I do think that part of literature's job is to comment on and participate in the social issues of the time.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Literature is at once the cause and the effect of social progress.
People have different views of how you deal with different issues in literature, and, frankly, long may it last that there is a range of views.
Literature is a far more ancient and viable thing than any social formation or state. And just as the state interferes in literature, literature has the right to interfere in the affairs of state.
The function of literature, through all its mutations, has been to make us aware of the particularity of selves, and the high authority of the self in its quarrel with its society and its culture. Literature is in that sense subversive.
I think respectful conflict is intrinsic to the spirit of literature. It reminds us that literary history is living and evolving and thrives on us being active participants.
Today there is a division between those who write about literature and those who create it. I, obviously, don't think that should be there.
Literary readings aren't going to shake their reputation as the added-fibre of our entertainment diet until the people who organize and participate in them snap out of this mentality.
The problem with literature, with writing, is that it works sometimes in terms of correction of social ills. Other times, it just does not suffice.
Literature is the denunciation of the times in which one lives.
I think the job of writing and literature is to encourage each one of us to believe that we're living in a story.