Interesting turn of events. I mentioned recently a post about eBook anxiety, which ended with the author Adam Robinson saying tongue-in-cheek he wanted to seclude himself in the Heimat of Heidegger somewhere online. As sometimes happens, he had a drive-by shot of lulz in the comments when someone asked why bother reading such a Nazi et al. This prompted an other post where the reasonable question was asked, should we read writers we find objectionable? How do you separate artist from their creations and influence? It’s the old problem of authorial intent, but the length and detail of the comments on that post are noteworthy.
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It’s all around us this market changing world of ours. Or is it? A couple of hundred years ago our dear forebears of English went ice cold thick banana-whips (to quote Douglas Adams) when Parliament forgot to renew the monopoly of the Stationer’s Company and people were able to print whatever they jolly well liked. We imagine our own times are unique for upturns in publishing output, but that’s misleading. Instead, we keep recycling the same business models — it’s only the tactics and technologies that change. Yesterday the Guardian reprinted from its archives an original note from 1958 about Pasternak’s refusal to leave the Soviet Union to receive his Nobel Prize. It’s terrific newspapers take the time to sometimes show their historicity (even if a lot of it is pre-conceived). It is language that tells us about the nature of a thing, provided that we respect language’s own nature. In the meantime, to be sure, there rages round the earth an unbridled yet clever talking, writing, and broadcasting of spoken words. Man acts as though he were the shaper and master of language, while in fact language remains the master of man. Heidegger Well, it’s that magical time of the year again when English receives one of its few officiated, marketed births. The Webster’s Dictionary team has brought up into Anglo consciousness their 2009 word-O-the-year. Unveiled all over the floor and some. As good critics we can see what is noteworthy by what was overlooked: cloud computing, wrap rage, wallet biopsy, go viral, and netbook . These aren’t words, but rather expressions — the kind of growths Dr.Johnson would have enjoyed having a good shout about. Yes, that is an preposition. As a student — maybe at any age — it’s really hard to determine the end point of an historical movement to understand what followed. This is a concern because ultimately one wants to know what is going on “now”, and what will be next. An example most young writers have to negotiate is Modernism. While “Post-Modernism” seems largely over as an historical theme, understanding the join, as it were, to the so-called Moderns at the end of the 19th and early 20th century is key to at least understanding how Post-Modernism began. And again, what might be next. The logic being if we can never catch up fully to the now we can at least see where things started and project what might follow. But those origins I think are largely illusory, because like most things they were the product of someone and did not evolve spontaneously. History is a long sequence of people interfering with one another. |
 
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