Neonski pečati

by Andrej Blatnik

Neon Seals begins with twelve autonomous yet connected studies of contemporary works, all but one (a collection of short stories A Tomb for Boris Davidovich by Danilo Kiš), North American novels: As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner, The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles, The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger, Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut, White Noise by Don DeLillo, Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis, Beloved by Toni Morrison, Vineland by Thomas Pynchon, The Hours by Michael Cunningham, Anil’s Ghost by Michael Ondaatje, and The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen. These monographic studies expose the influence of popular culture on the contents of, and the literary procedures employed in, these twelve works, a theme that is further explored in the second part of the book. In the 20th century, popular culture played an important part in forming personal and social identities. It influenced the production processes of not only the typical products of cultural industry, but also of those art disciplines that are referred to as “classical.” Authors now place on the market more than their writings: their names have become trademarks and their public readings Gesamtkunstwerk. A special case is hypertext, where even the external, physical existence of a literary work has changed. At the same time, hypertext enables a withdrawal from the historically established form of publishing a literary work, since it dispenses with a number of mediators between the author and the reader. This, however, is not in itself the greatest innovation, nor is the use of the new medium; through centuries, literature has used a wide variety of media – from clay plates to (predominantly) paper – and forms of their distribution. What gives a work of art its crucially new position is the recipient’s ability to actively contribute to its final structure.

Despite being greatly affected by popular culture, literary works of the 20th century ‘western canon’ did not assume the conventional representation codes typical of popular culture, which would have directed the reader's responses and expectations and transformed literary works (traditionally defined as unique) into serialized products of popular culture industry. The impact of popular and media culture caused another problem: a change in the socialization of a literary work. The dictate of the mass market and brand names, and the new forms of representation of art, have altered the ways in which a work of art exists, and reduced the chances for an integral and radically innovative work of art to emerge, exist and be recognized as such. When an autonomously created literary work begins its socialization (by being ushered, in manuscript form, into the publishing industry, which is followed by distribution, promotion, and, last, consumption) it has less autonomy than ever, despite the theoretically easier access to a literary work than before. The same representation mechanisms that enable a literary work to be accessible to the public have reduced its organic autonomy. This is the basic paradox of the present social position of any work of art.

298 pages

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Andrej Blatnik was born on May 22nd, 1963, in Ljubljana, Slovenia, where he studied Comparative Literature and Sociology of Culture and got his Masters in American Literature and PhD in Communication Studies. He started his artistic career playing bass guitar in a punk band, was a free-lance writer for five years, and now he works as an editor in Cankarjeva publishing house, teaches creative writing and is on the editorial board of the Literatura monthly since 1984. He is currently the president of the jury for the Vilenica prize.