Waiting for the Barbarians

Good Julian Gough read in this month's Prospect Magazine. Strange how the good things in life become academicised and over analysed, ever more so these days.

Back to simple pleasures I say.

Back to incoherence that parallels our lives.

Back to fun.

Back to a celebration of anarchy.

"You may think that to praise The Simpsons at the expense of Henry James makes me a barbarian. Well, it does, but I'm a very cultured barbarian. The literary novel has gone late Roman. It needs the barbarians. It secretly yearns for them"

I think that life too has gone too "Henry James" and late Roman. It too needs the barbarians.

Novelists have dwelled on recreating the classic rather than reflecting the now. I loved and thoroughly agree with Gough that a nearly hundred year old novel such as Finnegan's Wake "reads like a mash-up of a Google translation of everything ever" and is more representative of the chaos that surrounds us right now than the current crop of novels that are lauded and receive literary kudos.

Much like advertising awards that incestuously go to wonderfully creative ad industry specific ads rather than really effective advertising, literary awards seem to go to writers writing about writing rather than writers who reflect their own view of now.