Today’s literature: prescriptions written by patients.
—Karl Kraus (first half of the 20th century)*

the writer of yesteryear was the kind of patient clever enough to self-medicate and not listen to doctors’ orders. Today, those same doctors, who go by the name of critics, save him from hospitalization. He is good as long as he takes his medicine, which he can only get as an outpatient. He takes what they give him; he writes what they tell him to. But this prescription-writing must not be confused with a cure. It merely ensures his survival.

*Kraus, Half-Truths, 53.