New Voice

The literature section of New Voice will, predictably, feature essays on literature. Not reviews, although our contributors may decide to write on a new, or recently released book, but essays. Our editorial policy is relatively free and easy – our contributors are free to post what ever and when ever they choose. Essays can be thematic, my first series of posts will add up to an essay on the various aspects of responsibility in literature, or can be more specific – dealing with a particular author, or book, story, play or poem.

This section and, indeed, the entire site, is inspired by a love of the essay and by a (perceived, at least) virtual vacuum in this respect. Sure, there are plenty of sites dealing with books and all aspects of literature, but they are generally review sites and few devote the time and space to the leisurely consideration of an idea. It is our belief that the Internet is the ideal medium for the essay, for the postmodern essay anyway, references and quotations (of all kinds, notably video and audio clips) are easily incorporated into the essay by virtue of the link, a kind of online equivalent of the footnote. The blog, with its facility for comments, allow essays which are being posted in instalments to develop organically, mid-composition – it is our hope that insightful comments may influence the course of an essay and indeed inspire new essays.
We hope to pitch our essays somewhere between the standard blog approach (or the standard approach as we see it), which consists of endless top tens – top ten best books or, interestingly in a recent Guardian books blog, top ten coffee drinking scenes, and the academic essay. We have no interest in being held to rigorous academic standards, to quote from my edition of Montaigne’s essays (translated by M.A. Screech): If my design had been to seek the favour of the world I would have decked myself out better and presented myself in a studied gait. We do, however, want to allow our contributors the space and freedom to explore their subjects in a serious, considered manner without being compelled to condense or to ‘dumb-down’.

We hope too, in the spirit of postmodernism, (athough to paraphrase (liberally) a line from DeLillo’s underrated Cosmopolis, even the word postmodern sounds out of date now) that our differentiated sections won’t be all that separate and that the content will bleed from one section to the other, inform other sections and that essays in each section will converse with the others.

Finally, we are not professing to be experts, just enthusiastic amateurs, expressing our opinions and thinking aloud…feel free to add your voice.