Quote:
Originally Posted by fjtorres
The problem is with the idea that anybody could think it is possible to set out to do such a thing as write a "Future classic". "Future classic" isn't a genre. It is an arrogant conceit at best, delusion at worst.
A good writer's aspiration is to reach people; as many as possible, as deeply as possible. The best succeed in their times and transcend their own time and their own society. That is not something anybody can live to see so it's not something one could rationally set out to do or even recognize it happening; at most, one could dream of it. The very proclamation of such an intent suggests a certain... lack of understanding of the task involved. Or perhaps a divorce from reality? 
As for there being room for everybody: absolutely. But that is exactly what the article decries. That ebooks, by lowering barriers to entry, are opening the door for an explosion of (inferior) genre content. And that such a thing is, in itself, bad.
The underlying assumption behind literary snobbery (and an apparent driver behind the article) is the idea that if a lot of people like something, it can't *possibly* be good. Which is demonstrably false because the very classics they seek to emulate survive precisely because of their popularity, both in their time and after it.
What is and isn't a classic isn't for contemporaries to decide; that is something for history to pass judgment on later. |
I repeat:
"But why scorn someone who is interested in reading or writing that genre?"
It is easy to fall into that trap of "arrogant conceit at best, delusion at worst" even as a critic or naysayer.
Why not hope for the best?
