Where Did The Novel Go?
Roger Kimball discusses.
I personally read less because the critical community is often selling fake art. Some of the monster works of the past 20 years are total drags to even pick up. I don't think this can entirely explain the death of the novel, but it is a factor for someone like me. I read less because I don't find very much good new stuff to read and if I do, rarely is there anyone to talk about it with. I watch HBO instead.
1 comment:
This is not exactly to your point but your post made me think of it. You should certainly read this article - I found is fascinating:
http://www.utne.com/mind-body/solitude-leadership-william-deresiewicz-speech.aspx
A small excerpt:
I submit to you that a book has two advantages over a tweet. First, the person who wrote it thought about it a lot more carefully. The book is the result of solitude, an attempt to think for himself. Second, most books are old. This is not a disadvantage: This is precisely what makes them valuable.
The great books, the ones you find on a syllabus, the ones people have continued to read, don’t reflect the conventional wisdom of their day. They say things that have the permanent power to disrupt our habits of thought. They were revolutionary in their own time, and they are still revolutionary today. And when I say “revolutionary,” I am deliberately evoking the American Revolution, because it was a result of precisely this kind of independent thinking. Without solitude—the solitude of Adams and Jefferson and Hamilton and Madison and Thomas Paine—there would be no America.
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