* This is taken from an essay I wrote denouncing a certain tenant of the Formalist Theory of Literature. I won't get into what that is, but this section of that essay has true bearing on what Nintendo is doing in the gaming industry today with the DS and the Wii. * One of the most used phrases inside the business world today is “innovate or die.” The idea that continually pursuing the same end through the same means will eventually drive you to utter failure is something that has been the subject of study for many years. If “...continuity in literature...” was truly “...more important and significant than innovation...” the state of literature today would be very different. Today there are bookstores full of novels of many different genres, many of which have existed in their modern day forms for less than 100 years. Take the Graphic Novel for instance; the first Graphic Novel published in the United States was “The Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck”, published in 1842. However, stories have been told via pictures even before the beginning of written history. There are Petroglyphs in the American Southwest that date back thousands of years. These Petroglyphs were carved into the walls of canyons to record stories. The modern day Graphic Novel is only the most current iteration of a long line of innovations that began with Petroglyphs etched onto canyon walls thousands of years ago. The same can be said of all genres currently in existence in literature. They are all just the most current iteration in a long line of innovation brought on by progressive thinkers who took to heart the fact that innovation is the only real means of progression. (C) Jonathan A. Daley, September 11, 2006