‘Literature is news that stays news’ said some dead bigot. I suppose that’s why our literature is worthless today, when the news churned through the dark satanic opinion mills is either written by robots or people who think like them. This idea of ‘the news’ being reported reality is itself somewhat quaint, like the idea of reading a poem or looking at a painting just to find out what is there.
Perhaps the reason these habits are uncommon is that they have no practical value. These days, art is a boring lecture communicated through the medium of trash. Its function is to launder money. Most modern books could use practically any corporation’s latest advertisement to illustrate the cover. It is a product in the same vein of television and film and theatre, a parade of tropes deemed worthy by people who don’t much like your reality and would rather you looked at their fantasies instead.
Not all art is quite useless. The older stuff is better in the main to serve the appetite for beauty an…
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