Literature

Literature is not conformism, but dissent. Those authors who merely repeat what everybody approves and wants to hear are of no importance. What counts alone is the innovator, the dissenter, the harbinger of things unheard of, the man who rejects the traditional standards and aims at substituting new values and ideas for old ones. He is by necessity anti-authoritarian and anti-governmental, irreconcilably opposed to the immense majority of his contemporaries. He is precisely the author whose books the greater part of the public does not buy.

The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality, p. 51

It is true that most of the novels and plays published today are mere trash. Nothing else can be expected when thousands of volumes are written every year. Our age could still some day be called an age of the flowering of literature if only one out of a thousand books published would prove to be equal to the great books of the past.

The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality, p. 52

It is not the fault of capitalism that the common man does not appreciate uncommon books.

The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality, p. 52

What characterizes capitalism is not the bad taste of the crowds, but the fact that these crowds, made prosperous by capitalism, became “consumers” of literature—of course, of trashy literature. The book market is flooded by a downpour of trivial faction for the semibarbarians. But this does not prevent great authors from creating imperishable works.

The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality, p. 79