Instant Classic

When my professor, helping me with graduate school application prep, asked me why I wanted to study 18th century British literature, I talked about how I felt that period of thought and social development had many parallels with our own time. I felt legitimate in my opinion, but not confident enough to have expected her response. "Exactly!" she exclaimed, continuing into a familiar conversation to me that draws a line from the printing press to the internet. Suddenly, people popped up all over the place writing short publications like "The Spectator" where they wrote their little musings and said things were often pointless, but occasionally brilliant. Blogging and its various media brethren are affecting our culture in ways we don't understand.

How often have you heard someone say, "I was reading online the other day..." It's a good phrase because it's honest in its own way. It creates a foundation for any comment to be taken on its own merit. You can take any comment that comes after "I was reading online that..." and trust it or throw it away and no one will care.

The obscure writer's of our age will rarely make it to a noticeably powerful place in society and maybe that's a good thing, but it makes me wonder who will appear in 50 years as the genius of the early 2000s. Who have we already forgotten from the 20th century. If we go back to 19th century America, we'll find that Walt Whitman was one of the most influential and his contemporaries were Hawthorne, Emerson, Sigourney, Longfellow. Who remembers Longfellow? How much more famous is Emily Dickinson since she was discovered... what? 40 years ago?

Today's writers might disappear into forgotten corners of literary history, but someone always seems to show up and take the spotlight.