The Book is not dead, nor can it die. The future of the book is its continuous present, its ability to change, adapt, expand, and move with the people who sustain it, the communities who foster it, the lovers of literature. The book is not dead, nor can you place this lack of creative vision on the shoulders of young writers, you literary bourgeois with your ironic literary festivals, or haven’t you heard that
and the only means of saving literature is a
in new work and the embracing of new forms of creative vision.
WAKE UP!
WHERE IS YOUR IMAGINATION?
ARE YOU DOWNTRODDEN BY THIS
OUTMODED CULTURAL DISILLUSIONMENT
WHICH IS JUST A CRY-BABY POSITION OF PRIVILEGE?
The sales stats have nothing to do with the book, nor does the rise in literacy – the increase in the capacity to read a government form or a copy of METRO has not increased the love of reading literature. Let them have their danbrownS and twilightS. The fact that smutlit sells millions sez nothing about literature and has nothing to do with us. The book has never been for the masses. Jay MillAr, your grim prophecy for the book claims its salvation in elitism, but this is already our continuous reality!
You(ALL) cannot claim that my generation is ruined by our exposure to the internet, which you attest has ruined our attention spans and rendered us incapable of the slow work required to unravel a book. You cannot ignore our hardworking fingers turning the pages of Gravity’s Rainbow, or tracing the footnotes of Infinite Jest. The Book is for the few and always will be. No one rushed to publish Joyce, his nine year struggle for Dubliners is paralleled in the writers of today. Pursuing a career in art is never easy. Funding and support is always hard to acquire. The venerable Barbara Godard marks out that the writer must eat, but T.S. Eliot worked in a bank for most of his life. Are we all expecting to live off of royalties in Rosedale like Ondaatje?
IF WE ARE CRITIQUING THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE BOOK INTO A FETISHIZED COMMODITY, WHY ARE WE SEEKING TO RELY ON THE SYSTEMS OF CAPITAL THAT ENGENDERED SUCH AN EMPTY OBJECTIFICATION?
Boo-hoo the writer must live off of condensed soup, wear torn socks, and work another job. Is this not the sacrifice one must make for the love of art?
TESTIMONY 1:
MANIFESTATIONS OF THE BOOK AS AUGMENTED BY NEW TECHNOLOGY ARE BECOMING INCREASINGLY FREE FROM CAPITAL INTERESTS, THUS, REAL EXPERIMENTATION AND GROWTH ARE POSSIBLE OUTSIDE OF SALES TARGETS AND PUBLICITY BUDGETS.
It is physically impossible to read Ulysses online. After two pages, eyes tire and the flickering of the screen induces nausea. To think that online reading and THE HELLISH GoogleBooks will render the print tome obsolete is illogical. Electronic readers are convenient for backpackers and the elderly. Our library shelves will not dissolve into tables of panel screens, and if anyone ever suggests it, we will hang them from the rafters with their MacBook power cords.
TESTIMONY 2:
THE INTERNET CANNOT COMPETE WITH AND IS NOT COMPETING WITH CREATIVE WRITING IN PRINT. WHY? LEGITIMACY.
I have been using the internet since I was a child. I learned early on to mistrust it, considering the ease of modification and dissemination of information. The ease of use has not deterred me from seeking out information in print for clarification and further reading. The internet is a starting point, never an all encompassing or trustworthy source of complete information. The permanence of the page will always hold more legitimacy, its palpability will always be able to testify far more than a flickering screen.
TESTIMONY 3:
WEB-BASED ART AND WRITING ARE IMPORTANT AND MEANINGFUL IN THEIR OWN RIGHT.
Illegitimacy is also beautiful. Web-based art, made specifically for new technology is an important tool in the growth of the book, and the experimental technological augmentation of art. Young Hae Chang’s digital poetry, The Apostrophe engine (which also manifested itself in the book), digital visual poetry –they all serve to explore the boundaries of the VIRTUAL WOR(L)D, which explores the areas of our new life where IMPERMANENCE REIGNS. This is now part of who we are, and as Caitlin Fisher underlined, the impermanence is what makes this experimentation beautiful and worthwhile.
IMAGINE.
BELIEVE IN INNOVATION.
has a howl become cliche?
THE CYCLICALITY AND APATHY OF OUR IRONIC NARRATIVES HAVE FOUND THEIR DEMISE IN THEIR OWN UNSUSTAINABILITY.
We can only complain about our own disillusionment for so long before we wake up and realize that we are not powerless, that we are capable of meaningful change, and that new innovation is not something to fear, but something to take hold of. This postmodern "LOSS OF AGENCY" is truly only a loss of recognition of freedom and personal power at the hands of propogated capitalist fear.
The Book is an extension of humankind's capacity to create stories, and our love of diverse expression. The death of the book is the death of art and creative thought. If anything challenges the Book, it is our strained and cliched irony, with its insincere and crippling affect on art's honest ability to testify. At this year's Scream Literary Festival, Walter Bejamin was noted often for his essay The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility critiquing the augmentation of art with technological means of production - but no one seems to realize - or at least they seemed to omit - that the essay is somewhat optimistic, Benjamin suggests that technology can be used for means other than the shattering of aura, his ideas are not as empty and nihilist as they have been presented by many interpreters - it's no piece by Adorno and Horkheimer (maybe, if you want to be an artistic nihilist, you should consider quoting The Culture Industry)
SCREAM
BACK!
THE CYCLICALITY AND APATHY OF OUR IRONIC NARRATIVES HAVE FOUND THEIR DEMISE IN THEIR OWN UNSUSTAINABILITY!
THE CYCLICALITY AND APATHY OF OUR IRONIC NARRATIVES HAVE FOUND THEIR DEMISE IN THEIR OWN UNSUSTAINABILITY!
THE CYCLICALITY AND APATHY OF OUR IRONIC NARRATIVES HAVE FOUND THEIR DEMISE IN THEIR OWN UNSUSTAINABILITY!
THE CYCLICALITY AND APATHY OF OUR IRONIC NARRATIVES HAVE FOUND THEIR DEMISE IN THEIR OWN UNSUSTAINABILITY!
THE CYCLICALITY AND APATHY OF OUR IRONIC NARRATIVES HAVE FOUND THEIR DEMISE IN THEIR OWN UNSUSTAINABILITY!
THE CYCLICALITY AND APATHY OF OUR IRONIC NARRATIVES HAVE FOUND THEIR DEMISE IN THEIR OWN UNSUSTAINABILITY!
THE CYCLICALITY AND APATHY OF OUR IRONIC NARRATIVES HAVE FOUND THEIR DEMISE IN THEIR OWN UNSUSTAINABILITY!
THE CYCLICALITY AND APATHY OF OUR IRONIC NARRATIVES HAVE FOUND THEIR DEMISE IN THEIR OWN UNSUSTAINABILITY!
THE CYCLICALITY AND APATHY OF OUR IRONIC NARRATIVES HAVE FOUND THEIR DEMISE IN THEIR OWN UNSUSTAINABILITY!
THE CYCLICALITY AND APATHY OF OUR IRONIC NARRATIVES HAVE FOUND THEIR DEMISE IN THEIR OWN UNSUSTAINABILITY!
THE CYCLICALITY AND APATHY OF OUR IRONIC NARRATIVES HAVE FOUND THEIR DEMISE IN THEIR OWN UNSUSTAINABILITY!
THE CYCLICALITY AND APATHY OF OUR IRONIC NARRATIVES HAVE FOUND THEIR DEMISE IN THEIR OWN UNSUSTAINABILITY!
THE CYCLICALITY AND APATHY OF OUR IRONIC NARRATIVES HAVE FOUND THEIR DEMISE IN THEIR OWN UNSUSTAINABILITY!
THE CYCLICALITY AND APATHY OF OUR IRONIC NARRATIVES HAVE FOUND THEIR DEMISE IN THEIR OWN UNSUSTAINABILITY!
THE CYCLICALITY AND APATHY OF OUR IRONIC NARRATIVES HAVE FOUND THEIR DEMISE IN THEIR OWN UNSUSTAINABILITY!
THE CYCLICALITY AND APATHY OF OUR IRONIC NARRATIVES HAVE FOUND THEIR DEMISE IN THEIR OWN UNSUSTAINABILITY!
THE CYCLICALITY AND APATHY OF OUR IRONIC NARRATIVES HAVE FOUND THEIR DEMISE IN THEIR OWN UNSUSTAINABILITY!
THE CYCLICALITY AND APATHY OF OUR IRONIC NARRATIVES HAVE FOUND THEIR DEMISE IN THEIR OWN UNSUSTAINABILITY!
THE CYCLICALITY AND APATHY OF OUR IRONIC NARRATIVES HAVE FOUND THEIR DEMISE IN THEIR OWN UNSUSTAINABILITY!
THE CYCLICALITY AND APATHY OF OUR IRONIC NARRATIVES HAVE FOUND THEIR DEMISE IN THEIR OWN UNSUSTAINABILITY!
THE CYCLICALITY AND APATHY OF OUR IRONIC NARRATIVES HAVE FOUND THEIR DEMISE IN THEIR OWN UNSUSTAINABILITY!!
did your short attention span catch that, virtual reader?
To all those literary bourgeois who,
in their posh lassitude
claim that the book is dead:
The Book is as immortal as your imaginations are limited.
***
This Manifesto is inspired by the fantastic panel who presented five new manifestos for the Book at this year's Scream Literary Festival, stream it here.
(We had the video embedded into the post, but it began to interfere with the fierce comment board. Check it out!)
15 Comments
1 B-Rad wrote:
The book lovers manifesto? BOOKS LOVERS, UNITE!
<3
2 V.D. wrote:
Irony is dead, ay? Huge statement to make! Then again it's a POSTPOMO zine, right? As a twenty-two year old writer and visual artist, I agree that there's nothing left to say with irony about our culture. Fantastic manifesto and a ballsy move to mention new sincerity!
3 Cassandra Sivic wrote:
"THE CYCLICALITY AND APATHY OF OUR IRONIC NARRATIVES HAVE FOUND THEIR DEMISE IN THEIR OWN UNSUSTAINABILITY!"
If that isn't so goddamn quotable I don't know what is.
4 Bill Kennedy wrote:
As difficult as it was to rise up from my posh lassitude enough to comment on your manifesto, I do believe that it unfairly characterizes the good people at the Scream Literary Festival and their efforts to begin a sincere (yes, sincere) dialogue about the fate of the book. The manifesto seems to base most of its assertions on a presumption of the Scream’s “apathy”, insincerity and “disillusionment", a presumption which seems at odds with both our programming and our writings around the topic.
I encourage the readers of Steel Bananas to take a look for themselves and form their own opinions. Issues of irony, sincerity and optimism, among many other topics, are discussed here and here and here. Several links to manifestos read at our panel can be found here.
For the record - I do not believe that "irony" is somehow synonymous with apathy and “cultural disillusionment”. Nor do i believe that it is at odds with sincerity, which is what is being asserted here. Irony is a rhetorical gesture that can be put in the service of very sincere motives, which is the case with the Festival’s “Book is Dead” theme. If our goal was to make people confront what they value about books and literature, then this very manifesto is proof that our tactics were sound.
I'd like to end by quoting the last paragraphs of the Scream's introduction to this year's program. The article accuses us of misreading the cited Benjamin essay as pessimistic, an accusation I could fairly level at Ms. Da Silva in regards to our own enterprises:
“We at the Scream are looking to future with optimism. We are looking to a future when books reclaim their artistry, having shed the vicissitudes of mass marketing and mass production. We are looking to a future when literature redefines itself, finding new expression in emerging digital forms. We are looking to a future when the truly thoughtful publishers and booksellers, the risk-takers, the provocateurs, the craftspeople and the visionaries, thrive in the new book market. Mostly, we are looking to a future when we can continue to marvel at our literature in whatever form it comes to us.
“If that form is a book, well, I hope we take a moment to savour the feel of its weight, the elegance of its structure, the beauty of its design and the intelligence of its engineering, for while its time as the container of the world’s knowledge is over, its legacy will move into the future undiminished.”
Yours,
Bill Kennedy
Artistic Director
The Scream Literary Festival
5 Karen wrote:
Oh no! Bill, the manifesto is really not supposed to implicate the Scream Literary festival at all! I attended many events and loved it! It's more generally directed towards to the ideas - that many writers and members of the community have expressed - that there's nothing to write poetry about anymore, that the technological augmentation of literature is something to fear, and that young writers and artists are somewhat put at a disadvantage by their upbringing in a technologically augmented reality. Any pokes at the Festival are merely in friendly jest as a point of irreverent entrance, and when I address the cyclicality and apathy of our narratives, I speak for the widespread cultural disillusionment and nihilist irony of my generation, from a personal artistic perspective.
6 Cassandra Sivic wrote:
In Karen's defense, I really didn't read this as a piece criticizing the Scream Literary fest but I can see where Bill might have interpreted it as a bit irreverent and "implicating" - I think it implicates us all as artists rather than anyone specific, and especially not specifically the fest.
I do agree though that too many young artists have embraced irony as an empty device, and that it has lost its ability to move people considering everything is so ironic nowadays, there's no more impact.
I watched the presentation of the manifestos - I like Jay the best!
7 PCrog wrote:
I didnt read this as levelled at the festival either, it just sounds like some good old fashioned angry passion for sincerity and action.
8 SMF wrote:
I think this is a good manifesto to start a conversation, as the rebuttle by Bill Kennedy suggests. Long live the book, and honest angry critiques!
9 Curran Folkers wrote:
I'm going to have to go with the group here and say that I never at any point read the manifesto as being antagonistic towards the Scream Festival itself. It would appear to me as though the manifestos to which this is a response to were merely launching points for discussion, and this is exactly what Karen has done here: posited her rebuttal to a bold statement. Perhaps our cover-page copy, "Fuck that noise!" was a tad inflammatory, however, even there I think that it is clear that Karen's piece is in response to the assertions made by some of the supplements of the festival and not the festival unto itself.
10 B-Rad wrote:
If anything, this little misunderstanding (if you want to call it that) is a perfect example of author intentionality, writing and the reader's interpretation. Regardless of whether or not Karen intended to critique the festival, it was taken as such.
Welcome to the 'post-pomo' world, folks: where even a comments section can be hijacked and theorized about!
11 KnitGirl wrote:
I think this manifesto and the engendered comments really serve to support exactly what the Scream Literary Festival aimed to create - a launching pad for discussion! I too agree that Irony is now insufficient as means of inciting meaningful social or political change, but it still can be used to bring light to a topic or idea, as the Scream Festival did, which I don't think this manifesto addresses. I think the fault of this manifesto is that it can be interpreted as critiquing the irony of the festival itself - a fault that is rectified on this comment board by Ms. DaSilva, but then again, as B-Rad points out, that really is part of writing and reception.
12 ZIN wrote:
Come on guys, even if she was critiquing the festival (which I didn't interpret from my read, either folks) isn't the artistic community supposed to be about discussion? Can't the heavyweights take a little jab once in a while if it means publicity and honest discussion?
I'm sick of irony, too.
13 Jessica Hart wrote:
I also think it is important to note that the main "scream back" in this manifesto reads "the cyclicality and apathy of OUR ironic narratives have found their demise in their own unsustainability", the most important word being "OUR".
I definitely agree with Cassandra on this when she says "I can see where Bill might have interpreted it as a bit irreverent and "implicating" - I think it implicates us all as artists rather than anyone specific" (see above). We're all in this together, that is if we're all literature lovers who are obviously disillusioned with how commodity culture has affected art.
I really enjoyed the this manifesto, Karen, and can only hope that more young writers take hold of their position within history in such an unabashed way and in such an open and welcoming forum.
Yours Truly,
Jessica Hart
14 Jackson wrote:
This is really spirited and very well written.
15 Alicia wrote:
I have to admit, when I read the title I immediately thought of the "Book is Dead" theme for the Scream Lit Fest. However, Karen did a good job of discussing and critiquing ideas as opposed to implicating people.
This was well-written, well thought out and interesting. I enjoyed it very much.