"Proustian" as a concept only makes sense if you haven't actually finished Proust

At this point, I have no idea what it means to be "Proustian," or rather, what I now regard as "Proustian" is not something one necessarily would... want to be, or casually reference

"Proustian" as a concept only makes sense if you haven't actually finished Proust

At this point, I have no idea what it means to be "Proustian," or rather, what I now regard as "Proustian" is not something one necessarily would... want to be, or casually reference

I don't know... what are you reading on Wu Zetian? What's the best Chinese language secondary materials on Wu Zetian?

Also, what's the best TV representation? Anything good?

But once you start thinking more dialectically, it becomes even more apparent that markets were often involved but were not necessarily *driving* the development of arguably any literary form, sci-fi or otherwise

Nor should we want them to be

Maybe... thinking aloud:

I think the genuinely dialectical nature of historical progress is throwing us all for a loop

it's genuinely the case that, e.g., Frankenstein (1818) only "became science fiction" in the 20th C., but it's difficult to internalize these kinds of "retroactive truths"

Indeed, profits and pricing in the arts are even more like fetish objects than for other commodities.

Maybe it's only our being embedded in market relations that makes us treat the moment of sale as this sacred event. It's not. The market is often no more than a defecatory chamber from which commodities emerge.

it's like, the former of these works was a popular success, and, while to this day it remains an enjoyable read, it reads like a commercial novel

whereas the latter work never sold well, never will sell well, but is precisely what literate people most care about when they say they care about sci-fi

there's also something amazing that happens, where we are meant to lament the death of once-flourishing markets, at the same time it's slowly revealed that a lot of your favorite works were actually produced in defiance of these same forces

If we're serious about creating a world without depraved billionaires running wild while the rest of us suffer, we need to contend with higher ed's complicity in propping this system up.

(and, you know, "the translator is a traitor" has a fascist lineage, etc. etc.)

caizi jiaren 才子佳人 novels are also unenlightened on this topic