I just consider Coldplay as Radiohead for loved-up couples who want to feel angsty for an hour or so.Originally posted by subterranean
Play it loud, that's the right way to listen to it
And I just hate it when people compare Radiohead with Coldplay. Is this band worth listening to? Have I miss the boat?
Never forget that one of Coldplay sued a neighbour for taking the taxi he had ordered - rock and roll.....
Originally posted by Zooey
I blame television (and to a slightly lesser extent, movies) and the rise of Spark Notes on most of today's reading woes.
Why read a book when you can watch the movie version? And even better, why read at all when there's so many television programs to watch? It's so much less effort.
In addition, I blame video and computer games also. A friend of mine bought his kids an X-Box this X'mas. The kids got toys for every special occasion. I guess that's the way things are these days..
I just got back from a family Christmas in FL at my aunt and uncle's place. They got their 14 yearold kid a game cube for xmas. After presants we hooked it up and played from about 2 pm to about 2 am with a brake for dinner. The next morning he wandered into the living room, where I was sleeping on the couch, and started the damn thing back up. I tried to resist the call of the console, but to no avail. We ended up playing literally all day and deep into the night. When I got into the car for the 16 hour ride home, I looked at A Tale of Two Cities with contept and listened to the radio instead. It wasn't until about 4 hours into the trip that I remembered how much I loved reading and picked the book back up. The game cube almost brainwashed me into the tv glued preteen that I used to be. AND IT ONLY TOOK IT TWO DAYS!!! Video games are bad, but worse is that they are POWERFUL!!!
...Also baby duck hat would be good for parties.
The main difference is that in the best of the previous centuries remains nowadays. My grand father bought a lot of very well know author from the 19th century but nobody reminds them. We only remember what is seen as good literature, that's why I feel that nobody in one century is going to remember who Mary Higgins Clark or Stephen King was. Furthermore, the sheme of their book is so easy that it will not be studied at school.
After all, there some very good books nowadays, it's just that you have to find it. You have to make yourself decide and not let the big publishers decide for you.
I do not think literature is dead, just the love for it. But then again you do have so many things now that were not present in the past like t.v, the phone, myspace, movies etc etc. IWilKikU, I agree about the videogames, they have a power that is like all consuming!
I had an experience several months ago. I was at the bookstore and I was looking at bookplates. The sales guy was looking at me and said, "Oh the bookplates, do you have problems with people borrowing your books and not giving them back?" I actually laughed at the guy. No one around here reads anymore. I am having more trouble trying to locate my audioslave cd than in any of the books I own.
I sometimes look at people and wonder if their brains are shutting down. People are getting lazier and don't want to think about thinking. I have a friend who has only ever completed two books in his life. When I have a book in my hands, people ask me if I am reading it for class....umm hmmm. I don't think literature is dying, there are still plenty of good contemporary authors, I just think people don't think it is very entertaining to put their brains to a little work. But as people say, to each his own.
"So heaven meets earth like a sloppy wet kiss, and my heart turns violently inside of my chest, I don't have time to maintain these regrets, when I think about, the way....He loves us..."
http://youtube.com/watch?v=5xXowT4eJjY
99% of every art is crap, and that's a fact. Granted, lately all art, from painting to literature to music seems to be exceedingly awful as compared to, say, 70 years ago.
"In the sunset of dissolution, everything is illuminated by the aura of nostalgia, even the guillotine."
- Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
99% of everything is crap, not just art.Originally Posted by superunknown
I honestly think that things go in cycles, I mean the other night I was watching the black and white version of Anna Karenina with Vivienne Leigh(love it) and noticed how it was the big trend then to have these lavish social parties and afterward, instead of settling back and talking about the writers of the day or artists, they sat round the old table and tried to evoke the spirits of dead women or men that had scandalous love affairs. No matter how trendy something is, how advanced, there will come that defining moment when people sicken of certain things and go back to basics. there is something intrinsically beautiful, nurturing and peaceful about holding a book in one's hand and quietly entering another time and place and losing onesself in the story.
I tried reading a Doestovsky online and got so distracted and uncomfortable I gave it up. There will always be a segment of society that cannot live without the beauty and enriching fulfillment of reading a good book, looking at a truly fine piece of art or in fact creating both. The rest of the world, like all times past will always take the easy way out, but what can one do?
You are too optimistic. I’d say 99.99%
The thing that really narks me off is the way we're constantly being told all this stupid American TV like the sopranos and six feet under is sort of equivalent to great art, when actually it's surprisingly lame compared to the supercharged vit C shot of the really good stuff.
I'm put in mind of an exhibition title by the art group Bank, referring to things like artists DJing in galleries and spening whole nights in the pub talking about sitcoms:
Stop short-changing us. Popular culture is for idiots. We believe in art.
Pardon me for speaking (or typing) in a slightly extremist way, but I would never go so far as to call literature dead, nor judge it as 99% or 99.99% inefficient and unsatisfying.
Throughout time, literature does not seem the only thing that changes, but also readers' tastes in literature. Ideally, much literature, especially what sells best, ought to reflect and represent many of the sociological and psychological values, beliefs, thoughts, imagined whims, and morals of its readers. This, unlike literature and literature's readers, has never changed.
I read mostly classics, like most people here, not quite finding a lot of contemporary literature in my taste, but would not necessarily label contemporary literature as poorly written or 'bad' by any percentage impossible to determine. I primarly read classic literature because I admire the representation of the past - as I said, their sociological and psychological values, beliefs, thoughts, imagined whims, and morals. No, literature has not died, nor does it even seem near dying; to a limit, one can even call the instruction booklet to my digital camera literature, but not in the same sense as Charles Dickens, for example.
Yes, I confess to optimism.
If dead here means having nothing new to offer, then I'll say literature is 99,99% dead.
Today we have only variants and repetitions and (simply) boredom. No more creation. Only arrangements. ....hmm
It doesn't matter, does it?....
....
Literature has never been more than rearrangement of the themes that humans deem important. The "Enuma Elish" has essentially all of the themes that have ever appeared in literature, and it is probable that a similar oral tradition existed for a few hundred thousand years before that. There are only a few things that are important to humans. Good literature says something interesting about those basic themes.
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