Literate humanity is solicited daily by millions of words, printed, broadcast, screened, about books which it will never open, music it will not hear, works of art it will never set eyes on. Not even the computer and electronic databanks can process this mass. Steiner is mainly looking to arouse self-pity. It's all simply become too much for the scholars. A mandarin madness of secondary discourse infects thought and sensibility.
Media ruin the mind, and pointing out the culprits is sufficient.
Poets, composers and painters, according to Steiner, should not be satisfied with their five-minute fame. Meanwhile, the media have produced their own immortal heroes and myths, which can compete with the traditional ones and moreover happily embroider on them. Journalism bids us invest in the bourse of momentary sensation. Originality is antithetical to novelty. But creativity has become fatally entangled in the academic-journalistic discourse which twines around it.