essay on true literature

C’mon now, be serious! All literature is only writing that is both derivative and unique. At the same time. That’s all it is. If it is just the one or just the other it isn’t literature. It is just writing.

And another thing. It is an object. It has to be somewhere. If it is scanned, it is just scanned literature. And I’ll tell you why.

It is all in the history of the thing. Recently it has all been in the history of publishing and marketing. Literature as part of production and markets. Before that it has been projections from places and professions. Like priests, universities, magis and prisons. Graveyards and generals. That sort of thing. Establishments and celebrities. Literature as part of the positions of knowledge. A membership.

Before that it was just the stuff from those putting onto objects. Stuff that came from songs and images. I don’t mean the words and pictures. That’s just writing. I mean the songs and images. Even stick people or humming.

They were objects to use to try to move thinking and feeling and so enliven the outside and inside. The ones that worked, that was going to be literature. They started to add to the original derivatives some of that uniqueness and some carried over uniqueness to that new derivative. Before that everything just moved in the mind and in the world without literature all the way back to the original mind and body.

With literature you are not trying to just stimulate readers. Yes you need those for literature too; they are part of it.

No, not tying to excite or please them. That’s just writing. Nope, you’re also trying to work with them to get to something somewhere. Move it around a bit. Get it to work again if it isn’t.

But what about stuff that isn’t in the history of literature? Is it literature too? I ask you that seriously! And I’ll tell you why I do. I have a book here, I don’t know who wrote it, written in pencil as a copy of something which my friend read before he went away and died. I haven’t had the time to read it myself.

It’s called ‘1001 Tales by the Exile in Dementia.’

Is it literature?

He said it was really, really good.