Literature: important or impotent?

Following up on the Yann Martel thing below, there's been some confusion as to whether or not I think literature is important. Every time I've said it isn't, I've tried to qualify that statement to make clear that even though I think it is, I also recognize that the vast majority of people don't. I don't exactly welcome that reality, but I do accept that it's true, and think it is an important truth for writers to keep in mind when they start demanding real-world entitlements.

In the grand, writerly tradition of recycling work whenever possible, here is part of the reply I made to this post on Steven Beattie's site:

First of all, I was talking about writers, not so much writing. I never suggested for a second that literature doesn't actually matter, in the sense that Sartre and Bloom and a million others have argued, only that the manner and realm in which literature matters has absolutely nothing to do with, say, how appreciated a bunch of artists feel when they visit the House of Commons. I would argue that literature's importance is almost antithetical to the idea of being applauded by a bunch of parliamentarians.

Great literature is as much an indictment of reality as it is a celebration of it, so we shouldn't act so shocked and appalled when reality isn't all that grateful for the attention. The imaginative privileges writers grant themselves should be enough; demanding cultural and economic privileges on top of those is a little rich.

Ist klar?

Finally, there are a lot of things wrong with Martel's piece, but probably the most damning is this: You can't argue for the importance of great writing with an essay that is sloppy, clichéd, condescending, pretentious, illogical, and arrogant in the extreme. Sort of defeats the purpose.