Style ideals of clarity now serve the commodity logic of fast reading.

Evidence

What if, in this period of the overproduction of printed matter and the proliferation of methods of quick reading, they were intended to speed the reader across a sentence in such a way that he can salute a readymade idea effortlessly in passing, without suspecting that real thought demands a descent into the materiality of language and a consent to time itself in the form of the sentence? — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 18

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Jameson’s later work on postmodernism and the flattening of time — the same critique of speed, image, and ready-made ideas that underwrites his analysis of pastiche and the waning of historicity. — connects to: The commodity structure shapes language itself in modern literature. — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 757; Ordinary reading is a passive absorption governed by linear syntax — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,…, 1196; Aesthetic style becomes a commodity attribute that aestheticizes everyday life. — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry: Selected Essays…, 61 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• The commodity structure shapes language itself in modern literature. #expands (0.85) — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 757
• Adorno’s dense style is a deliberate intransigence against cheap readability #responds-to (0.85) — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 18
• Capitalist speed and flow premiums directly inscribe themselves into literary style. #expands (0.85) — Anna Kornbluh, Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late…, 135
• Modernist difficulty in poetry and philosophy counters the cliches accelerated by commercial reading #responds-to (0.85) — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 69
• Aesthetic style becomes a commodity attribute that aestheticizes everyday life. #expands (0.80) — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 61
• The market operates as a totalizing logic underlying diverse aesthetic forms #expands (0.80) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 476
• Ordinary reading is a passive absorption governed by linear syntax #corroborates (0.75) — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 1196
• Style promises to reconcile individual expression with a shared universal idiom. #complicates (0.75) — Anna Kornbluh, Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late…, 392