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Is literature a defunct art form? Is it so niche that only a few people will care about it in 20 years? Like Classical Music or Jazz? Or is it already at that point?

I can't see that ever happening

I would say it is becoming a defunct art form, it may persist because of hipsters wanting to bee cool, or schools mandating reading, but indefinitely, I see it being lost to as an antiquated communication method. Look at how little people in the modern era know about history. I frequent my library, because there is quite a bit of information hat you cannot find in the wired in old books. Everyone at the library knows me (they are volunteers from local Uni) because I am the only person in my 20s who actually visits the library for more than free dvd rentals... There are even college professors who will argue that handwriting is an obsolete skill, because we can communicate with keyboards over the wired now... I think that it is a dangerous slope, because it removes redundant systems that have acted as fail safes for thousands of years... One of my coworkers was complaining that he had to go to a parent teacher conference because his 5th grade daughter insisted on writing in cursive like her dad taught her too, because she thought it looked prettier and liked it more than manuscript, but the school wrote everything exclusively in manuscript.

>>1269 Thats is pretty strange. My library is packed with people, given that now I use my university libraries but few years ago when I was in high school it would be hard sometimes to find a sitting place with so many people reading and learning there.

What are you people talking about? There's loads of people who read and loads of people who read nonfiction and classics, not just junk narrative. If anything, book sales have mostly gone up in recent years: https://interactive.guim.co.uk/charts/embed/mar/2017-03-17T13:32:19/embed.html Get out of your bubble, folks. Anecdotal evidence isn't evidence.

>>1271 that graph says that paperback book purchase has gone down from 2013 to 2015 and it's probably not accurate

>>1269 Excuse me but manuscript doesn't simply mean something written by hand? I checked on Cambridge Dictionary and it says only that about that word. Ah, and in my country in schools people write mainly in coursive, never heard of a school where you can't do it. Anyway i don't think of literature as a defunct act form. I see a lot of people reading, often cool stuff. I think possibilities are 2: the first is that who writes that is from the U.S.A., where AFAIK not only literature but culture in general was never much regarded. The second is that who writes it reads a lot and wants to feel better than the others.

heh although nowadays people have a lot of alternative mediums to entertain themselves, there's nothing quite like text. For fiction imo it's still the medium that stimulates imagination the most and one of the most immersive. Then there's the commercial aspect, writers gotta eat, afaik literature publishing is one of the sectors that was hurt the most with internet, publishers just didn't adapt. In my country recent ebooks with DRMs are almost as expensive as physical books, no wonder people don't buy them. Luckily it's also way easier for writers to cut the middle man and publish their stuff themselves with less censorship as a bonus but going without a publisher requires additional skills and it makes it harder for them to meet their public

Even if everyone just reads GRR Martin, at least they are reading something. More and more people are reading digital versions of things than physical books but it's still literature. >>1269 If reading books makes me a hipster then pour me another IPA and turn up that Broken Social Scene LP.

Reading has always been something that only the middle and upper classes really did, until the mid 20th century when everyone in the lower classes suddenly had access to paperbacks. If anything, literature is thriving now more than it has in the past 10000 years of human existence. The fact that most people don't read doesn't really change that, since only a tiny subset of the population ever read in the first place.

It's really cute that you guys think that somehow the written word, which has existed since the dawn of civilization, will disappear just because computers exist

I was going to say something like "'Course not, you should check out [new writer]" but then I released OP is probably the book world equivalent of those guys that say all music today is like kicking dead whales down the beach.

Obviously you've got plenty of styles of literature. For example, one could argue that what is written on this chan is a form of literate documentation. Jazz, classical music, the internet, television etc. are primary means of transforming and providing a product. Namely, communication, music, videos etc. From this point of view, literature is a product in itself that can be shared through multiple mediums. However, I don't see how and why the product would disappear. Plenty of people read, though it might be only through more plebeian mediums like the newspaper or the latest facebook and twitter statuses. Now, if by literature you exclusively imply those books that are deemed classic. Obviously these particular books popularity will raise and die as trends change. This is the nature of any medium.

Depends what consists of literature according to you. Books and entertainment via written text aren't disappearing anytime soon. Professionally-written fiction might, but that's hardly all literature. For those mentioning cursive, look at any form of cyrillic cursive and excuse me if I feel that nothing of value has been lost. It works better as a means of obfuscation than a means of transmission.

I believe that literature is a form of art that is primarily used by people who seek to further their niche knowledge, in rare cases to challenge their current world views, and to enjoy the artistic expression of written language. Working from that basis, which could be refined but is my observation based on best-sellers, I believe that literature will inevitably be condensed for those seeking to further a view, become more sophisticated for those seeking to challenge a view, and become more formulaic for those seeking surface level artistic expression. It's going the way of the videogame market imo.

>>1267 Quite an absurd thing to ask since art is not going through some kind of linear and progressive evolutionary development. The Roman plebs, who were mostly illiterate anyway, became interested in pantomime and gladiator matches towards the end of their civilization. The more cultured, intellectually curious minds of their nation's upper stratum, on the other hand, were interested in recording the histories of Rome's battles and Caesars, as well as reading the great high cultural works of Ancient Greece's dramatists and tragedians. Were patricians interested in pantomime as well? Maybe, maybe not. I know that I enjoy listening to classical music as well as watching a good anime every now and then. Higher art will always be appreciated by some stratum of a society, and literature is one of the most basic mediums through which a higher culture can express its inmost soul. Future cultures may find a great way to turn technological advances in art such as film into their most iconic medium of expression, but literature is going nowhere as long as written language remains an important and expressive part of a high cultural Being.

writing, stories, novels, and so forth will always exist. as for western "literature"? it's already on the decline and will really tank once there's not enough money borrowing/stealing economical power to sustain it and its influence. humanities has been taken over by low quality undesirables so there will be a black period for the west while that's corrected. i think the idea of western cannon being supreme and western literature being the best is defunct. regions like asia will be culturally booming though and will see huge expansion over the world. western literature relies on the authority and hegemony of the west to pass itself off as being the most legitimate and best. once this influence goes away then yes the entire illusion will burst

>>1270 If it's a university, they probably aren't there for the books.

>>1269 I think the professors claiming that handwriting will be a obsolete skill is kinda interesting. As a kid I would spend all my time on my computer. I could type really fast and was always a really fast reader but my handwriting was atrocious but it never held me back because I could usually just type an essay.

Digital books are the real cancer. It's just so far from the actual, down-to-earth, honest act of reading a physical book that I can't even bother to read digital books. I regularly buy books so I guess cost is a point to be made as well, but not with novels since they're cheap (versus educational books, technical bibles etc. which cost a lot.)

The reason why literature is becoming defunct isn't the increase in digital books or the sales of e-readers, it's that people nowadays don't read anymore and write even less. They could go in any library, shop or on the internet to get tons of cool books that might educate them and possibly enrich their life. But they don't. If they buy books, it's for decoration. And if they do read something, it's some pop stuff or they want to appear smart. If you want to "make literature great again" you ought to show people what this medium can offer and how more complex and enriching the creation of it can be compared to almost everything else. We make pupils read from an early age on but they won't, why? Is it because they don't find enjoyment or because we teach them in a way that destroys any fun? They get more enjoyment being on the Internet or doing sports or watching a show while a book requires knowledge about the language, the author, narrative and symbolism. All this is forced into them in class. If you have to read five supplementary books to get one classic, what's the point? That's exhausting. Watch the movie instead. People who still read after they left school just weren't too badly influenced by their teachers. TLDR: >show kids how reading is more fun than watching TV >teach them to go beyond the pop stuff and read what interests them >repeat for a century >??? >profit >>1719 >It's just so far from the actual, down-to-earth honest act of reading a physical book What the fuarrrk is that supposed to mean? I don't get it. If you don't like reading on an e-reader, fine. But claiming a device is a reason for it's downfall is not true. Amazon and all those soykafshops offer classical literature for free (Kafka, Poe, Shakespeare, Goethe) and the barrier to read them is lower than ever. Even without an e-reader, it's pretty much a few clicks away for every single person on the Internet. Type in *bookname*.pdf in google and you got it 99% of the time. If you think there's a huge difference between reading as a physical book and a device that might be true to an extend. It'd influence they time we spend reading because eyes get more tired looking at screens than at paper (but this is changing) Amazon had in it's old kindle line a few devices without backlight or touchscreen. Those are nice. Their battery also lasts for over a month. They replaced them tho Also, roll.

>>1719 e-readers nowadays use e-ink, there's little difference between them and physical books anymore, except for the battery and size. You can even buy e-readers that run libre OS, if that's what you are concerned about. >far from the actual, down-to-earth, honest act of reading a physical book how is a digital book far from honest? And what's the problem with not being 'down-to-earth'? Just because something might not work for you it doesn't make it automatically 'cancer'

If I may add, threads are a sort of magazine in a way as well. They are about one topic and have multiple authors all putting in their opinion about said topic.

>>1720 I agree with much of what you said. Although I've found that my memory retention when reading on digital is somewhat less than with physical books- but like you mentioned, with practice, this can change.

>>1277 yeah there is actually a longer period that 10000 hun.. lol

>>1721 The difference between e-ink and a nicely printed paper book is still massive. However, e-ink is not so bad that it's uncomfortable to read from, unlike a typical LCD. I use mine a lot for things that are expensive or rare, but if I'm given the option to spend $5 on an actual book I'll usually take it.

>>1721 what e reader has a libre os?

>>1267 >Is literature a defunct art form? No. >Is it so niche that only a few people will care about it in 20 years? Like Classical Music or Jazz? Or is it already at that point? No, it will not only be a few people; though, this also depends on your definition of "literature." Physical books? It's hard to say. The words themselves? They're not going anywhere. Case in point: because my brother struggled with getting glasses when he was little What can I say? We didn't have money he never learned to love reading like his other siblings did. But he still loves listening to audiobooks, and eats 'em up. Physical books? Mainly tactical manuals, but he still reads them some. But with audiobooks he'll listen to whatever. Why? You still do not see the written word when it is an audiobook. Is it not weakened and impure? Has it lost its essence? I do not believe so. Why? Because it is as said here by >>1275 >For fiction imo it's still the medium that stimulates imagination the most and one of the most immersive >>1658 100% agree with you, chummer

>>1762 The kobo e-readers run vanilla GNU/Linux with some proprietary software running on top. You can replace the reader software with the free Koreader and it's pretty easy to get shell access too, letting you run an ssh daemon to scp all your books across. It's not as bad as some competitors, but they do have all the usual tracking nastiness by default, so hacking is pretty essential.

Literature is just written language. Imageboards are a kind of literature, to use the term broadly (think about usenet groups and other sites). It's definitely changing right now, but that doesn't mean that it's dead. People say that poetry is dead as a medium, but they're only thinking about print, and ignoring the incredibly vibrant musical traditions that are exploding with creativity right now (100 years from now I guarantee we'll remember Death Grips as kicking off 21st-century poetry). For a board so invested in tech, the future, and transhumanism, I expected more from lains

>>1789 >attending school in the year 2130 >analyzing Death Grips lyrics in early 21st literature class

I don't think so. Not many people have been reading before, not many people read now.

>>1273 Manuscript as in "Print Writing". >>1720 The problem there is that the public schooling system, at least in the US, is fuarrrked. Also, rolling.

This seems relevant to the discussion. The author of this blog post at The Paris Review ponders if literature is dead because it just can't keep attention and fill the imagination in today's fast info see-and-move-on world. https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/08/27/is-literature-dead/

Right proper high art longform printed literature is dead as disco already. Now that the written word is mostly the typed word, the artform will adapt accordingly. So yes if you were talking about that, no if you just meant writing in general as an artform.

>>1718 Could you imagine how much time was wasted because people used quill and ink instead of computers to write things down?

>>2886 I use a dip pen for writing some things and it does indeed take a huge amount of time. Some of that time is waiting for the ink to dry, but most of it is recharging the nib with ink as I use an eyedropper rather than actually dip it. I have to get the right level of ink on the nib or else it will either dry out too quickly or drop a blob of ink on the page. For the public in general I don't recommend it, but I personally prefer it because I like the aesthetic over fountain or ballpoint pens. There is just something about the way the ink flows in an uneven pattern that is fun to look at.

Internet publishing killed literature forever. Every talentless hack can (and does) churn out some soykafty book and put it on Amazon. The extreme oversaturation ensures that most literature enthusiasts are NEVER going to seek out independent authors anymore; the only things they will read will be what the big publishers release, and they release exclusively from nepotism now because they receive too many submissions. The barrier of entry for writing being so low is what will keep it dead forever. The only writers that matter anymore are those who can make it in television, cinema, gaming, etc.

>>2895 If' we're talking mainstream, mass media consumption, then yes, maybe you're right. For myself, I think that when the population isn't getting what it needs or wants out of the mainstream sources, it tends to bypass them. For example, there are still magazines out there that look for and publish new talent: http://www.asimovs.com (for-profit) http://www.sfsite.com/fsf (for-profit) https://www.barrelhousemag.com (non-profit) https://www.washingtonsquarereview.com (published by NYU grad students) https://www.tetheredbyletters.com (seems for-profit) And that's not counting independent zines created and distributed by individual enthusiasts. Basically, and this is just my opinion, literature is diminished, but probably not completely gone. Maybe more like under the radar.

>>2886 I imagine it was less of an issue than the distraction of working in the same machine you connect to the internet.

Sloterdijk basically got it right in "Human Zoo": If this period seems today to have irredeemably vanished, it is not because people have through decadence become unwilling to follow their national literary curriculum. The epoch of nationalistic humanism has come to an end because the art of writing love-inspiring letters to a nation of friends, however professionally it is practised, is no longer sufficient to form a telecommunicative bond between members of a modern mass society. Because of the formation of mass culture through the mediaöradio in the First World War and television after 1945, and even more through the contemporary web revolutionöthe coexistence of people in the present societies has been established on new foundations. These are, as it can uncontrovertibly be shown, clearly post- literary, postepistolary, and thus posthumanistic. Anyone who thinks the prefix `post' in this formulation is too dramatic can replace it with the adverb `marginal'. Thus our thesis: modern societies can produce their political and cultural synthesis only margin- ally through literary, letter-writing, humanistic media. Of course, that does not mean that literature has come to an end, but it has split itself off and become a sui generis subculture, and the days of its value as bearer of the national spirit have passed. The social synthesis is no longeröand is no longer seen to beöprimarily a matter of books and letters. New means of political^cultural telecommunication have come into prominence, which have restricted the pattern of script-born friendship to a limited number of people. The period when modern humanism was the model for schooling and education has passed, because it is no longer possible to retain the illusion that political and economic structures could be organized on the amiable model of literary societies.

>>2929 Interesting points. What do you think is the potential of literature finding a new niche in society beyond that of an interesting subculture? For example, we live in a polarized time. Would it be possible for literature to be an intermediary between two opposing sides? That is, the focal point that people could be angry against instead of each other? Perhaps literature could benefit from an expansion of its definition. That is, expanding beyond printed works to some form of digital adaptation. I'm not suggesting just transferring printed works and formats to a blog, but a true, new, adaptation of literary conventions to a digital medium. It's been tried repeatedly, but there is hunger for some form of literary work. Fanfic would not be popular online if this were not so. Perhaps it's just a matter of hitting the right set of circumstances.

> Is it so niche that only a few people will care about it in 20 years? Like Classical Music or Jazz? Around 150,000 people attend the UK's Glastonbury festival and it's considered internationally a huge thing; using that for comparison, in 2016 over 175,000 people attended the San Sebastian Jazz Festival, which runs for five days. They also have smaller events around the year, and according to their site they net 150,000 people through those smaller events accumulatively through the year. As a different example around 52,000 people attended Istanbul's Jazz festival. Classical music is kind of a difficult thing because unlike other genres the entire music kind of rests on having a well-designed theatre to properly show it. But even so there were 32,000 performances of classical music in 2017, and around 60,000 people attended The Proms in 2017 which is about the same number of people attend the average music festival (like Aftershock in Saceramento), and around 35,000 of those were newcomers. Back on topic: Literature here is kind of amusing because honestly speaking, the entire "literature" field has been in a bubble since around the 1950s. I don't remember the article's name or a exact sentence from it so I can't dig it up, but I remember reading a good dissection of "millennials are reading less" and it basically showed how, lots of people buying a single main "bestseller" book and reading it was unusual when it started in the 1950s or so, and really only persisted for about 40 years. These days with the books that people read, it's likely more diverse and from more different authors, but I highly doubt that people are reading less. It's honestly just the circles you're in. For example, I spent a couple of months of 2018 finding leftist socialist facebook groups to join. It was good fun and I learned some neat things, but the main takeaway I have is that basically all of them are just reading philosophers and authors pretty voraciously. And you have a really, really difficult time to argue against any of them unless you can reel citations of Marx, Engels, Luxemboug, Trotsky, Hegel, and basically all of the major inspirations of 1900s socialist thought and before, off the back of your head. Almost every other thread (at least the ones that were not memes) was documenting the books they had bought or read on history or politics. It was pretty impressive. I don't think literature is dead, I just think you might need a better group of people. Go find a book club or something, I dunno.

Literature and jazz are not dead or even niche, is this a bit you are doing? Sometimes i cant graps just how preformative this site is? Can we talk about that how serious are people on this websight?

>>1701 I'm not too sure what to think of this. It's definitely a phenomenon that is taking place, even in Western Media we are seeing more international media being disseminated (anecdotally, I've noticed many slavic works be increasingly pushed out to the masses; with future prospects appearing to make a push for East Asian Japanese works to be normalised) however at the same time there is a clear and wanton demand for intranational works, to the point that abject garbage will be taken as a progenator of Western canon. The demand is definitely there, and by all accounts within the millions of people that live in the West here is surely the inherant skill somewhere, so my question is why the two are not connected; even moreso in this era when interconnection is apparently at an all time peak? The easy answer for this would naturally to say 'Political Agenda' pushing approved talkpieces to the front line, but this isn't logical in the slightest. A businesses 'win condition' is to simply make as much profit as possible, pushing inadequate work not only decreases brand value but ultimately fails to entice potential customers. Even among the masses; obvious agenda pushes are unpopular, so why even boher working against your own singular goal? I ultimately think the current failure of the industry is the overreliance on 'the next bestseller' concept. Whereas developing regions of the world are taking an approach much more attune to throwing soykaf at the wall and seeing what sticks (therefore allowing both masterpieces and deviantart OC to both get published alongside each other), the West very much appears to like to bet all on one horse. Realisitcally speaking, outisde of a few very large names within each genre, the general ethic of letting a creator build themselves is something that has not only been lost to the West, but is actively being suppressed; not only in literature but in music and other forms of media. It is simply easier to market and promote 1-2 somewhat-reliable-consistant-but-completely-uncontested 6/10 mega-authours, mega-musicians etc than it is to throw the book at the wall and market 50 actively opposing and competing creators and then pray that sporadically you average out more hits than flops. Then again, it could actually really be interdimensional paedophillic jewish vampires seeking to taint and destroy the West for their nefarious schemes. Who fuarrrking knows. Either way, once the West loses it's hedgemony, people are going to be really fuarrrking pissed having to try and claw it back becasue of the simple incompetancy of non-cultural corporations. >>2954 >>Can we talk about that how serious are people on this websight? >[double space] >[Uncapitalised I] >talk about that how serious >websight Shiggydiggy, got a chuckle out of me.

>>1701 a sense of supremacy is not at all necessary for literature to exist. you think people only read/write because they think their culture is the greatest? as for 'the Canon', yea, that's crumbled in its cultural importance...and lit/poetry continues to be produced >>1789 >Imageboards are a kind of literature damn...guess I'm a writer

>>2895 >The extreme oversaturation ensures that most literature enthusiasts are NEVER going to seek out independent authors anymore; the only things they will read will be what the big publishers release That's why I stick to the classics.

Have certain literary mediums died out? The serial novel is dead. Is poetry dead? Science fiction magazines are dead. Will the mass-market paperback die? Will future mediums be as natural or inoffensive to read on as the paperback was, and was the paperback a step down from what we had before?

>Is it so niche that only a few people will care about it in 20 years? Like Classical Music or Jazz? your misconceptions are not only about literature, but also about music. Classical music, Jazz music, Literature, are thriving. The question for more pert is what form Literature evolving to. As I see, Informatics is aspect of modern form Literature (e.g. 'Literature+'). >I think that it is a dangerous slope, because it removes redundant systems that have acted as fail safes for thousands of years... Beside destroying factor to humanical heritage. Agree full. >look at any form of cyrillic cursive and excuse me if I feel that nothing of value has been lost. It works better as a means of obfuscation than a means of transmission. Utter disagree! Cyrillic cursive is of most elegant script. Few careful tunings for letters, and perfect. Sad to you trapped in latinic script. >handwriting was atrocious but it never held me back because I could usually just type an essay atrocious handwriting never held me back because atrocious handwriting still readible. >Digital books are the real cancer. It's just so far from the actual, down-to-earth, honest act of reading a physical book that I can't even bother to read digital books The essence of Literature is not book, the essence of Literature is text. Text is sequence of sequence of sequence of sequence of sequence of symbols (word, sentence, paragraph, section, chapter,,). Text : structure, text !: matter.

>>1267 It's always been niche. Literacy was a luxury up until very recently, and books were only read by scholars and the elite.