Is literature dead?

[Video Drone]

I feel everything is going down culturally. Music, movies, games, and books as well. In the movie and game department I can be quite certain because I observe those closely. Good things are coming out not out of the regular market, but something hidden, indie, arthouse, cultist. The regular market becomes a business and it becomes corrupted, spawning professional creators who create not for art but for money... I cannot say if that is the same with literature because I am not a close observant but is there a large number of good books that came out? I only hear of Stephen King, Harry Potter, and Eragon so far. >_< Good works usually become popular among communities such as this forum, but all I have been observing is old books.

[Aiculík]

I cannot say if that is the same with literature because I am not a close observant but is there a large number of good books that came out? I only hear of Stephen King, Harry Potter, and Eragon so far. >_< Good works usually become popular among communities such as this forum, but all I have been observing is old books.

There are many good books that come out... but usually they're not bestsellers, so people don't hear about them. Which doesn't mean they don't exist.

When I enter the bookstore, I don't even look at the "top 10" shelf... I'm interested in besttellers, not bestsellers. But every bookstore has some part for "high" literature and every time I come I find at least two dozens of new books that seem more than interesting and leave with broken heart as I can't afford to buy them all. Not that I don't try. This year (and it's just July) I bought some 30 books, most of them by modern foreign authors I didn't know before. The last disovery was Alessandro Baricco, popular italian writer and his novel Silk. I higly recommend it.

[KidTruth]

Back in the 19th century and earlier even commercial literature (Charles Dickens, Matthew Lewis) was good stuff. I believe this can be attributed to the fact that literacy was low in the less educated classes. As more and more became literate, literature dumbed was dumbed down; and look at it today: The only new books on the shelves are Stephen King, Danielle Steele, Jeffrey Deaver garbage. Every now and then there's some book like The Corrections that passes itself off as real literature, when it's actually just REALLY REALLY BAD wannabe-literary fiction that recycles cliches from films blatantly.

I may sound like an elitist, but it would be silly to say that the lower classes have the same opportunities to understand and appreciate literature given that they have less education and less time to read.

Sure there are still great writers like Russell Banks and Salman Rushdie but very few.

You sound like an elitist. Allow me to paraphrase what you are saying:

"Why aren't people writing old books anymore?!"

Your own fetish for books that are at least fifty to sixty years old blinds you to any good literature being written today. I wonder how much of our fascination with old literature and how intelligent it is comes from the fact that much of its obfuscation is due to out-of-style dialect, hype and the history we have to learn to understand what they are saying.

Either I'm right in my above conjecture, or you're right and everyone in the world became stupider for no real reason at all.

[stlukesguild]

You sound like an elitist. Allow me to paraphrase what you are saying:

"Why aren't people writing old books anymore?!"

Your own fetish for books that are at least fifty to sixty years old blinds you to any good literature being written today. I wonder how much of our fascination with old literature and how intelligent it is comes from the fact that much of its obfuscation is due to out-of-style dialect, hype and the history we have to learn to understand what they are saying.

Either I'm right in my above conjecture, or you're right and everyone in the world became stupider for no real reason at all.

I can't speak for Robert E. Lee... but I will gladly admit that I am an "elitist". I am an "elitist" in that I absolutely reject the notion of artistic or cultural relativism which declares that there is no good nor bad art... but thinking makes it so... that all is pure subjectivity. On the other hand, I most certainly will not not agree with any notion that no one is writing good books anymore. There are any number of living writers whom I feel are certainly good... perhaps great (Cormac McCarthy, Geoffrey Hill, Anne Carson, John Ashberry, Mario Vargas Llosa, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and many others immediately jump to mind). Of course it is always more difficult to judge contemporary work of art than one in that has been absorbed into the culture. It can be challenging to discern true formal originality with mere novelty or to recognize the difference between what may be merely timely but soon to relegated to the category of "period pieces" from that which is bears a timeless relevance. It also might be pointed out that our access to contemporary literature is often far more limited in that there are often few translations available of the contemporary works (good, bad,or mediocre) written in other languages.

I don't buy the notion that it is a merely an outdated vocabulary or diction that makes older works difficult (and thus attractive to some readers). John Milton was never an easy read, neither in Geoffrey Hill or Thomas Pynchon. Personally I can find any number of modern or contemporary works that are just as difficult (if not more-so) than most older works. Neither is difficulty nor lack of difficulty any guarantee of artistic merit. On the other hand... one may surely be enamored of the beauty of certain older artistic languages. One may find the Elizabethan language or the Victorian language as represented by the greatest authors of those periods to have a certain beauty that one admires far more than than languages of Faulkner, Beckett, or Pynchon. This would seem to be no different than if one were to greatly prefer the style of Renaissance or Impressionist painting to Picasso, Pollack, or Lucian Freud... or the music of Mozart, Beethoven, and Rossini to that of Schoenberg, Webern, and Philip Glass. Such would not necessarily be an expression of snobbishness... but more a personal preference.

I do agree with R.E.L. that the broadening of the audience has not meant a necessary improvement in the overall quality of what does get published or what gains the support of the publishers. Literature... art as a whole... is largely seen as mere entertainment by many and the art which can entertain the largest audience gains the largest audience. But art can be and often is more than entertainment. We may have grown far more literate as a society (surely a good thing) but this in no way assures us that this broad audience will take the time and put forth the effort demanded by some literature (or art... or music). I don't know that I would go so far as to suggest that we are in some artistic decline... although I do greatly suspect that we are no longer in a period that in any way can compete with that of early Modernism. I doubt that this is some long slide into mediocrity (or worse). Every great period in the history of the arts has been followed up by a lull of sorts. It is only to be expected and does not mean that there are/were not artists of truly great ability and achievements active during these times. Perhaps it merely demands more of an effort upon the part of the audience to seek out the best of contemporary art... but it is assuredly worth the effort.

[poofyhead15]

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

I agree. You can see the lack of ideas in the movies too. Take a look at the movies coming out in the past few years. It's gotten so bad, these writers are making sequels, then part III, IV, V, etc. to originally bad movies, movies based on comic books. I realize that there are interesting independent films, but the majority exhibit the lack of intellectually stimulating art.

[ClickForth]

okokok

[JBI]

Don't give me that; have you seen the amount of sequels coming out these days? Yeah right, like movies haven't gone downhill. I think literature now isn't "dead", good stuff is just hard to find. Now everyone is an aspiring writer, which makes things more difficult for the good writers. It is the publishers that are to blame not the readers. They are there to make money, therefore they publicize what sells. Though, some great authors sell well, many other greats don't.

[ClickForth]

okokok

[Big Al]

Don't give me that; have you seen the amount of sequels coming out these days?

How many James Bond films were made throughout the '60s and '70s? How many entries in the Thin Man franchise were produced in the '40s and '50s?

Yeah right, like movies haven't gone downhill. I think literature now isn't "dead", good stuff is just hard to find. Now everyone is an aspiring writer, which makes things more difficult for the good writers.

As with artists in any field, I am sure many of the great authors struggled to make a living. Look what happened to Herman Melville after he wrote Moby Dick. There has and always will be drivel clogging up the shelves and hogging all the attention, but the truly timeless works being written will be remembered and celebrated fifty years from now.

It is the publishers that are to blame not the readers. They are there to make money, therefore they publicize what sells. Though, some great authors sell well, many other greats don't.

There is a contradiction here, I think. The readers are not to blame because publishers only publicize what sells. In other words, publishers publish what readers read. Sounds like the root of the problem is the general public after all. But then again, there's no accounting for taste.

Oh, and to the author of the original thread, I have a few names for you:

Cormac McCarthy
Thomas Pynchon
Gene Wolfe
Clive Barker
William Gibson

...Just to name a few.

[DigitalLove]

I remember being shocked to learn in literature class that there was a huge market for 'junk' literature in the 1800's. Apparently there were a lot more newspapers and other types of publications back then. The junk literature was written primarily for bored housewives, and it was sort of like the romance novels of today.

It is interesting to note how human nature can romanticize the past. I think there is a lot of great literature out there today, but I do agree it can be hard to find at times.

[Calidore]

Edit: No longer applicable

[Atomic]

Not dead - there are some fine contempory writers; Margaret Atwood, J.M. Coatzee, William Gibson, Natsuo Kirino...don't forget that there was a time when all 'novels' were viewed a trashy indulgences. When the novel broke out as an art form, it was quickly established as one of the most profund forms of expression, but even in the 1800s and early 1900s, the 'greats' were always a dime a dozen. It may be a dime a thousand now, with so much published trash, and the market in ruin, but there are still many fine writers floating about, aching for your recognition. Go and read them!

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Yep. Literature is dead. Completely, utterly dead.

[tonywalt]

Literature is more accessible in these times.

The dumming down result can be frustrating. I was watching a news conference for Naomi Campbell's autobiography and one intrepid report asking if writing was cathartic. Needless to say, she had no idea what the word meant, but in true form gave a rude answer to the reporter and even threw in my favourite word - "whatever" - part of the slapdown for asking such a lettered question

There is a lot of good literature, but it does not sell as well - Cormac McCarthy, Thomas Pynchon, Zadie Smith, David Foster Wallace....and they do well in the market place.

[nancybella]

People don't ask will science literature die. It never will of course, as people are born with a curiosity to figure out how the natural world operates.

It's the same with literary writing: people are born with a curiosity about human behaviour and suggest solutions with imaginative scenarios. A solution usually amounts to nothing more than a nice way of expressing the problem.

A love of stories, a beginning, a middle, and an end, whether it's planet earth and her fellow planets and the great dome she lives under, or if it's just the people running round on the planet.

I think people will always want to read and write.