THE BLOG OF DISQUIET :Qweir Notions,an uncommonplace-book from the Armpit of Diogenes, binge-thinker jottings since2008.
Tuesday, 10 December 2019
The problem I have with Literature
is that (like plants)
it is so much more interesting and relaxing
than actual people.
5 comments:
Karl
said...
The cult of literature in western countries is one big scam to avoid looking at the horrible reality. As entertainment, fine. As 'truth', nonsense. Only pampered academics could believe it so.
On the contrary, literature - until now, at any rate - is the only (if faint) means of disseminating and acquiring insight. It is only very recently that psychology (and, to a much lesser extent, sociology and social anthropology) have become subtle, empathetic and sensitive enough to inform us about each other and our crass cultures.
I disagree. Literature is a middle-class phenomenon, produced and consumed by those with time and leisure. The idea that a fictional production of a solitary individual in a room somewhere produces 'insight' or empathy is a very English bourgeois notion, and usually serves as a handy cover for not having to actually help anyone in the real world.
Maxim Gorky : My Childhood. And several other literary memoirs (e.g. Father & Son)... Such books made me antinatalist and extremely glad never to have had a father. One learns very little from sociology, but a great deal from Solzhenitsyn, Genet, Angelou and a few hundred others, including many contemporaries. The unemployed are also part of the leisured class, and used public libraries to read avidly in the 1930s.
5 comments:
The cult of literature in western countries is one big scam to avoid looking at the horrible reality. As entertainment, fine. As 'truth', nonsense. Only pampered academics could believe it so.
On the contrary, literature - until now, at any rate - is the only (if faint) means of disseminating and acquiring insight. It is only very recently that psychology (and, to a much lesser extent, sociology and social anthropology) have become subtle, empathetic and sensitive enough to inform us about each other and our crass cultures.
I disagree. Literature is a middle-class phenomenon, produced and consumed by those with time and leisure. The idea that a fictional production of a solitary individual in a room somewhere produces 'insight' or empathy is a very English bourgeois notion, and usually serves as a handy cover for not having to actually help anyone in the real world.
Maxim Gorky : My Childhood. And several other literary memoirs (e.g. Father & Son)...
Such books made me antinatalist and extremely glad never to have had a father.
One learns very little from sociology, but a great deal from Solzhenitsyn, Genet, Angelou and a few hundred others, including many contemporaries. The unemployed are also part of the leisured class, and used public libraries to read avidly in the 1930s.
... and the media is conditioned reflex
Post a Comment