The Changing Nature of Literature.

Most that were once journalists tend to write in clipped tones, years of training, I always remember reading a short essay by Graham Greene on how to change his training; exchanging his journalistic instincts for a novel. Often he, Hemingway, Proulx, and many hundred other "journalist turned writers" read exactly the same. Short, clipped, to the point. They were Journo's. When the landed gentry of England and France would write superfluous drivel without ever getting to the point but in the process we would end up with a descriptive tale that was immeasurable with warmth and familial feeling. I have often been asked, when interviewed, which ethos, credo, I consider paramount and my answer is simply; Neither. There is much to recommend short clipped tones that carry you, simply from one word to another. There is another thought to recommend long passages of pure thought, imagination and description.

I suspect that I may annoy many here by saying that the classics of old have often now been surpassed by the works of today. Many good writers use a combination of all styles to create a homogeneous whole that is greater than the sum of it's parts. Many (particularly Scandinavian) writers have surpassed Dickens, Voltaire, Austen with fuller more essential characters. Others, whilst producing thrillers, psychological dramas (etc) have outshone Hemingway, Harris, Wolfe and Roth by happily combining the magical and fantastical along with fast paced drama. I am a fan of the classics in literature and of the (Greek) classics in general but unlike many stilted and set in their ways, readers and academics, realize that there are better works being produced today than there ever has been in the history of humanity.