Western literature in decline

[Chris Broderick]

Ya Sam mentioned:

"The Celluloid Canon in the Twilight of Western Literature"
By John David Ebert

So I sez:

Thanks for reposting it.  I certainly don't think you can be blamed for creating for such a spectacularly confused and wrongheaded text.

Gee, where to start?  Maybe the fact that he claims that all of Mozart's contemporaries sounded like Mozart, or that Mahler was unproductive because he only created 10 symphonies.  My personal favorite was his claim that one of the reasons that cinema kicks the novel's ass is because too many novels are based on other novels.  Has he been to a movie theater lately?  How many movies out there aren't based on other movies?

And, please, I know it's apples & oranges, but comparing AI and The Abyss to Magic Mountain?  Excuse me while I have a coronary.

And OK, one more fundamental complaint then I'll shut up.  His biggest complaint about the contemporary novel is that it is too "self-conscious".  Of course a medium that has as one of its strengths the ability to mine individual consciousness will be "self-conscious".  The novel has been a self-conscious medium since Cervantes, at least.  And of course self-consciousness is less a part of a collaborative medium like cinema, but does that make it a greater or lesser medium?

Sorry about the rant.  I've just been buttonholed by this guy (Mr. Ebert, not Ya Sam) or his doppelganger way too often at cocktail parties.

-Chris