Michael Rose (Again)

The age of the Feuilleton

“… In the course of the aforementioned Age of the Feuilleton, men came to enjoy an incredible degree of intellectual freedom, more than they could stand… We must confess that we cannot provide an unequivocal definition of those products from which the age takes its name, the feuilletons. They seem to have formed an uncommonly popular section of the daily newspapers blogs, tweets, status updates, ‘likes’, were produced by the millions, and were a major source of mental pebulum for the reader in want of culture. They reported on, or rather ‘chatted’ about, a thousand-and-one items of knowledge… We feel surprise that there should have been people who devoured such chitchat for their daily reading; but what astonishes us far more is that authors of repute and of decent education should have helped to ‘service’ this gigantic consumption of empty whimsies. Significantly, ‘service’ was the expression used; it was also the word denoting the relationship of man to the machine at the time… The great majority, who seem to have been strikingly fond of reading, must have accepted all these grotesque things with credulous earnestness. If a famous painting changed owners, if a precious manuscript was sold at auction, if an old palace burned down, if the bearer of an aristocratic name was involved in a scandal, the readers of many thousands of feature articles at once learned of the facts. What is more, on that same day or by the next day at the latest they received an additional dose of anecdotal, historical, psychological, erotic, and other stuff on the catchword of the moment. A torrent of zealous scribbling poured out over every ephemeral incident, and in quality, assortment, and phraseology all this material bore the mark of mass goods rapidly and irresponsibly turned out.” (Fragments taken from Hesse, Herman, ‘The Glass bead game’)