tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3458341.post8387740792478270845..comments2024-01-06T10:36:04.084-05:00Comments on A Commonplace Blog: What shapes literatureD. G. Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10659136455045567825noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3458341.post-53956619579712047932009-02-04T22:38:00.000-05:002009-02-04T22:38:00.000-05:00Mark,Thanks for the comment. I shall discuss the i...Mark,<BR/><BR/>Thanks for the comment. I shall discuss the idea of the individual and the realistic novel in a later post, if you don’t mind.<BR/><BR/>You see no difference between (<I>1</I>) the materialist commonplace, as set forth by Chartier, that <I>the effects of meaning produced by the material aspects of writing</I>, and (<I>2</I>) my counterclaim that a “new technology ratifies what a writer has already been doing.” You are correct that the subject of each sentence is the same, despite my inelegant variation of it. Chartier and I predicate something different, however. According to him (and his materialist followers), meaning changes when material conditions change. According to me, meaning is independent of material conditions, which (when affirmed by the writer) merely affirm it.D. G. Myershttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10659136455045567825noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3458341.post-36738448340771596152009-02-04T11:25:00.000-05:002009-02-04T11:25:00.000-05:00Hi DGM,As you know, I've been thinking about the h...Hi DGM,<BR/><BR/>As you know, I've been thinking about the history of the novel myself recently... <BR/><BR/>Grossman's repetition of the "scholarly commonplace" that the modern novel got going in the 17/18th Century might not explain exactly why Moll Flanders followed after Arcadia, but neither does your recourse to an "older theory" which explains either nothing or something very similar to G's "third-hand Marxism."<BR/><BR/>You say, "the novel came of age along with the individual." Well, surely, the individual was and always has been shaped by the world around him, determined more by his context than he is able to change it? (Not that I'm convinced that "the individual" suddenly came along at this time.)<BR/><BR/>Secondly, I see no difference between these two sentences: "It won’t be because the material conditions of fiction-writing generate its meaning. It will be, rather, because the new technology [erm, material conditions] ratifies [erm, generates the meaning of] what a writer has already been doing."Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3458341.post-45078137126933288142009-02-04T08:08:00.000-05:002009-02-04T08:08:00.000-05:00The reason I disagree is that, during any given da...The reason I disagree is that, during any given day, a human being does far more listening than he does silently reading. The more that writing sacrifices any <I>aural</I> dimension, the worse it becomes. It becomes abstract, attenuated, dead words on page or screen. That won’t change. What will change, I predict, is that there will be more bad writing—simply because it will be easier and easier to produce and disseminate.D. G. Myershttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10659136455045567825noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3458341.post-80086637527202471632009-02-04T07:19:00.000-05:002009-02-04T07:19:00.000-05:00I'm not as convinced as you that material forces d...I'm not as convinced as you that material forces do not act upon cognitive ones. Leaving this aside, however, it may very well be that we humans are in the midst another cognitive shift to a much more visual mode of thought.Leehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13770069472552779217noreply@blogger.com