Ilse’s Reviews > Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction > Status Update

I always liked Pound's description of literature as "news that stays news" (ABC of Reading).

Ilse, don’t you think books can be a form of consumer media? Especially the pulp fiction and serials that people mostly read the past two centuries.

I must admit I found the quote hard to grasp—especially the mention of capitalism. Yet it made me reflect: literature can resist values, or simply help us ignore life, as Pessoa said?
Thank you, Ilse.

Literature as entropic, interesting

This kind of quote demonstrates a lack of aesthetics. Aesthetics, artistic expression is just the exact opposite of noise - it is substantial form, essence of communication in uttermost dense symbolization. But yes, most texts, most novels etc are just discursive ways to have and show and explore opinions. But are they really different from any other texts like news, like reports? If literature is art, then art cannot be noise. Noise is an informational entity, and this softens the term of art and expressive language techniques to offer a magical exchange of world and spirit. I am still exploring better terms but good literature is ... not just entertainment, it is in its way enlightening, opening, uniting an image and sharing a part of the world.

I wouldn't have called literature noise either, but possibly the author wanted to convey that literature can encompass both meaning and meaninglessness in contemporary culture?

I like the idea of literature as noise, at times. It seems that there is always something indistinct about culture but recognizably part of it -- a noise at first encounter but that becomes distinct when we choose to focus on it.

It sounds more like an ideological stance towards literature. Literature, to me, is not a encouragement to resist to any particular set of values. It just exposes the fissures in a dominant normality, be it leftist or capitalist. Literature does not exposes those fissures by simply criticizing them, rather it turns them into its playground. It plays its innocent games where no one even dares to think of stepping into.

I've always wanted to be an entropic force. I was better at as a child. Like a lot of things.

Fred wrote: "I always liked Pound's description of literature as "news that stays news" (ABC of Reading)."
Fred, both you and Path mentioning Pound's ABC of reading make me curious to read it. That literature is news that stays news certainly tunes in with how I experience it, in the sense that curiosity for it doesn't wane - but I am also the kind of reader who reads news magazines years after they came out...

Noel wrote: "Ilse, don’t you think books can be a form of consumer media? Especially the pulp fiction and serials that people mostly read the past two centuries."

Noel, I fear you are right, and such not only for the type of fiction you point at - they are all part and parcel of capitalist system. Flaubert already wrote about books as consumer goods in a grocery store in 1872:

If one does not address the crowd, it is right that the crowd should not pay one. It is political economy. But, I maintain that a work of art (worthy of that name and conscientiously done) is beyond appraisal, has no commercial value, cannot be paid for. Conclusion: if the artist has no income, he must starve! They think that the writer, because he no longer receives a pension from the great, is very much freer, and nobler. All his social nobility now consists in being the equal of a grocer.

Surrounded by many unread books at home because I mostly read library books, I admit getting more and more alienated from the collector's drive of my younger self and withhold from adding any, although sometimes still succumbing, eg when abroad, where books are less expensive. How do you deal with such bookish conundrums?

Oh yes, Ilse, I definitely agree. Really, my objection is two-fold: 1) I find it presumptuous to simply say, X activity encourages resistance to capitalist values, and 2) the majority of people that have read throughout history were not reading Literature, which is a more or less arbitrary label anyway. That said, I definitely don’t think someone who reads a lot of quality books is the same as someone who watches loads of mindless TV.

I also try to avoid buying books nowadays, but sometimes I still do, haha.

As a public librarian, that quote's one of the more hilarious opinions I've encountered this week, and not in a good way.

The opening of the quote is slanted, targeting capitalism as a solitary source of resistance. Personally, I'm anti-capitalist, but literature can be a resistance or affirmation of countless political and philosophical ideologies that I can't follow the absurdity... which is bazaar. You can't posit that all "literature encourages resistance to capitalist values."

Mr. James wrote: "The opening of the quote is slanted, targeting capitalism as a solitary source of resistance. Personally, I'm anti-capitalist, but literature can be a resistance or affirmation of countless politic..."

You can posit it, but as you demonstrate not every one will accept it! Literature, i might suggest, can also be conformist and encourage acceptance of the status quo

That's true, and you validate what I was going for. My point was that the quote suggests literature always resists capitalism, when in fact its representation is too broad to carry a single message. Of course, the quote is out of context, so I'm sure -- as a whole -- it's not suggesting that.