A proposal, something to test Marshall McLuhan’s incorporation through numbness:
In the late 1950s the painter Brion Gysin commented to William Burroughs that writing was fifty years behind painting. He meant this in terms of technique. It was partly this observation that led to the cut-up experiments, made famous by Burroughs Nova Mob novels, and later thoroughly incorporated into late capitalist culture.
Like most generalisations this is true and not true. Novels and poetry are antique art forms. While they are valid media, veneration of such art forms is generally part of a reactionary agenda. However, writing, as opposed to novels, is not backward in being forward. A newspaper is a novel of a day. It is as synchronic as language is going to get. Though the stories and features are fragmented in form the overall effect of a newspaper is broad and impressionistic. Newspapers are a form of montage. The narrative is the overall perspective of the newspaper, the ideology, the distinct set of ideas it promotes, corresponding to a point of view within society.
Surely it would be possible to produce a book, somewhere between an anthology and a picaresque novel along the same lines: with a staff of writers and editors, a series of themes, perhaps a stock set of characters (it’s fairly clear the day before who will be the characters featured in your average newspaper). There would be word targets and deadlines. New and interesting books could be turned out in days, as opposed to years. If needs be these books could be presented in a similar visual style to newspapers.