Life In The Old Girl Yet

[poliphilo]

Critics say the novel is dead but people go on writing novels.

Critics say cinema is dead but people go on making movies.

Why this rush to ring down the curtain?

Because it's only once a thing is definitely over that it becomes graspable.

You need a corpse before you can perform an autopsy.

And while there's life in the old girl you can't make pronouncements like "The cinema is this" or "The novel is that"- because there's always the chance that the next thing to be released or published is going to negate all your assumptions.

Comments

[cmcmck]

Poetry is dead too,so we are told, which may be why carry right on writing it!

[poliphilo]

I don't see how poetry can ever die- at least not so long as we carry on having to use language. Perhaps we'll stop needing it once we're all telepaths.