Comment by plourens
2 hours ago
"Private intellectual activity that is sustained, complex, and long-term requires an external intellectual community to provide material and motivation, like fuel and oxidizer."
Aside from programming, one of my main interests is reading and writing. I think that literary fiction proves what the author is saying above. Even the most reclusive, private authors (Thomas Pynchon, Cormac McCarthy, etc.) actually published their work. They contributed to the community and took part as readers. Literature is always in conversation with itself. And although literary fiction may seem not to have the sway it once did in society, it is flourishing among the people who care about it (like me).
My thoughts aren't fully formed, but I find it interesting to situate technical pursuits like software engineering with humanities. And anyway, I've always felt that programming is both a science and art.
Kafka didn’t publish his work, and I’d expect that he’s just one we happen to know about, others are likely lost to time.
Indeed there are people who don't contribute to the community. Or maybe they can't find a publisher. I'm sure there are brilliant things written which will never find an audience.
But the broader point, in agreement with the article, is that the existence of fiction depends in part on extrinsic motivation (e.g. publishing, finding readers) and a community of intellectuals engaging with one another through their work. If everyone decided to stop seeking readers all of a sudden, the field would die and become a museum (mausoleum?) of former thinkers.
Contributing to the community posthumously still counts as contributing.
Kafka did publish some of his work during his lifetime, including The Metamorphosis.
Yes, but much of it wasn’t, which was my point, as it’s simply the first case that comes to mind where we know an author demanded their unpublished work be destroyed (Terry Pratchett is another). And Kafka didn’t receive widespread recognition until after his death, when Brod started publishing his writings en masse.