What questions should writers ask?

Put yours in the comments…

The most notable thing about the “Symposium” in the new TLS, which asked a series of writers what questions authors ought to be asking today, is that none of them said anything much about literature.

Katherine Rundell called billionaires immoral and said the Data Bill would be legalised theft. Several others used metaphors that didn’t say anything beyond “we need to ask difficult questions”. There was plenty of talk about “the texture of lived experience” and “the structures and systems we take for granted”. Tessa Hadley talked about writing novels, but the rest was mostly vague political commentary that wouldn’t other wise merit publication.

And they wonder why literature is losing its relevance and significance!

So, tell me in the comments: What questions should today’s writers and artists be asking? I am confident Substack can do a better job of this!

Here are some questions I would ask.

How do writers get out of the auto fiction cul-de-sac (akin to the “what next?” problem that arose after Virginia Woolf and Roger Fry). Can we imagine a short term future where literature is based in more forms than the novel and personal essay? How will Substack influence that? How can we persuade elites of the importance of reading the classics? (And the moderns…) What can we do to identify a new generation of literary talent which has an affinity for AI? Will there ever be an epic poem of the space age or Silicon Valley? Why are philosophical ideas so absent from modern literature? Is the golden age of children’s writing dying? Should arts funding rely more on patrons and less on committees? How can we encourage more literary entrepreneurship? What will happen to print as audiences add AI to the rosta of entertainment that has been growing ever since photography and radio were invented? Is there a case for techno-optimism? Do we need a revival of major, serious non-fiction? How can a modern intellectual like George Eliot be convinced to write fiction today? Is literature simply too low status to matter as much as we want it to? Will nostalgia be the future of literature? There’s a revival of interest in literature happening—how do we make the most of that?

What else?