that there is "nothing new under the sun" after all. I think that's an exagerration but it is true that it is hard to come up with a story, or idea that doesn't seem similar to something that has been done before, there are only so many ideas and naturally everyone is going to be influenced the literature that has come before even if it is just to a small degree. In terms of the style, everyone writes in their own way within the confines of the language, and in a way that makes sense. I don't see what grounds you would have to complain there. Sure some have employed experimental styles like stream of consciousness and the like, those are very interesting and I like SoC, but there is a reason that these things are 'experiments' that are enjoyed by only a few people, they are difficult to read for the most part. There is certainly a place for both and while I don't read much modern literature either, but writing what seems like a random free-writing excercise just to appear 'original' or 'innovative' doesn't break any ground for me to be honest.

[Pumpkin337]

You need help. Especially if you think the illiterate, incomprehensible, foul mouthed nonsensical garbage you spew out like vomit is wonderful literature. Any moron can spew forth obscenities - just look at any subway or toilet wall - but literature this is not.

Take the time to learn how to write, in one of those highly successful and enduring styles you deride and then lets see if you actually have something worthwhile to say.

Unfortunately you are so immured in your arrogance you take criticism as encouragement, which is quite possibly your greatest flaw.

[illiterati]

I actually went and read two of Wolf's poetry books--Eulogy for the Human Race and Yippee!

Pope--Could you specify what Beat writing you're thinking of, in light of which Wolf's work is a lame imitation? I'm not seeing it. First off, Wolf tends towards closed forms--the prose poem, more than anything--which flies in the face of the truly innovating formal achievements of the Beats (New Americans, more broadly) in terms of open form. His emphasis on the sentence as unit of composition reminds me more of the Language poets who followed in their wake. As to obscenity: obscenity and vulgarity, for the New Americans, tended towards a completely different function than in Wolf's work. For them, obscenity was the content-equivalent of sincerity, authenticity, breaking with academic censorship of actual human thought / speech. For Wolf, it's more like a stylized repetition-compulsion in language.

Yes, a lot of the time it's too much for me, too--windy, pointlessly vulgar, etc. But I do read pretty widely in 20th century American poetry and contemporary poetry, and I can say that Wolf's commitment to imagination and innovation achieves some fresh notes that I haven't seen elsewhere. I cite the poem below, first posted in personal poetry:

I Penis the Sky with Raspberries
a poem by Wolf Larsen

I penis the sky with raspberries
I flow like sewers through my words
I conquer each page with my neuroses
I explode my neuroses with every phrase going pop-Pop-pop like Southside bullets
I explore other universes with my words
I create new brains with my poetry
My poetry rampages across the page like conquering armies
Each phrase of my poetry is a cannonball smashing through the literary world
I create each poem with the blood of the conquered
I incite the words to new revolutions
because the literary world is a cesspool which I defecate upon
I am a blue-collar god
I turn all your neo-classical edifices or orifices into bordellos
I turn all your prestigious literary magazines into toilet paper
I launch my phrases of poetry into outer space with a screaming mouth larger than the universe
My sledgehammer smashes all tradition into dust
Upon this dust I build a future madness
Because madness is greatness!
Because greatness is innovation!
Because the greatest literature ever made is in our future!

Copyright 2014 by Wolf Larsen

[Pumpkin337]

lets see - its pointless, meaningless and vulgar, not to mention self-absorbed, narcissistic, arrogant and overweening oh yes and dangerously self-deluded with regard its own brilliance? I can read wittier vulgarities on the back of a public restroom door.