These times and the writer.
Where among us is the Steinbeck who'll tell the tale?
I listened to cheering in the debates and thought about all the people struggling to survive after they lost everything, and who've been trying to find work ever since, and who've found a little, but too little. Food stamps are keeping their families alive. And their neighbors are shouting they're useless and let them starve. And they don't even know it.
That person isn't one of the people they mean, of course. It's just the useless, the lazy and the cheats, and they're told there are huge numbers of them. They've never met any, but "everybody knows." Who is the Steinbeck among us, who will write the pain of this time, in a way that will never be forgotten?
I listened to cheering in the debates and thought about all the people struggling to survive after they lost everything, and who've been trying to find work ever since, and who've found a little, but too little. Food stamps are keeping their families alive. And their neighbors are shouting they're useless and let them starve. And they don't even know it.
That person isn't one of the people they mean, of course. It's just the useless, the lazy and the cheats, and they're told there are huge numbers of them. They've never met any, but "everybody knows." Who is the Steinbeck among us, who will write the pain of this time, in a way that will never be forgotten?
date
newest »
newest »
message 1:
by
mountainmama
(new)
Jan 18, 2012 03:05PM
I'm sure someone will come along to tell our tale, Sharon. I just wish there wasn't going to be a tale to tell.
reply
|
flag
It's very much a thought about independent publishing, mountainmama. A corporation couldn't do it, no matter how famed the author. "It wouldn't be good for business." Who will our great and great-great-grandchildren read to learn of the time when people lost everything they'd invested for the future and everything they had?
I think you're right, Sharon. But I've seen so much talent in indie authors that there is no doubt someone who can and will do it!
"Writing the great American novel" has been a joke for far too long. Who among us is writing because the truth of our times should be told? What genre is that?
Probably the genre that's being ignored by everyone!
Exactly. The extreme mass market commercialization of the last thirty years has left large gaps on the shelves in the library. I remember being one of those loudly protesting science fiction IS literature, about forty years ago. Now here I am protesting there isn't any literature in literature.
Exactly. The extreme mass market commercialization of the last thirty years has left large gaps on the shelves in the library. I remember being one of those loudly protesting science fiction IS literature, about forty years ago. Now here I am protesting there's too little literature in literature.
I think it goes in cycles like everything else. It'll come back as surely as platform shoes and bellbottoms!
You bring up a very poignant question. My thought is that we live in an age of illusion. There has always been a mythological component to living, but the previous generations were less prone to illusion. When myth turns into illusion, and the equilibrium of experience is no longer balanced, it does not foster the insight into raw experience writers like Steinbeck tuned into.While things recycle, they are also prone, at some point, to irrevocably change. I think that has to absorb into the consciousness as a collective, before the record keepers (artists) can turn the key and tell the story.
With every day that passes, more get the illusion knocked out of them. Reality delivers real hard thumps when it's being ignored.Change is inevitable. As a science fiction writer, my job is point out white water ahead. But if people don't notice they're being swept along by the current, it's real hard to get them to take paddles to help steer.
Spinner Spins
Regular, probably not. Subject, practically anything.
- Sharon L. Reddy's profile
- 18 followers
