What Happened to Writing

In these times, writing has lost its majesty. The drudgery and meticulous formation remains, but the eloquence of the final result has evaporated for the sake of condensing ideas into modern trends. These trends lean towards action, fiction, or tales of each writer’s struggle in the modern world; their struggles to find love, peace, or god prevail amongst the majority. I mean prevail only in the financial, goal oriented sense. With intelligence and the right insight to people’s enjoyment, a best seller is the perfect combination of those two things and an entertaining plot put forth in more basic terms for the general public. But, what of the best sellers of the past? Why do we no longer see many writers with comparable skill the Jane Austens or Machiavellis of the past? It is the same concept that provides the basis for mob mentality. The masses learn to agree with each other, willingly or not. They begin to accept the entertainment of today despite the incredible decrease in talent. Any average Joe can write to entertain the masses. Who among them, or standing aloft, can grasp the masses? Who can engross the average in disputes of morality, conscience, and pure debate of language? Then, what skillful individual can tie these talents with the desires of the mob that is comprised of modern consumers? Such a writer puts the writing first and the desires of a reader second, instead of the other way around.
I walk into a bookstore these days. Self-help, how-to, books drabbled with everyday struggles in simple language line the bookstores. They are not small, nor do they lack funds to thrive in the business, yet, they can’t afford to dedicate more than a tenth of their stores to classic literature, beautiful pros, and spillings of brilliant minds on to simple ivory colored pages. They may only afford the space for such talents if they are internationally acclaimed, or maintain a tale entertaining enough to feed the dogs that have demanded such “entertainment” for a few years now. Now, Jane Austen and Anne Hathaway can grace the shelves of most any bookstore, but what of the unsung authors? What of the literature with equal talent and deliberate eloquence? The answer lies in the content. They speak of “boring” issues of years past. But have we lost all respect for pure elegance of writing? I believe so. Thus we must slowly pull it back from the gentle hands of unimportance. Quietly, secretly, we can combine the supposed “drudgery” of late English with the demands of society. But it is, of course, only for the sake of literature that we must seek, only after putting intelligence, wit, and brilliance of language first, to appease the masses.
May we stimulate a higher level of discussion? May we encourage the importance of intelligent debate by weaving such literary techniques into everyday works?