I am often amused by those who would define literature, thinking that somehow they can draw boundaries around such an abstract idea as if drawing boundaries would ever make any difference at all. Literature is a phenomenon unequaled in the imagination of human creation. It bleeds into every avenue of human endeavor, but has nothing to do with any particular area of writing. Some would say that literature is just the creative arm of writing–poetry, essay, fiction, non-fiction, but who hasn’t read an interesting letter, diary, o explanation? Some theorists would have us think that literature has something to do with artist’s intention, but that idea has long since burned itself out on the ash heap of good intentions and dead end streets. Literature cannot be explained because it defies explanation, escapes facile definitions, runs away from those who would box it up and sell it. The problem with definitions of literature is that almost all of them come with some sort of aesthetic attached: that this writing is not aesthetically driven so it isn’t literature, that a novel by Nabakov or Cervantes is literature, but the instructions for building a model race car are not. There is no doubt that these are different kinds of literature that do extremely different things, but they are both literature. Literature does not need protecting, or defining, or coddling, or anything at all. Whether one likes a piece of literature or not is another matter entirely, but then again, nothing is written about personal taste. You may or may not like Ovid, Aristotle, Aquinas, O’Henry, Miller, Flaubert, or Pasternak, but others do. You may like romances, or mysteries, or essays on evolution, and others may find all of that very boring while they read historical fiction and biographies which you hate. The problem with a word such as “literature” is that it is too big to be constrained in any meaningful way which does not deconstruct into nothingness. Literature can be almost anything. Maybe the list of ingredients on a cereal box is not literature, but then again, maybe it is. Literature, regardless of its form or content, has life when readers do whatever it is that readers do: read. By trying to define literature be its function, or form, or content one falls into an aesthetic tiger trap of irrelevancy and vanity. Though some might react by saying that literature has to be definable because it exists, I would still insist that all definitions fall short of actually saying anything of importance about literature, writing, genre, tropes, metaphors, or reading. Some might accuse this point of view as completely relativist. Those who teach “great texts” are often blinded by their own aesthetic considerations for what constitutes literature, which is fine because literature offers liberty especially for those who would lock themselves in a prison of pious opinions, anachronistic literary theory, and worn out traditions. Literature does not have to be old, or written by white European males to be good, profound, insightful, entertaining, delightful, or moving. I’ve read my share of Aquinas and Augustine, and although they are very good, they are literature for more mature minds that have time to disentangle the complex rhetoric and profound theologies. Dashiell Hammett has as much, or more, to say about nature of sin in our fallen world, and he’s a little more accessible than his predecessors. Since what we consider to be literary has so much to do with personal taste, a rather subjective criteria, we must admit that there was no golden age of literature in the past when everything was marvelous and that today we are passing through a decadence from which we cannot free ourselves, which is just so much nonsense. Literature, even in the age of mechanical reproduction, will survive every challenge to quantify it, change it, monitor it, censor it, or kill it because readers will always want more.