“What, exactly, is the difference between literature and journalism. The maker of literature strives to say a thing once and for all time; while the journalist says it over and over, with slight variations, every day or week or month.”And since ninety-nine per cent of the money paid out for written words is paid for journalism, it follows that ninety-nine per cent of the writers must be journalists, no matter what capacity they may have to produce literature.”
Upton Sinclair in Money Writes!, published by T. Werner Laurie, 1931.
Sinclair is best known for his landmark book that exposed the state of the meat processing industry, The Jungle.
28 June 2009 at 11:23 am
And we may add, quite a few literary critics (at least in India) repeat what others have said, or vary it slightly and pretend they have said something original. They might do so even though they gleefully identify the literary sources the creative writer depended on.