Thanks Mark, for clarifying much of what I stumbled to
suggest.
At 05:06 PM 22/06/2006 -0400, you wrote:
>". . . and short, and was eclipsed when technology
brought performance
>into the home."
>
>So we're in a post-literate age, now? And we're all
Luddites here for
>continuing to turn pages? Maybe.
Probably not Luddites in that we're computer capable, and
also able to turn a television on and off, but still, even
without any data before me, I suspect one single episode of
television drama (The Sopranos, say) draws a bigger audience
than 90% of printed fiction in any given year. Well, some
eye-popping statistic like that could be claimed, I'm sure.
Blockbuster movies make millions their first weekend of
release. I've no idea how many units are sold, or how much
money a successful computer game makes, but I suspect it's as
much or more than the years printed best-seller. Not that any
of this is what you call Big L literature. My point is simply
that the market for popular fiction has shifted to other
media.
Judging from my experience trying to shill books from a
table-top at the front of Canada's answer to Barnes &
Noble, few read for "leisure" these days, buying more
computer manuals, self-help books, maps, CDs and scented
candles than anything that might be called fiction, creative
non-fiction, certainly poetry or Big L literature.
>As I recall from long ago lit classes, I think
Melville was somewhat
>popular for his "whaling tales," but nowhere near a
Stevenson, for
>example.
Okay, but "popular" among what set? Were enough people
literate at the time for there to be what we've come to call
a pop-art market?
>"If a bit of art is here in the present, however it
got to be here, then
>I guess it has to be better than whatever art is not
here in the present
>and so cannot be evaluated at all, making Miker
right, sort of."
>
>But better by what standards?
and
> And they
>remain lost, even if times may have or may in the
future shift to a more
>sympathetic mindset.
Except if something doesn't exist in the present we've only
an act of faith to believe that it existed in the past, good,
bad or indifferent. Logic may suggest, but we've no way of
knowing. And it's only guesswork, even by the most qualified
of institutionalized critics, as to what will exist in the
future. I'm off on sort of an existential tangent here, just
for the hell of it.
>So I am perfectly willing to believe that what
survives is some of the
>best of the past, but I have trouble believing it's
all of the best.
I agree, but it's all about belief. Then again, maybe the
REALLY good stuff never made it at all. I'm trying to think
of some especially crappy writing that has wriggled its way
through the ages. Bet it has something to do with those
enduring human qualities related to sex and violence.
I can dream, can't I, Kerry
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