Nostalgia about 20th century modernism/avantgarde?

Whenever I read books like Pierre Bourdieu's Rules of Art - which explains how authors accumulated prestige in 19th/20th century Paris - or like Pascale Casanova's World Republic of Letters - which explains why Paris was on just about every modern writer's mind, and shows how writers used different strategies in their careers -, and whenever I think of the great poetry books I've read from the past century that brimmed with enthusiasm, I get a feeling I'm living in the wrong century... at least when it comes to literature.

I'm most keen on literature that experiments, deconstructs, explores the limits of writing. I like to say it has to do with my autistic brain works, yet I know writers who claim to be on the autistic spectrum and their preferences are almost polar opposite to mine. (What's worse is I hardly know anyone who feels very close to me, and sometimes I feel like I would have to clone myself to stop feeling so lonely.)

So I have to resign myself with the thought that I'm merely the product of a privileged upbringing, having spent all of my high school reading frantically through great deals of essential pre-modern and early to late modern literature, and then stumbling upon Penn University's online course on modern & contemporary American poetry, which made me fall in love with even more difficult writers. like Gertrude Stein and the language poets...

As a reader, it feels great to have this much better access to most of the tradition of 'innovative' writing (in lack of a better word). But as an author who doesn't come from a privileged background, it feels like there's no present and no future left, no financial security for writing, few prospects of serious attention. Outside the fragile and overly expensive and privileged academic enclaves (I have sometimes the impression that maybe the people I'd get along with are on some campus and can afford to not waste time on social media or sites like LibraryThing and Goodreads, whereas I'm too poor to stay offline), the corporate suits don't care much for any poetry, let alone experimental one, but neither do "indie", "hip" people.

And now... don't get me wrong, I hate anti-"PC" (almost every writer in my country seems to fall into this camp) and I do appreciate that minorities are finally getting their due, some of the greatest experimental writers of the past century do happen to be women and/or queer/part of some other minority! However, it was traumatic to witness how, in NA, it happened that certain high-profile conceptual poets pulled off racist incidents, which made other people who otherwise come from the same milieu to debate how conceptual poetry itself and even any and all avant-garde are inherently "racist", "elitist" and so on!

Conceptual lit seemed like a great way to restore some of that 20th century energy to shake up the literary establishment, only to become too enmeshed in a problematic establishment and force some of its practitioners to try distance themselves from this term... just as I was trying to adopt and propose it in my country and shake up the establishment here. And I tried in vain anyway, because almost no one had a deep interest in it and engaged earnestly with me.

Sorry for this early morning rant... in which I am the only one responsible for my own misery, it's not as if I don't know that literature is dead, killed by neoliberalism because no one has the time and room of their own to write whatever one wants and whatever one don't imagine now one could write, and I'd be better off even just producing equally niche music - that would still be a more sizable niche that feels more alive.

Literary gift and intellectuality are still respected in Paris, but I don't think they were ever routinely remunerative, especially for poets, especially difficult ones. Mallarmé had to teach to stay alive. Stein and Toklas had some family money, but they also lucked out buying now priceless art for cheap. The surrealists did all kinds of jobs. A great many contemporary authors rely on journalism, teaching, and other media for the largest portion of their income. However, there is still a certain aura and prestige to being a littérateur, a notion inexistent in English, where only the antiquated "man of letters" comes close.

North America and the Anglo-Saxon world in general doesn't have the same regard for culture and going by the current trends, that will only get worse (the sheer size and average wealth of the US campus world somewhat obscures the national anti-intellectual trait, but as even private education erodes, it's bound to become more apparent even there. The UK goes where the US goes, when it doesn't precede it.)

Capitalism destroys all aesthetic or idealistic arguments for the arts. It's up to you to find "customers" for your "product", or you're a lazy bum, a loser, etc. Oops, sorry, didn't mean to make you feel worse... :)

If your French is as good as your English, you might consider following so many of your compatriots into francophone production.

I couldn't help but mention this article by Will Self an edited version of this year's Richard Hillary memorial lecture, which will be given by him on 6 May at the Gulbenkian theatre, St Cross Building, Oxford. It could possibly assuage the angst we all feel at the supposed death of literature and the literary novel. Here's the link: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/may/02/will-self-novel-dead-literary-fict...

Some poets like Rupi Kaur are still finding success today, but only by their work fitting the times. You may have missed your niche in terms of your preferred style suiting the period, but rare success can still be achieved by the right combination of talent and luck.

Emphasis on luck. We may not be placing enough of that emphasis on the greats of the past, while admiring their talent and subsequent influence. It's said today that we don't know how many would-have-been greats die unnoticed. We don't really know how true that was in the past as well, but I'd imagine it happened then too, to individuals who weren't right for their time either.