Literature and Society

"Arts and literature create and re-create the life of a society in many respects, making it full of aesthetic touches. Without literature, countries and societies are devoid of the driving spirit of a full and vibrant life and thinking. Art and literature help a society in its growth at different levels as a continuous process. This intellectual entity shapes an individual's and a society's meaningful approach towards life and its components. 

The literary community believes in peace and love, and is very sensitive to the events taking place in society hence they are the first ones to draw the real picture of events in their writings. Since they are born with the traits of truth, they have remained victims of oppression during every reign of dictatorship."

More: http://paktribune.com/news/Literature-for-life-By-Mukhtar-258234.html



SpyWriter Jack King, the author of:
Agents of Change, WikiJustice, The Black Vault, and The Fifth Internationale.
A new Pope. A new Church. A new world:


www.SpyWriter.com

Writers are obligated to live for themselves

"And yet I had not been wrong, perhaps, after all, in sacrificing not only the vain pleasures of the world but the real pleasure of friendship to that of spending the whole day in this green garden.  People who enjoy the capacity—it is true that such people are artists, and I had long been convinced that I should never be that—are also under an obligation to live for themselves. And friendship is a dispensation from this duty, an abdication of self.  Even conversation, which is the mode of expression of friendship, is a superficial digression which gives us no new acquisition. We may talk for a lifetime without doing more than indefinitely repeat the vacuity of a minute, whereas the march of thought in the solitary travail of artistic creation proceeds downwards, into the depths, in the only direction that is not closed to us, along which we are free to advance—though with more effort, it is true—towards a goal of truth.  And friendship is not merely devoid of virtue, like conversation, it is fatal to us as well. For the sense of boredom which it is impossible not to feel in a friend's company (when, that is to say, we must remain exposed on the surface of our consciousness, instead of pursuing our voyage of discovery into the depths) for those of us in whom the law of development is purely internal—that first impression of boredom our friendship impels us to correct when we are alone again, to recall with emotion the words uttered by our friend, to look upon them as a valuable addition to our substance, albeit we are not like buildings to which stones can be added from without, but like trees which draw from their own sap the knot that duly appears on their trunks, the spreading roof of their foliage."
Marcel Proust, Within a Budding Grove

What do Pimps and Literary Agents have in common?

According to this Nobel Prize recipient: "Agents have strong nerves and stamina. To them the term  'sensitive soul of an artist' means the same as DAB beer, and any attempt at serious conversation with them about art and artists would be a waste of time. They well know that even an artist without a conscience has a thousand times more of it than the hardest working agent. Their weapon lies in understanding that an artist cannot do anything but create, whether paint pictures, perform, sing songs, or carve in stone, or granite. An artist resembles a woman who cannot do anything else but love and falls with every kind of male donkey that falls in her ​​sight. Artists and women are particularly well suited to be exploited, and each agent is ninety-nine per cent a pimp."
Heinrich Böll

Like pimps, literary agents are on the way out. The Internet has changed everything:

"the use of the Internet for prostitution as well as other changes in the sex industry have resulted in the disintermediation of prostitution, allowing prostitutes to deal with clients directly. This has rendered pimps largely superfluous, at least in the United States." Source: WikiPedia

The use of the Internet has allowed writers to bypass the pimps literary agents and reach readers directly, via e-books...

Dorky graffiti artist

World's most dorky graffiti artist?

Using a ballpoint pen, on a designated graffiti board...

Authors' earnings

According to a report, Canadian authors' earnings (or lack thereof):

• Authors earned $32,000 on average in 2005. This was second only to “Producers, directors, choreographers, etc.” (who pulled in $43,800). The overall labour force earned $36,300, and the cultural sector labour force earned $32,900. The lowest-paid artists were visual artists and dancers, both of whom earned, on average, less than $14,000.
• Authors were the second-largest field surveyed in terms of numbers, representing 18% of all artists. Musicians and singers had the largest ranks with 24%.
• Eleven percent of authors reported no earnings in 2005.
• Fifty-four percent of authors are female, almost perfectly in line with the percentage across all artistic fields (53%) and slightly higher than the overall labour force (48%). Male authors earned $34,000 on average, while female ones earned only $30,400.
• Forty-one percent of authors were self-employed; the rest were “paid workers.” Self-employed authors earned only $21,400, while the paid workers earned $39,700.
• There were 24,600 authors in the 2006 census, up from 21,100 in 2001 and 15,200 in 1991. Average earnings are dropping, though: authors earned $36,500 in 1990, $35,800 in 2000, and $32,000 in 2005.