The Hard Thing

The hard thing is to step back and look at contemporary American literature within the context of society and history. To do so is to realize it's been in decline.

Once, some of the biggest celebrities in America were writers-- dynamic talents like F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway who were popular as well as literary.

What went wrong? Blaming everything on TV or computers isn't good enough. The rise of the Internet means more people are reading and writing. Other art forms like popular music have thrived in the past fifty years, while literature has stagnated. The real cause can be found in structural flaws-- including the prevailing philosophy and aesthetic used as foundation for the literary art.

It's not enough for me to state this. My task is to find or create new writing to rescue the art.