Literature isn’t dead, it just smells funny

One concern levied against modern literature in the wake of the self-publishing movement is that in this market environment, the classic works of the past could not come to be. Critics have said that there is no modern James Joyce, no Wallace, there will be no more DeLillos.

They’re right, and they’re wrong

Today’s James Joyce is out there, but you won’t recognize him. He’d never write anything like Ulysses, because Ulysses has already been written. There’s no need for the daring artistic innovators to tread old ground, and that’s what most conventional literary fiction is, old ground. Classically educated scribes aping style that was innovative a century ago. Trying to write like dead men, writing for dead audiences.

Tomorrow’s James Joyce will not be writing for yesterday’s literary critics.

He probably isn’t writing for the critics at all.

Who is the next James Joyce

Good art, real art is a reaction to what’s come before it. Impressionism was a reaction to classical, surrealism was a reaction to realism, and dada was a reaction to the idea that art had to have meaning. Literary art works the same way, and the next great literary figure won’t be writing to fit any current established standards of taste.

She’ll be someone coming out of nowhere, possibly without any sort of prior recognition, working the medium in a way that is both entirely unexpected and utterly inevitable. The next revolution will come in the form of some weird epistolary twitter thing, or a sophisticated transmedia half-story half-alternate reality game. Something that pushes the boundaries. Something that isn’t even remotely a book. Something that makes the establishment uneasy and confused, because that’s what good art does.

Good art pushes boundaries. The boundaries of the 21st century, not wearing deep the trenches trodden by the innovators of the 20th.

You will not be ready

It won’t be anything you’ve studied. It won’t be anything you’re prepared for. It won’t be anything you’re expecting. If your mind isn’t open, it won’t even be anything you’ll recognize until you read other people raving about it.

Chances are, if you’re bemoaning the fate of books and literature, you don’t understand art well enough to catch it at all.

So the next James Joyce is out there, somewhere, right in front of your face. Can you see him?

 

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