Not the End

There’s an unfortunate idea that has been around for decades now that somehow literature and books and the whole of art is somehow dying. The reality is… that’s just not true. Books are changing. The way in which readers consume books, the way in which we tell stories and really a lot in the art world is evolving with the times. But we are not at a loss for writers and we are certainly not at a loss for readers. It’s just that readers appetites are changing. Most readers are not easily impressed by large tomes that seem to go on without an end in sight. Most readers are not interested in great endless exposition and little dialogue between characters. Readers would rather follow characters than plot, and that isn’t a bad thing. It isn’t the death of literature. It’s change, change that writers have to adapt too. I think the reason that the ‘literature is dying’ myth has prevailed is because it’s an easy excuse for older writers who are set in their ways and don’t wish to change how they operate.

Maybe it’s ‘literary’ novels, that are dying out. The concept of the Great American novel, as if somehow such a novel would be more important to literature than a novel from any other country, perhaps this is something that’s dying out. But literature itself, books, and all that they are are not going anywhere. Authors and pessimists (which often seem to go hand in hand) have decried the death of literature and culture since the beginning of time. Somewhere, modernist authors, decried the death of literature at the post-modernist period, and so again in the current era of literature. And onwards throughout history. Somehow I do not doubt with the birth of the novel, Sophocles cried. This, is the death of literature.