As always, the real action in arts is in the “lowbrow” end. While auteurs still struggle to create the next great novel, the cutting edge of creativity has moved on to other media. Eventually, novels will be dead as poetry.
(at least, poetry not set to music).
Video games are the future.
Our experience of stories is, by and large, a lateral one, in which the writer commands every aspect of the world the reader inhabits as well as the process by which it reveals itself. Fine; it’s worked for centuries. But it’s hard to shake the feeling that gaming – which increasingly promises a narrative space for the player to make his own way, never having the same experience twice – is where at least some of the great writers of tomorrow will make their names
(Update: changed “The cutting edge of creativity has long gone” to “the cutting edge of creativity has moved on to other media”. I think my careless wording misleadingly implied that novelists have no creativity. This isn’t true, as there are great novels and novelists working today. However my point still stands)
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It’s extraordinary, DD, how everyone will have forgotten the winner of last year’s book prizes, but 40 year old pop music and tv shows – which were always supposed to be expendable – are very well remembered and are also part of the cultural lexicon of future generations.