Even the much-praised notion of competition seems fake and cynically manipulated by the “corporate” mentality that now pervades the world of culture – by the financial pre-selection that determines what publishers, producers, and other impresarios will support. Just imagine what might have happened with the works of, say, Proust, Kafka, Musil, Faulkner, or Borges had they been subjected to mass-market competition like shoes or cosmetics.