Thank you, Michael, for turning my too-long and presumptuous comment into a post. It's so good to have friends like you on Substack. I love the line from your post, "Why Culture Must Lead": "we must reverse the widely-held belief that it is the government's job to create conditions in which a healthy culture can flourish. Quite the opposite is true: It is culture that must create the conditions in which good government becomes a possibility."
Maybe I'm just biased because I'm a literary fiction writer and I'm looking for a cheerleader to make it possible to continue, against all odds, to try to get my work in front of readers.
I hear it again and again whenever I mention to a new friend that I'm a novelist: "Oh, I don't have time to read fiction; I only have time for facts." (My husband in number among that group, but I married him anyway.) So where have all the fiction -- and poetry -- readers gone?
I blame a lot of this on the fact that in English Departments, professors have long given up teaching students about literary style and the use of devices and rhetoric to create new connotative meaning. They teach to the subject matter instead. What is the book about? not, How is it written? And the subject matter that they focus on has been largely confined to Identity Politics.
People may complain now that Identity Politics dominates politics and economics. Well, it got its start in English Departments thirty years ago. That's why I left literary criticism and theory in 2000 and went into complex systems science instead. I found more people who sympathized with my interests in art among scientists than I had found among literature professors and students.
Just as we (people interested in sanity) are having to develop our own alternative news outlets, food systems, and health centers, we will have to develop our own cultural institutions.
In a way, it's a great time to be alive, while the world is in transition -- assuming we survive.
You're very welcome. And not presumptuous at all. For me the comments are an open space in which I hope for open and inspirational sharing. As for too long - well if it is, it's sometthing I'm often guilty of too.
Yes, yes, we must reainimate culture. What is the point of economic stability, scientific knowledge etc, if there is no culture? What you have written above also brings to my mind Mattias Desmet's recent book (subject to a 'kind of review' by me in The Witch, the War and the Virus', with a part two 'kind of review' pending). He posits (to be covered in the part two) that a world obessed almost exclusively by materialist science must inevitiably end up with totalitarianism.
The fiction and non-fiction question is also interesting. I also read nearly all non-fiction, but where it leads me into deeper feeling for life – Tarnas, Steiner, various esoteric stuff, some history and philosopy, a lot of psychology, technology from a point of view of understanding the human relationship to it. When I read non-fiction, it is mostlly the 'greats' of the past. Hardy, Melville, Goethe, Doestoevsky – but its probably only 10% of my reading diet at most. I often think that the capacity for such great writing has temporarily disappeared from the world – very little of it after about the 1940's (Steinbeck and Woolf being great examples – and East of Eden being my favourite novel of all time), and I'm always looking out for it's re-emergence. Some later stuff is good – To Kill a Mocking Bird, The God of Small Things, Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight – but not on the scale of the earlier greats. (Haven't read any Paul Kingsnorth's novels yet, but I will). Those great writers of the past understood the human condition so deeply, their legacies are for me a great repository of human wisdom and for me it is a real concern that the present generation does not read them. (In fact I come across some teenagers in Spain where I live who do - smart, engaged, open-eyed kids who really give me hope – but of course a small minority. Perhaps playwrights of later times have a better showing than novelists. Ben Elton's 'Popcorn' and Terry Johnson's 'Insignificance' both made a lasting impression on me.
I loved the style of your extract and hope to see the book at some point. I aslo love the writing of Mary McLaughlin on her Substack 'The Art of Freedom'. We really need you people to rekindle the flame!
I was struck by V.N.Alexander's comment too, so I'm glad you're giving it a wider reach. So intrigued by The Masque of Anarchy -- I'm checking it out now! Thanks, Michael.
Glad it resonated with you Mary. Would it be presumptuous to say I feel some kind of kindred quality in VN's extract here and your own writing?
As for 'The Masque of Anarchy', I just read it in full myself. Wow. Even though I am for approaches to devolved responsibility other than anarchism, that doesn not invalidate for me the courageous and defiant principle Shelley espouses, and the way it pours inescapable shame on perpetrators of tyranny. And then I was about to write that though it probably wasn't the case, I could easily imagine it as a direct inspiration for Gandhi. But then I wondered about 'probably not the case'. A quick search showed that Gandhi apparently often read out this specific poem at his rallies, as he prepared to personify the principle in a way which became etched forever on world history.
Thank you, Michael, for turning my too-long and presumptuous comment into a post. It's so good to have friends like you on Substack. I love the line from your post, "Why Culture Must Lead": "we must reverse the widely-held belief that it is the government's job to create conditions in which a healthy culture can flourish. Quite the opposite is true: It is culture that must create the conditions in which good government becomes a possibility."
Maybe I'm just biased because I'm a literary fiction writer and I'm looking for a cheerleader to make it possible to continue, against all odds, to try to get my work in front of readers.
I hear it again and again whenever I mention to a new friend that I'm a novelist: "Oh, I don't have time to read fiction; I only have time for facts." (My husband in number among that group, but I married him anyway.) So where have all the fiction -- and poetry -- readers gone?
I blame a lot of this on the fact that in English Departments, professors have long given up teaching students about literary style and the use of devices and rhetoric to create new connotative meaning. They teach to the subject matter instead. What is the book about? not, How is it written? And the subject matter that they focus on has been largely confined to Identity Politics.
People may complain now that Identity Politics dominates politics and economics. Well, it got its start in English Departments thirty years ago. That's why I left literary criticism and theory in 2000 and went into complex systems science instead. I found more people who sympathized with my interests in art among scientists than I had found among literature professors and students.
Just as we (people interested in sanity) are having to develop our own alternative news outlets, food systems, and health centers, we will have to develop our own cultural institutions.
In a way, it's a great time to be alive, while the world is in transition -- assuming we survive.
You're very welcome. And not presumptuous at all. For me the comments are an open space in which I hope for open and inspirational sharing. As for too long - well if it is, it's sometthing I'm often guilty of too.
Yes, yes, we must reainimate culture. What is the point of economic stability, scientific knowledge etc, if there is no culture? What you have written above also brings to my mind Mattias Desmet's recent book (subject to a 'kind of review' by me in The Witch, the War and the Virus', with a part two 'kind of review' pending). He posits (to be covered in the part two) that a world obessed almost exclusively by materialist science must inevitiably end up with totalitarianism.
The fiction and non-fiction question is also interesting. I also read nearly all non-fiction, but where it leads me into deeper feeling for life – Tarnas, Steiner, various esoteric stuff, some history and philosopy, a lot of psychology, technology from a point of view of understanding the human relationship to it. When I read non-fiction, it is mostlly the 'greats' of the past. Hardy, Melville, Goethe, Doestoevsky – but its probably only 10% of my reading diet at most. I often think that the capacity for such great writing has temporarily disappeared from the world – very little of it after about the 1940's (Steinbeck and Woolf being great examples – and East of Eden being my favourite novel of all time), and I'm always looking out for it's re-emergence. Some later stuff is good – To Kill a Mocking Bird, The God of Small Things, Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight – but not on the scale of the earlier greats. (Haven't read any Paul Kingsnorth's novels yet, but I will). Those great writers of the past understood the human condition so deeply, their legacies are for me a great repository of human wisdom and for me it is a real concern that the present generation does not read them. (In fact I come across some teenagers in Spain where I live who do - smart, engaged, open-eyed kids who really give me hope – but of course a small minority. Perhaps playwrights of later times have a better showing than novelists. Ben Elton's 'Popcorn' and Terry Johnson's 'Insignificance' both made a lasting impression on me.
I loved the style of your extract and hope to see the book at some point. I aslo love the writing of Mary McLaughlin on her Substack 'The Art of Freedom'. We really need you people to rekindle the flame!
So kind, Michael.
I hope to see her book at some point, too, and yours.
It's been a rough few weeks and I'm just coming up for air. To read this re-energizes my soul, frankly, so thanks for that! xox
Sorry to hear of the rough few weeks Mary. And thanks - always great to know if my writing is having a positive effect, even if only on a few! xox
We will survive, though there may have to be a little hard work as time goes by.
Good luck with your book!
I was struck by V.N.Alexander's comment too, so I'm glad you're giving it a wider reach. So intrigued by The Masque of Anarchy -- I'm checking it out now! Thanks, Michael.
Glad it resonated with you Mary. Would it be presumptuous to say I feel some kind of kindred quality in VN's extract here and your own writing?
As for 'The Masque of Anarchy', I just read it in full myself. Wow. Even though I am for approaches to devolved responsibility other than anarchism, that doesn not invalidate for me the courageous and defiant principle Shelley espouses, and the way it pours inescapable shame on perpetrators of tyranny. And then I was about to write that though it probably wasn't the case, I could easily imagine it as a direct inspiration for Gandhi. But then I wondered about 'probably not the case'. A quick search showed that Gandhi apparently often read out this specific poem at his rallies, as he prepared to personify the principle in a way which became etched forever on world history.
Some new dialogue below that you might find intersting too.
:-)
That's quite the compliment, Michael, thank you. Will check out the new comments...
Thanks. I agree, 'chance encounters' are one of the things I love about SS too.
👍