Nomo Fosho

Sometimes I speculate that there have been no universal literary classics since Catch-22, no absolute must-reads. Perhaps the time of literature is over. I always wonder who could have a taste for Richard Brautigan except me, who likes books in which nothing in particular happens, and the prose just rolls on without reason and for its own sake. 

Of course, then I think this kind of book comes after something, or before –- that it is dispersed as the path that a ship runs behind it in the water; the dispersal of literature, of everything that literature has been, of all 'universal classics.' Somehow, writing has discovered itself through literature; has chanced upon itself, blind and unknowing, forgetting everything and diffusing it all as the contemplation of an adolescent in a field of grass left to her own devices.

Language itself has become the sea of grass across which no path passes. The deeds of the world are slowly disappearing. Our lives will be written on a uniquely American page… all writing henceforth will concern the ordinary, the everyday, and the mundane—there will be nothing else even arguably noble to write about.  Language, meanwhile, will gyrate like a suburban adolescent dreaming about rap music, and all of literature will become part of that dream. And when it awakens, it will gaze upon us without a face and leer at us with no eyes and speak in words that we will no longer recognize. Perhaps it is good that the time of literature is over. 

Bob Church©9/1/07