[acornlive] Millenniel challenge
nessa@indigo.ie (acornlive@dublinwriters.org)
Fri, 1 Jan 1999 12:04:52 -0000
Dear list members
A very happy New Year to you all - One of my new year's
resolutions [I've already broken the one to not make any] is to stir
up the kind of impassioned debate on this list that we are currently
seeing in our messaging forum.
One of our most recent contributions suggested that some writers'
reputations depend almost entirely on their antiquity, and that if we
cooly examined them in the light of contemporary standards, they
wouldn't really make the cut. Shakespeare [ahem] was quoted as
an example.
What do people make of this general point? Do we automatically
revere the ancients because posterity has conferred on them
credibility, and are we thus overly suspicious of contemporary
writers because we lack the benefit of hindsight? Is it possible to
truly evaluate the quality of today's writers without knowing whether
they'll be even remembered by our grandchildren? Do we trust our
own critical faculties, or do we depend on a small intellectual clique
to tell us who we should and shouldn't like?
Anybody got any views on this one?
Once again, best wishes for 1999 to everybody here -
Nessa O'Mahony
DWW