As a fan of classical antiquity, I enjoy seeing ancient quotes crop up in the most unlikely places. Whether splayed across a national monument or displayed as a screenname beneath a wonderful blog post (see below), famous quotes worm their way into all sorts of situations.

But the Greeks and Romans aren't our only sources of inspiration. There's a stock of famed authors such that any sentence - no matter how banal - is infused with new life simply because of who may have said it in a fit of passion, frenzy, or delusion.

Nor is our adoration confined to quotes. If a well-loved author experienced adversity in childhood or faiied to eke out a living in her own lifetime, she becomes an inspiration. And rightly so. This post is not meant to detract from the remarkable feats and perseverance of famous authors in history. Instead, it only asks why the modern literary community is so captivated with alluding to and citing those who came before.

For instance, I have recently encountered an article that examines the role of antiquity in comforting us. That is, we look to the past to see that others have experienced similar pain or similar pleasure - that we are not the first to encounter the trying times which frequently define a human experience. But I feel that this is only a small part of the answer to a very large question.

Increasingly, I have found that my peers are weaning themselves even further from the quotes and histories of these authors. I have lately had discussions and read pieces in which names of people and titles of books are dropped in such a fashion that the only thing they can possibly contribute is a sense of pretentiousness. How should one feel about our reliance on the past for comfort, for answers? When an American girl in a French bookstore tells you which obscure beatnik novels you need to read and in what order, why does it seem so superficial? I believe that it is because she has lost interest in the history and the people. Instead she lists only proper nouns and cannot maintain a conversation about the substantive content behind them. I find that this issue also plagues the literature of today.