Death Schmeath

According to some Experts, everything is pretty much dead. With eyebrows arched cynically and eyelids wearily at half-mast, they declare, for example, that The Novel is dead, The Short Story hardly lived, Theatre was dead long ago. This is a horrible declaration for someone like the young Believer, who actually believes people, to hear. This puts the Believer’s mind in a tailspin before it loses all control and goes skidding into a ditch. “All those things must be dead,” the Believer thinks, horrified. “There’s no chance for me. I came along too late.”

Yet on further examination, and upon re-playing the YouTube interviews with said jaded Experts, the Believer suddenly understands that it isn’t the Novel, the Short Story, or the Theatre that is dead; it’s the Expert. The Expert’s already had his moment; his wings have felt the air beneath them; he has basked in the sun, and now the sun has set, and it’s over. So what the Expert has done, essentially, is projected his own death upon the art form as a whole. Because the Expert’s novels are no longer appreciated, his short stories are no longer published, his plays are no longer being produced, he has no other recourse but to imagine the death of the entire thing, rather than the more personally painful admission that his own particular career is over within that discipline.

It’s an understandable predicament: nobody wants the game to continue after his time is up. But the game does continue, and it’s an irresponsible, bitterly harmful, presumptuous thing he’s done by declaring the game over. Shame on the Expert. He should find a job in some other field, learn a new trade, start over, do something productive, rather than decry the things being produced today as post-mortem obfuscatory babble.

As long as something is being produced, as long as there are aspiring Novelists, Short Story writers, Playwrights and Actors, as long as people want to do these things and are trying to do them, well then, these disciplines, Sir, are Alive and Well (well, at least as well as they’ve ever been).

How dare you declare their death, for whatever reason? By erroneously declaring the death of these disciplines, you shatter and suffocate living dreams of Believers who haven’t had their time yet. This declaration is tantamount to a death sentence, or, more bluntly, murder.