..."when we found ourselves finding love and friendship and meaning…through glass screens. Bonds and epiphanies that, though they were discovered through a screen of glass, felt way more steady and firm than the 'unsinkable' cultural ships that, year after year, seemed to capsize all around us."
I think the big, most striking, most powerful change on both sides of the epic flood of "glass screens" with the omnipresence of the internet and most especially with the flood of computer-camera phones - "smart" phones - is the rise of social media and independent media, which function as the people's media, at its best. This created a new world via new understandings of the world and far greater and quicker accessibility to it and recreation of it.
In the political realm, the potentially world-changing connections between the rise and spread of the people's media and populism are apparently not only here to stay but to intensify. Fake populists like Trump and Biden/Harris are opportunists, all about themselves and their fellow plutocrats, the leaders in particular, while progressive populists like Bernie and the Squad lead the charge for all. The multi-winged populist surge is not coming out of nowhere. It's coming out of social media and indy media, the people's media at its best, which is more pervasive now, by far, both in generation and consumption than any time in human history. (Similarly, chaotic populists against the plutocracy like Luigi Mangione and the couple recent would-be assassins of Trump seem to be popping up increasingly.)
The world-shaking effects of the unprecedented glass screen generation and distribution of the people's media has dramatic effects far beyond political electoral realms, into other public realms and into very private and personal realms. Glass screen generation and consumption whether social media, corporate media, or otherwise has many dramatic effects upon all life, positive and negative, some well documented.
In the rise of the people's media is the great hope and possibility that it will lead to unprecedented and ever greater people's organization and action - already in play.
What does all this mean for the novel? Maybe not so much, maybe a lot. A novel should expand experience and consciousness, not least against the shattering and oppressive effects of the day. This may include consciousness of the liberatory and revolutionary against the intolerable and genocidal, and by now against the wholesale ecocide of Earth. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o — Decolonising The Mind: “…the biggest weapon wielded and actually daily unleashed by imperialism … is the cultural bomb.” Hugo Chavez — “The Empire sows death with its weapons. In contrast, these are our guns: books, ideas, culture.” The establishment too knows that “books, ideas, culture” have the power of guns. The battles for and against Empire, for and against Revolution are waged on many fronts. Imaginative story and art, its criticism and its production and distribution, are vital fronts with powerful impact where important battles are won or lost.
Of course a good novel does not need to be overtly political, though maybe this is exactly what is needed now. In The Novel and Our Time (1948), anarchist and scholar Alex Comfort notes that:
“Whether we [novelists] are able to influence human conduct will depend very largely upon the number of people in a given asocial society who react by rational aggression towards that society rather than by irrational aggression towards their fellow individuals. The social role of the novel will depend very largely, in coming years, upon the persistence of sufficient rationally disobedient individuals to make novel-writing of the kind I have described possible.... Because of the essential humanity which a writer must possess to write major novels, I am confident that it will play a large part in the events which precede the end of asociality, and should it pass out of currency as a form, it will be replaced by the unanimous literature of tyranny or the spontaneous social literature of a free society….” (1948)
Note that Comfort states that if the novel "pass[es] out of currency as a form, it will be replaced by the unanimous literature of tyranny [plutocracy] or the spontaneous social literature of a free society...." I think that "the spontaneous social literature of a free society" is unprecedented today and that it is found on both sides of "the glass" - the best of today's social media and indy media, aka the people's media. (The "unanimous literature of tyranny" is also booming through the glass too especially in the corporate-state financialization, spying, profiteering, and propagandizing.) I think there is no foreseeable reason for the novel to die and that it will be, should be deeply informed going forward by the epic new reality of the best of social media and indy media as the people's media.
Finally, the 9-11 novel like the "internet novel" discussed in the interview has its place, as do many other types of novels, like war and genocide and ecocide and omnicide novels, Trump novels, feminist, cultural, ethnic novels, and on and on. And also having their place are what might be considered new Victorian novels, new Enlightenment novels, new modernist novels, new postmodernist novels, new post-post-, etc. The thing is, the most distinctive Victorian novelists were not trying to write Enlightenment novels, nor baroque novels, nor Icelandic Sagas, nor Greek epics, nor anything that came before, though they were incorporating some of their elements. Same goes for the modernists and the postmodernists and so on. I have my own views of what contemporary novels, in fact what the contemporary era might do well to be, and it's not a rehash of any one or more eras or works that came before, no matter how great the eras and works managed to be at the time. And so I write my own novels to embody that, recognizing the profoundly different time we live in today and attempting to meet it full on. The "glass" isn't the thing exactly, but what is new and most urgent that is happening on both sides of the glass definitely is. What is happening and what might happen. What can be imagined. Revolt and revolution, not least. Liberatory consciousness, action, and character. Seems time. Seems to be the era for it, long since. Now, before it's too late, before the novel is obliterated off the face of the Earth along with the species that gives it life.
..."when we found ourselves finding love and friendship and meaning…through glass screens. Bonds and epiphanies that, though they were discovered through a screen of glass, felt way more steady and firm than the 'unsinkable' cultural ships that, year after year, seemed to capsize all around us."
I think the big, most striking, most powerful change on both sides of the epic flood of "glass screens" with the omnipresence of the internet and most especially with the flood of computer-camera phones - "smart" phones - is the rise of social media and independent media, which function as the people's media, at its best. This created a new world via new understandings of the world and far greater and quicker accessibility to it and recreation of it.
In the political realm, the potentially world-changing connections between the rise and spread of the people's media and populism are apparently not only here to stay but to intensify. Fake populists like Trump and Biden/Harris are opportunists, all about themselves and their fellow plutocrats, the leaders in particular, while progressive populists like Bernie and the Squad lead the charge for all. The multi-winged populist surge is not coming out of nowhere. It's coming out of social media and indy media, the people's media at its best, which is more pervasive now, by far, both in generation and consumption than any time in human history. (Similarly, chaotic populists against the plutocracy like Luigi Mangione and the couple recent would-be assassins of Trump seem to be popping up increasingly.)
The world-shaking effects of the unprecedented glass screen generation and distribution of the people's media has dramatic effects far beyond political electoral realms, into other public realms and into very private and personal realms. Glass screen generation and consumption whether social media, corporate media, or otherwise has many dramatic effects upon all life, positive and negative, some well documented.
In the rise of the people's media is the great hope and possibility that it will lead to unprecedented and ever greater people's organization and action - already in play.
What does all this mean for the novel? Maybe not so much, maybe a lot. A novel should expand experience and consciousness, not least against the shattering and oppressive effects of the day. This may include consciousness of the liberatory and revolutionary against the intolerable and genocidal, and by now against the wholesale ecocide of Earth. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o — Decolonising The Mind: “…the biggest weapon wielded and actually daily unleashed by imperialism … is the cultural bomb.” Hugo Chavez — “The Empire sows death with its weapons. In contrast, these are our guns: books, ideas, culture.” The establishment too knows that “books, ideas, culture” have the power of guns. The battles for and against Empire, for and against Revolution are waged on many fronts. Imaginative story and art, its criticism and its production and distribution, are vital fronts with powerful impact where important battles are won or lost.
Of course a good novel does not need to be overtly political, though maybe this is exactly what is needed now. In The Novel and Our Time (1948), anarchist and scholar Alex Comfort notes that:
“Whether we [novelists] are able to influence human conduct will depend very largely upon the number of people in a given asocial society who react by rational aggression towards that society rather than by irrational aggression towards their fellow individuals. The social role of the novel will depend very largely, in coming years, upon the persistence of sufficient rationally disobedient individuals to make novel-writing of the kind I have described possible.... Because of the essential humanity which a writer must possess to write major novels, I am confident that it will play a large part in the events which precede the end of asociality, and should it pass out of currency as a form, it will be replaced by the unanimous literature of tyranny or the spontaneous social literature of a free society….” (1948)
Note that Comfort states that if the novel "pass[es] out of currency as a form, it will be replaced by the unanimous literature of tyranny [plutocracy] or the spontaneous social literature of a free society...." I think that "the spontaneous social literature of a free society" is unprecedented today and that it is found on both sides of "the glass" - the best of today's social media and indy media, aka the people's media. (The "unanimous literature of tyranny" is also booming through the glass too especially in the corporate-state financialization, spying, profiteering, and propagandizing.) I think there is no foreseeable reason for the novel to die and that it will be, should be deeply informed going forward by the epic new reality of the best of social media and indy media as the people's media.
Finally, the 9-11 novel like the "internet novel" discussed in the interview has its place, as do many other types of novels, like war and genocide and ecocide and omnicide novels, Trump novels, feminist, cultural, ethnic novels, and on and on. And also having their place are what might be considered new Victorian novels, new Enlightenment novels, new modernist novels, new postmodernist novels, new post-post-, etc. The thing is, the most distinctive Victorian novelists were not trying to write Enlightenment novels, nor baroque novels, nor Icelandic Sagas, nor Greek epics, nor anything that came before, though they were incorporating some of their elements. Same goes for the modernists and the postmodernists and so on. I have my own views of what contemporary novels, in fact what the contemporary era might do well to be, and it's not a rehash of any one or more eras or works that came before, no matter how great the eras and works managed to be at the time. And so I write my own novels to embody that, recognizing the profoundly different time we live in today and attempting to meet it full on. The "glass" isn't the thing exactly, but what is new and most urgent that is happening on both sides of the glass definitely is. What is happening and what might happen. What can be imagined. Revolt and revolution, not least. Liberatory consciousness, action, and character. Seems time. Seems to be the era for it, long since. Now, before it's too late, before the novel is obliterated off the face of the Earth along with the species that gives it life.