Are Books Still The Gold Standard? (David Intro)

Are Books Still The Gold Standard? | The Weekly Atticus

May 16, 2020

A recap of the week's writing at Atticus Review. Submit to our Flash CNF Contest, judged by Nick Flynn! Introduction by David Olimpio

I was never much interested in modern macroeconomic theory (MMT), but recent events have kind of put it on my radar. What does it have to do with literature, you ask? And why am I starting this letter talking about it? Well, for one thing, the “father” of MMT is John Maynard Keynes, who was a member of the Bloomsbury Group, and who hung out with the likes of Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell and E.M Forster, I have an ongoing fascination with Bloomsbury.

But that’s not the reason.

You can

what Keynes believed, or if you prefer education in the form of a (really horrible, but funny in a cringy way) rap-battle, you can get that on

, where you learn how Keynsian ideas differ from the ideas of Friederich Hayek or the “Austrian School” of economics. 

I’ve become more interested in macroeconomic issues since the pandemic. What actually makes economies work? What makes them not work? It’s something I wish I’d been more interested in in college. But I was far more interested in the possible love triangles between the members of the Bloomsbury Group than their political or economic philosophies. 

Anyway, with the US printing trillions of dollars and pumping that into the economy, I’ve noticed that a debate is rekindling among economists, some of whom say that printing vast amounts of money to pay for programs and lowering interest rates will lead to runaway inflation, and worse, an increased deficit. One aspect of MMT is that it does not tie the printing of money to any physical good, like gold. There is no “gold standard” in MMT. Instead, money is printed according to need or demand. I think that freaks a lot of people out. Honestly, it kind of freaks me out. It seems to defy common sense. How is simply printing money a solution to anything? Won’t this get us more in trouble. Don’t we NEED a gold standard?  

According to some MMT economists, no, not really. People like

would argue that deficits don’t really matter; instead, it matters more what countries do with their deficits. (If you're interested in this sort of thing, you might check out her book coming out next month on this called

. Or, you might enjoy this

 on the Make Me Smart podcast.

Okay, really, aside from Keynes hanging out with the likes of Virginia Woolf, what does this have to do with literature? Well, I’ve been thinking of this idea of a “gold standard” in relation to the economics of literature. Books and literary publications, financially speaking, have been in crisis for years. Last week

about the tendency for people to, every so often, declare certain literary genres "dead." (The essay for example, as Dorothy points out.) The same tendency applies to books and literary magazines. Every so often, somebody will come along and declare one or both of these things dead. 

As a magazine editor and a book lover, this recurring death knell certainly bugs me. And yet, there is no doubt in my mind that if I had fallen asleep in 1996 and woke up today in 2020, without the emollient of time, I would have a keen sense of something having died in the literary landscape. It would be jarring to see how much less tied is “literary culture” to hardcover books, to print magazines, to the New York Review of Books, things that were at one time the "gold standard" for writing and the foundation for the economics of American literature. And yet, it would also be obvious to my recently awoken 1996 brain that literature was somehow still thriving. 

One reason some economists can't get their minds around deficit spending being okay and not "bad" is that they can't let go of their belief in the old gold standard. But regardless, we've moved away from gold. Money continues to be printed. Deficits continue to increase. (The actual deficit as I’m writing this is $3.25 trillion and counting. The number looks like this: 3,250,005,000,000. It will probably be about a billion more dollars by the time you read this.) And even with all of these things, runaway inflation isn't happening (at least not yet). Gold still exists and still holds some value, sure, but it’s not as important as it once was.

The literary ecosystem has its own gold standard, less important than it once was. It's hard for us to let go of our belief in the physical objects of literature: books and print magazines. To be clear, I don't think they'll "go away" or "die" or whatever. Clearly, they’re important. But one day they will stop being “the gold standard.” 

My sense is they have already. 

If that’s true, then what is the new “gold standard?” I’m not sure. What I do know is that writers aren’t alone in this shifting paradigm. Albums are no longer the gold standard they once were for musicians. Live performances are where the money is made. Albums are really just marketing tools to promote musicians, and some musicians are even skipping albums and just releasing singles.  

What’s the new “gold standard” for literature? What will fuel its economy if not books and printed objects? I honestly think it has something to do with community, with fostering discussions, with in-person (or online, socially-distanced) interactions.

Atticus Review

strives to do what it can to foster this new gold standard, to lift up new writers, to help engage dialogue.

The gold standard is dead. Long live the gold standard. 

Thanks for reading. We’re glad you’re here.

David Olimpio

Publisher & Editor-in-Chief

ATTICUS NEWS

Announcing The 2020 Atticus Review Flash CNF Contest, judged by Nick Flynn. Deadline July 26th. Only $10 to enter. First Prize: $350; 2nd: $100; 3rd: $50. All pieces considered for publication.Send us your CNF!SUBMIT

If you ordered a Print Annual and have been waiting for it, we're very sorry for the delay. We ordered some postage and other supplies from the post office about a month ago so we wouldn't need to spend as much time physically in the post office, and we only just received that order yesterday! We'll be sending out issues next week and hopefully they won't take a month to get to you.You can order Volume Three here.

THIS WEEK AT ATTICUS REVIEW

BOOK REVIEWTASTE AS TIME TRAVELA Review of EL DORADO FREDDY’S by Danny Caine and Tara WrayReview by Michael B. Tager"...[the book] awoke a craving that was undeniable. How powerful must a book be to impel behavior? To evoke a triple-whammy of nostalgia, hunger and action?"GET THE BOOKREAD THE REVIEW

FICTIONA SANDWICHby James Cato"Here the four of us sit ordering dinner. Mrs. B asks about my new job as a firefighter. She has a twitch under her left eye, and strokes it like a cat."READ ON

POETRYSELLING ORANGESby Genevieve DeGuzman**Winner of the 2020 Poetry Contest!**"Don’t dwell on the knife,a switchblade, he imaginedhe Excalibured from granite..."READ ON

CREATIVE NONFICTIONBROOKLYN BABIESby Scott Neuffer"The more we understand the universe, the more we see into the nature of our own inputs. The way we live matters. The way we die matters."READ ON

MIXED MEDIAUNSETTLEDA short film by Cassie Timpy, Jordan Timpy, Jeffrey Yamaguchi, and Juhu Thukral"...an exploration of disquiet: How the weight of what's happened, just happened, or is about to happen — in the room you are living in, as well as in the rest of the increasingly chaotic world — impacts the quieter moments in which nothing is happening at all."WATCH HERE

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