Caterina.net: The Conspiracy of Imitators

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{ Tuesday, June 1, 2004 }

The Conspiracy of Imitators

How can we define a crisis in contemporary literature? The system of best-sellers is a system of rapid turnover. Many bookshops are already becoming like the record shops that only stock things listed in a top ten or hit parade. This is what Apostrophes [a French TV show about literature] is all about. Fast turnover necessarily means selling people what they expect: even what's "daring" "scandalous" "strange" and so on falls into the market's predictable forms. The conditions for literary creation, which emerge only unpredictably, with a slow turnover and progressive recognition, are fragile. Future Becketts and Kafkas, who will, of course, be unlike Beckett of Kafka, may well not find a publisher, and if they don't nobody will notice. As publisher Jerome lindon says, "you don't notice that what you don't know isn't there." The USSR lost its literature without anyone noticing, for example. We may congratulate ourselves on the quantitative increase in books, and larger print runs -- but young writers will end up molded in a literary space that leaves them no possibility of creating anything. ... What gets imitated is always itself a copy. Imitators imitate one another, and that's how they proliferate and give the impression that they're improving on their model, because they know how it's done, they know the answers.

-- Gilles Deleuze, in Incorporations

LINK | 6:08 PM | TB

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{ COMMENTS }

It is, of course, nonsense. The human animal is a creative, expressive beast. That creativity will out, no matter what the Soviet or capitalist forces dictate.

SRH | June 2, 2004 12:16 PM

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I completely disagree, SRH. Regimes can and do suppress human expression, constantly and everywhere.

I agree with what Deleuze writes here that the literature of the USSR died under Communism, after a few centuries of flourishing. Communism likewise wiped out the creative forces of entire generations of the Chinese, who are only now recovering. Totalitarian regimes are not only noted for their destruction of the creativity of individuals, it has been argued that that is their entire agenda: to master the narrative, to force their control over what can and can't be expressed. Solzhenitzyn wrote reams on this. Literature and the arts have a better chance of flourishing under individualist regimes such as our own, but naturally every regime has its problems, and the dictates of the marketplace are the problems our culture must face.

Totalitarianism can only foster human expression in the forms we saw in the photographs of Saddamm Hussein's art collection and their fantasies of omnipotence, and the photographs coming out of Abu Ghraib. These are certainly examples of human expression, but they have been perverted out to the very borders of what might be considered "art". Where are the great Nazi artists? The great artists preceded that regime and were expunged.

The suffering of artists under oppressive political regimes is well documented. Look at Anna Akmatova, who made her friends memorize her poems so they could not be found by government officials and sentence her to prison. Only the strong were able to survive the grinding compulsions of Soviet politics. How many voices were silenced? We'll never know.

Caterina Fake | June 2, 2004 12:46 PM

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I think Deleuze is confusing popular taste with a systemic oppression of good literature. All you have to do is walk past the "rapid turnover" rotating rack of best sellers -- down the escalator -- past the kids' books -- and on to the back of Barnes & Noble to find David Foster Wallace, Nicholson Baker, Vollman, Franzen, George Saunders, and a whole hoop of extremely ballsy and very good contemporary writers. If they don't sell as well as JK Rowling, how does that undercut the literary culture that produced them?

We'll have to wait 50 years to find out how this period of literature ranks against others, but there's no reason to think we're short on quality. The confusing thing is that we're so long on quantity. More people read than ever before. A lot of them like to read what Oprah recommends. But Oprah is a long way from Stalin, and I'm not too worried that I'm suddenly going to find myself adrift in a sea of romance novels.

EJ | June 2, 2004 1:43 PM

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You already *are* adrift in a sea of romance novels. A full 53% of all paperbacks sold in 2003 were romance novels.

:-)

Caterina Fake | June 2, 2004 1:49 PM

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53%??????

That's enough to make me want to grow a ponytail and shave my chest!

http://www.likesbooks.com/coverballot/2003/WO-results-2003.html

EJ | June 2, 2004 2:16 PM

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I totally agree with Deleuze. But Deleuze was not reaaly talking about Soviet Union. He was talking about France and what is happening to publishing in France and other western countries. The market dictate the choices ; who is gonna be published or who's not ! Big publishing houses use their monoploly over artists and they are driven by profit. They sell book the way they sell soups.

EJ >> But who's gonna tell about the books that Oprah don't talk about ? How many people do what you do in Barnes and Noble ? And how many people just go to the bookstore at the corner and buy the book they just saw Oprah talking about ?

( sorry for my english )

Yassine | June 2, 2004 2:17 PM

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My point was supposed to be that there will always be underground art, even in totalitarian states, that no one can stifle. I didn't mean to imply that artists do not suffer under totalitarianism, just that some artists do not let the fear of suffering put them off producing. Such was the case in the USSR, no doubt it is the same in China.

Please understand that I'm not defending totalitarianism; of course regimes under which freedom of expression is defended are better.

SRH | June 6, 2004 11:42 PM

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