Tuesday, May 08, 2007

Doomed Lit-Bloggers

In what condition is literature? How bad are things?

Compare it to two dying sports: boxing and horse racing.
This past weekend, the Kentucky Derby was still alive enough to attract the Queen of England (who, if we remembered our revolutionary roots, should've been sent to clean the horse stalls, then immediately shipped back to her home country for encouraging aristocracy).
A boxing match later that evening recorded millions of pay-per-view buys.
(And Spidey III at the same time opened with record attendance.)

In literature, Marisha Pessl is looked upon as a huge success because a hundred thousand comfortable people are conned into buying her ridiculous book.

Are lit-bloggers the answer? Or sites like Foetry?

Not if their complaint is that American literature isn't elitist ENOUGH. Too many of these would-be saviors, hyper-educated in a narrow way, are convinced that literature should become more refined, more out-of-touch with the American people. This is artistic suicide.

2 comments:

FDW said...

I spent some time up in old North Hampton, Mass back in 1991.
(The summer and Fall "of the Great Opposition 'twixt Venus and Jupiter which is referenced in one of the poems (ATLANTIS FM) the HJ band has been kind enough to let me read to their improv backup this coming Friday at the Canivolution at the Tiberino Museum,3819 Hamilton Street, here in Wes'Philly.)
And so spent some time around and about Smith College in fact had opportunity to check out the girls at the school and experience first hand the culture of eliteism and entitlement there.
Attended a few of their parlies and even their literary/poetry thingies but I was working and living on an organic farm and asana yoga center on the other side of the tracks-- East Hampton.
To make a short story even shorter I can confirm what King's saying here and it's reasonable besides and what would expect from a writer like Pissel and her idiot-savant agent.

FDW said...

I'll on first thought attempt to get the poems to be action-read up on ULA Poetry and Prose Blog before Friday!
The other one's called "The Last Man On Earth" and is kinda still in progress......
By the way now with the MP in semi-retirement in an undisclosed mental hospital rumour has it that a until now unknown but much more severe protegy of the nutty masked one, "the Swami, Mr. 7, will appear.