to pursue litertature in the first place you are at odds with the society you are in.

lots of people have the capacity to write well, but why would we waste the time and effort with our head in the clouds when we have pressure do make things happen.

It is a reflection of society thats all.

Mr Barnes you write a convincing piece. And as you point out, the ordinariness and mediocrity stretches across all the arts. Perhaps this is postmodernism. If it is, I don't like it. Anything passes for "art" these days. Even Big Brother will probably be studied in secondary schools soon as "literature", if indeed it is not being studied as such in universities right now.

It's a tragic thing. Just another sign of the decline and fall of Western culture. I seriously doubt that Western culture will see out the century. Hopefully, Asians might bring some inspiration and creativity to the world of art. Who knows? For the present, we can only but sigh.

"The attention span of a sheep". Pft. How can we prove otherwise? I've read "War and Peace" and "A Suitable Boy" (longest novel written in English apparently)- does that make me able to comment? Oh sorry, they were not AUSTRALIAN.

Do I like novels by Australian authors? Sure, if they catch my attention - the origin of the author has never been an issue in my decision to purchase or read a book. Nor should it be.

This article seemed utterly bitter-spirited

A bit away from the book scene, but .............one only has to read the latest "newspapers" to really see the abysmal decline in Australian literary standards.

From yesterdays news warmed up for tomorrows (or the next day's) headlines, to juicy exposes of the current "Big Brothers" breast implants on 19 year olds (how does one sadly shake one's head here...?)

But then again there are so many of the "sheeple" who dote on every word printed as gospel truth in the tabloids, that one really has to wonder if the end has already passed by - and we are just being forced along with the vacuum?

I had often wondered why newsprint was no longer used to wrap my fish and chips ........ I thought it was the ink in the paper, but no, it was just that with the decline of education, the words were just too hard to swallow.

Pfftt, whinge whinge, plenty of people still read books, even long ones. And people still study philosophy, literature, think about the meaning of life etc. Get over it Greg.

"Pfftt, pfftt" - whatever that post modernist literary statement is supposed to mean, who knows? It certainly isn't in the Oxford Dictionary -

Ask Oxford - "pfftt"
http://www.askoxford.com/results/?view=searchresults&freesearch=Pfftt&branch=&textsearchtype=exact

Whatever, "...people still study philosophy, literature, think about the meaning of life etc."

But do they have the requisite knowledge to analyse or evaluate what they read against the rich tapestry that has preceded them?

Do they have a classical understanding of the forefather's thinking so as to see the compassion and the pain that built civilisation - or are they assessing meaning by values as cheap as burgers, Coke, university degrees and tabloid journalism?

Without depth of values, the banal becomes exquisite. Without depth of knowledge, that which has gone before, wisdom, becomes gobbledegook. A naive acceptance of the current. The contemporary is ignorant. It is by nature primitive. Ordinariness and mediocrity prevail whilst buffoons struggle to reinvent the wheel claiming intellectual breakthroughs that privileged scholars of the Renaissance would have thought trite in their time.

Think about it.

Poor ol' Gen-X has been given the shaft by academics. The sad part of it all is that they don't even know it and they fight to defend their own ignorance. That's what's really shocking. They "bought the farm".