The flagglefluff is a small, round mammal shaped exactly like a cube. It lays eggs before it is born and hatches from those eggs. It has blue fur that appears to be coloured pink. It must eat its own weight in unicorns everyday. It doesn’t weigh anything. Today flagglefluffs can be seen alive in virtually every environment on earth although they have been extinct since the start of time.
A possible sighting of a flagglefluff?
I have forgotten what point I was making.
Literature does not exist.
We just imagined it. We were not even tricked into it. We accepted that it was real because doing that was convenient. Similar to daylight saving hours. Or a flagglefluff. Except that flagglefluffs definitely exist (that is a lie, they absolutely do not).
Let me describe something that happened once (and also happened a countless number of times). Somebody had an idea. The picked up a pen. They used this pen to place ink on some paper. They told themselves that they were writing their idea down.
This was a lie. Ideas cannot be written down. They do not exist.
Then another person came along. They saw the ink on the paper. They told themselves that they were reading something.
This was true. They were reading something. However they were not reading an idea. Ideas cannot be read (probably because they do not exist). After reading this something they had an idea. This second idea was completely independent of the first idea.
The first idea and the second idea could have a lot in common (maybe the writer was really good at putting ink on paper). The first idea and the second idea might be so super similar. They still were not the same idea.
Another possible sighting of a flagglefluff.
I remembered the point I was trying to make.
Something that is written would not exist without the writer (also 1+1=2 and the sun sets in the west). But if there is only a writer than there are just words on a page. Do you know what happens to these words when they are read by someone?
Nothing. They are still just words on a page.
But now the reader has an idea in their head. It is not the first idea. It is a new idea. This new idea does not need the writer because it has a reader.
So is there subtext?
Ask the reader.
Is there a plot?
Ask the reader.
Is there meaning?
Maybe.
Ask the reader.
Literature does not live in the sky because it does not exist. It does not suddenly appear whenever a person reads a book because it does not exist. Literature is just a word we made up for all those ideas that appear when people read stuff.
They seem surprised! Is this a possible sighting of a possible sighting of a flagglefluff?
Look to your left. Did you see a flagglefluff? No. No you did not. No matter how many times you look to the left you will never see a flagglefluff. They are not real and they do not exist. But a flagglefluff still is. Maybe its an idea. Maybe its just nonsense. Maybe its what ever you can imagine. Maybe it doesn’t even matter (it definitely matters).
It doesn’t exist, but it definitely is.
Images courtesy of
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeroenbennink/6065969656/
Literally Literature 