Why is everybody so obsessed with the men and women that made the paradigm shifts in historical progress? Too often major works of our times are compared against the works of our historical heroes, be it the novels written, or the music composed, or the political edicts passed, or the audacious statements made in science.
The argument goes like this; there was the golden time of 20th century, of James Joyce, D. H. Lawrence, T. S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, but sadly today we don't have these greats anymore, all that is produced today is perfunctory, short, superficial and unfortunately pretentious.
Writers of today work in utter darkness with the weight of this measurement against the greats, they endeavor to produce works that would be regarded worthy of measurement with the greats. It is a sad state, that in their attempts, they narrow down the production values to a bare minimum, as set by the greats of the immediate past. For the incumbent writers, it is either this, or they admit the fraternity's wrath. Any writer who produces work that does not fall either in loose pages, few stanzas or few chapters into the narrow "window of measurement" set by the immediate past would be neglected by the current fraternity of writers. Works like these would generally be tagged as anomalies and every review done on that tagged work would remain unappreciated, unacknowledged.
Some members of the existing fraternity might show predilection towards the anomalous work, but they would then be prodding into territories of "disloyalty". These members would be ridiculed for their honest opinions on works of genuine worthiness and quality. These members would become case studies for every other member of the fraternity and eventually the fraternity closes its doors on any dissenters, which makes the works of genuine seminal quality difficult to produce.
It is against this backdrop of piled up intellectual sewage, an intellectual proponent shatters the walls of an existing fraternity and debunks their vale systems. The injured fraternity does everything in their domain to render the anomalous books unavailable, they would precipitate false claims of pejorative instincts in the semantic works, make the books inaccessible. This fight would take years, sometimes generations, but eventually when the dust settles and the vision is clear, works of semantic quality are devoured by the common readers, but at the same time, this book of semantic quality unconsciously helps create a new fraternity, which attracts all the bereaved victims of the "paradigm shift" it helped create.
James Joyce’s Ulysses with its unbearable desire to memorably thwart the existing systems, Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway with its semantic utility - stream of consciousness technique, D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's lover with virtually no sexual innuendos but on the contrary, the book is a plateau of sex with its nakedness as portrayed by an artist. All these were responsible for the "paradigm shift" in the early 20th century. This "paradigm shift" gorged on the purity and absoluteness of Victorian writers.
Similarly, the writers of today are measured against the writers of early 20th century, and all of today's works are adjudged as good readings, but never masterpieces. What the reviewers let slip out of their mind is the memory of early 20th century writers who were mistreated just as the writers of today are. It was against the "purity" and "wholesomeness" of 19th century writings, novelty became a paradigm shift in early 20th century. It was considered novelty throughout the major part of 20the century, only in the last 3-4 decades, those novelties are pushed into the corners of defined "paradigm shifts" and have been the objects of appeasement since then.
It is only customary for every generation to look back on the immediate past with veneration, and if the immediate past happens to be a "paradigm shift" with a quality of "revolution", the ripples of that immediate past would be felt in the current times; and for the writers of today; to probe these ripples, to surface becomes a gargantuan task. These attempts of probing would eventually, by the posterity, be considered works of "revolutionary quality", but as we stand today, these appear mere efforts, sometimes even vain efforts. It is for the posterity to decide the quality of these efforts. Works, be it major or minor, they all seem to be realized against a "throughput" of a generation or two.
It is important to notice that masterpieces are made all the time, but only during crisis (which is achieved with the collective restrained efforts of a past generation) are the masterpieces acknowledged and appreciated, other times they are simply neglected or scorned by the fraternity. Once realized, masterpiece then becomes a hinge on which the revolution posits and history pivots.
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