/lit/ - Literature

I hadn't heard of this 'movement' until now, but I've often thought that it is exactly what contemporary literature needs. One of the reasons that I'm so fond of Romanticism is that it so jarringly confounds our modern preoccupation with the 'ironic' or 'insincere' - to the extent that it is practically rendered fantastical. I'm very fond of modern iterations of irony (in other media) - and actually believe that they are often more sophisticated in utilising the 'mode of delivery' than their literary counterparts: I would argue, for example, that no writer has ever employed tongue-in-cheek insincerity in their work as successfully (and consistently) as Tim & Eric have on TV. The reality is that literature is going to be left behind if it continues to challenge prevailing media - which are, manifestly, more popular - rather than make a contrived effort to distinguish itself from the pack by re-appropriating 'archaic' notions of artists 'seriousness' and 'importance', albeit spoken in the modern diction. A successful writer ought to be, essentially, indistinguishable from Wordsworth in all but his syntax.

Let's not forget how literature conceptualised itself during the High Modernist period (not even one-hundred years ago), surely some of that earnestness-cum-arrogance exhibited in Wyndham-Lewis' 'BLAST' can be salvaged today.

Jules Laforgue - Collected Works
Enemy of the Stars - P. Wyndham-Lewis
Tarr - P. Wyndham-Lewis
Essays, Social and Literary - Matthew Arnold