Writing with no past has no future…

The great and present danger to American literature is the growing
homogeneity of our writers, especially the younger generation. Often raised
in several places in no specific cultural or religious community, educated
with no deep connection to a particular region, history, or tradition, and
now employed mostly in academia, the American writer is becoming as
standardized as the American car—functional, streamlined, and increasingly
interchangeable. The globalization so obvious in most areas of the economy,
including popular culture, has had a devastating impact on literature. Its
influence is especially powerful since globalized commercial
entertainment—movies, television, popular music, and video games—now shapes
the imagination of young writers more pervasively and continuously than do
literary texts. An adolescence in Los Angeles is not much different from
one in Boston or Chicago when so many thousands of hours are spent
identically in the same virtual worlds. Is it any wonder that so much new
writing lacks any tangible sense of place, identifiable accent, or living
connection to the past? Nourished more by global electronic entertainment
than active individual reading, even the language lacks resonance and
personality. However stylish and efficient, writing with no past probably
has no future.

The Catholic Writer Today
Encouraging Catholic writers to renovate and reoccupy their own tradition.
Dana Gioia

Writing with no past has no future…