Too Many....
Apr. 17th, 2005 10:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poliphiloRichard and Judy's novel-writing competition (which I didn't win) drew 46,000 entries.
46,000 novels. Think of it. You'd need a lifetime to read them all.
46,000 novels. And one has been selected for publication.
According to the Economist something like 10,000 novels are published in the UK each year.
Of that 10,000, how many will be remembered?
In a good year- one, two, three? In many years none at all.
And how many classic novels are there altogether? Count up the novels that really matter- the novels that form the Western canon, from Don Quixote to Catcher in the Rye- and I doubt if they number more than 1,000.
The novels that matter are a tiny proportion of the novels that have been published and the novels that have been published are a tiny proportion of the novels that have been written.
It makes me feel sick and giddy.
And small....
46,000 novels. Think of it. You'd need a lifetime to read them all.
46,000 novels. And one has been selected for publication.
According to the Economist something like 10,000 novels are published in the UK each year.
Of that 10,000, how many will be remembered?
In a good year- one, two, three? In many years none at all.
And how many classic novels are there altogether? Count up the novels that really matter- the novels that form the Western canon, from Don Quixote to Catcher in the Rye- and I doubt if they number more than 1,000.
The novels that matter are a tiny proportion of the novels that have been published and the novels that have been published are a tiny proportion of the novels that have been written.
It makes me feel sick and giddy.
And small....
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no subject
Date: 2005-04-17 08:32 am (UTC)about the fellow who always wanted to paint
a tree but could never really do more than
a leaf perhaps stands for the most of
writing doesnt it--one can fear a lost
masterpiece here and there (and many more
things which given another read at another
time by someone else might have made their
way for a time without becoming classics,
but might have pleased a few people and I
am sure yours is at least one of these)
but what also stands out is the mountain of
partial achievment isn't it? I would not be
the one to reject Tolkien's happy ending,
that there is a tree of Niggle's imagining
which he may come to, but I am thinking that
the imagined and partly realized is already
there as image or dream and the mountain of
partial acheivment over all the centuries
somehow more happily reminds us of the
great number of dreams and images so many
people formed out of the stuff at hand...
gosh this sentence belongs in the cosmic
slush pile but perhaps somewhere in here
is a little thought worth being a comment...
+Seraphim
no subject
Date: 2005-04-18 12:59 am (UTC)All those unpublished and unread novels and poems and plays are the underwater foundation on which the coral atoll rests.