The subtitle of this blog, which has been invisible until now, is “a manifesto in progress.” Because we’re definitely creating some kind of manifesto here. As for what exactly it espouses… that’s what we’re figuring out.
Manifestos are everywhere. Recently we linked to a column by China Mieville that describes 5 hypothetical literary movements of the future. And there’s a great piece by Anne Boyer at HTML Giant that proposes 24 new avant garde movements. And we’ve been discussing Remainder by Tom McCarthy, which is essentially a manifesto for the International Necronautical Society.
We don’t know what the future holds, but it’s bound to be different from this. By creating a manifesto-in-progress, we can all make sure the future includes less hipster appropriation of Latin American authors, less branding of writers according to their musical tastes, less jokey “non-fiction” posing as fiction… and more cross-generational tributes to neglected authors, more fictional comments on the day’s headlines, more study of the evolutionary benefits of storytelling. Isn’t that what we’re fighting for?
Check out the manifestos linked above, and tell us, in the comments, if you have any bizarre ideas for what the future of stories might look like.
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How about this? One person, one book. Everyone is encouraged to write one book in their lifetime, and also forbidden to write more than one book in their lifetime. So there is a one-to-one correspondence between humans and books: each person is represented by a single book , and vice versa. This would force everyone to participate — and participate equally — in reading and writing.