Marcel Proust once observed that newspapers, with all their insistent headlines and daily updates, had become indispensable to modern cultural life – even as they threatened to overshadow books altogether. It was a paradox that resonated with a whole generation of 19th- and early 20th-century French writers. They reviled the press for its sensationalism, corruption, and mass appeal. Yet they relied on the very medium they scorned to earn a living, build reputations, and experiment with new literary forms. Their ambivalent relationship with journalism, infused with both alarm and admiration, is a rich subject that still speaks to our own uneasy age of information overload.
In this post, we will take a closer look at how figures such as Charles Baudelaire, Stéphane Mallarmé, Guillaume Apollinaire, and Marcel Proust navigated the rise of ‘newspaper civilisation’ in France. Despite their complaints that newspapers were a destructive force – an ‘evil’ that sapped moral and artistic vitality – many of these very critics also wrote for the press. Through essays, reviews, poems, and serialised novels, they both shaped and were shaped by the dynamic, fast-paced world of print journalism. By tracing their experiments with intermediality and their forays into the world of press publicity, we can glean fresh perspectives on how best to manage the demands of new technologies – and how to find an artistic space free from the onslaught of perpetual news.

The Rise of Newspaper Civilisation
By the time Baudelaire was writing in the 1860s, newspapers had undergone a massive transformation. From modest political bulletins serving metropolitan elites, they had become an industrial product, cheap, widely distributed, and designed to appeal to broad audiences hungry for news, serial fiction, illustrations, gossip, and advertising. Circulation soared, with daily numbers growing from about 1.5 million in 1870 to some 10 million by 1914. Amid new freedoms of the press (and fewer restrictions on political reportage), journalists rushed to feed an appetite for up-to-date information.
For many critics, these developments posed a threat to high art. The pages of the typical mass-circulation newspaper were likened to a ‘tissue of horrors’, filled with lurid crime stories and sensational tragedies, feeding a near-addictive appetite for fresh shocks. This was what Baudelaire memorably called ‘a disgusting aperitif’ that the civilised man drank every morning at breakfast. Although he, too, was deeply alarmed by what we might label ‘doomscrolling,’ Baudelaire was one of the first to acknowledge that the press could serve as an engine for new artistic forms.
In later decades, the phenomenon only intensified. Technological advances and improved education turned the press into what Mallarmé dubbed ‘universal reportage’, a constant flood of commentary and bulletins. It was partly a marvel – a new democracy of reading. But it also sparked fear that literature would be drowned in the torrent of sensational news stories. The paradox is that many of the writers who decried these conditions were themselves active participants, penning columns, short stories, and poems for the same newspapers they often criticised.
The Literary ‘Whorehouse of Thought’
Honoré de Balzac’s monumental novel Lost Illusions (1837-43) shows just how suspicious literary authors could be of press culture. In the novel, a young idealistic poet, Lucien de Rubempré, arrives in Paris brimming with aspirations of artistic glory. Before long, he is seduced by the glamour of the press world. He writes flattering reviews in exchange for bribes, befriends editors who demand ‘bought’ coverage, and sinks into professional corruption. Finally, he abandons his literary ideals altogether. The newspaper offices are described as ‘whorehouses of thought’, cheapening and degrading genuine art.
Yet even Balzac, who savaged the ethics of mass journalism in Lost Illusions, wrote for newspapers and magazines to support himself. The same story applied to Guy de Maupassant, the Goncourt brothers, and many other key figures. They earned their keep through serialised fiction and short pieces, often in the very venues they publicly maligned. That uneasy dance between moral condemnation and practical necessity recurred time and again in 19th-century French letters.
Corruption was widespread. One editor supposedly prided himself that every single line of his newspaper was bought and paid for, which is why the novelists’ depiction of shady payoffs and biased reviews in the press hit so close to home. They were documenting what they already saw. But they also overstated a picture of unrelenting degradation, ignoring the creative opportunities that daily journalism provided. The ‘laboratory of literature’ thrived in those pages, with authors testing new styles and forms that no publisher would risk in a full-length book. Baudelaire’s prose poems, for example, found an audience through the ephemeral world of newspapers and magazines.
Baudelaire and the Elusive Concept of Modernity
Charles Baudelaire’s own relationship to newspaper civilisation was exemplary of this broader paradox. He lamented readers’ morning habit of devouring the ‘universal atrocity’ doled out by the press. Yet in an 1863 essay for Le Figaro – then a literary newspaper – Baudelaire penned a rhapsodic salute to the illustrator Constantin Guys, calling him ‘the painter of modern life’. The poet championed Guys not because he believed the artist’s sketches were timeless but because they captured a new, fleeting quality Baudelaire famously labelled ‘modernity.’
What Baudelaire admired was Guys’s ability to seize the ever-changing fashions and street scenes of 19th-century Paris. Journalism, like Guys’s sketches, was anchored in speed, novelty, and hustle. It sought to fix the ephemeral in print. The idea that newspapers recorded the ‘transitory’ essence of the present, while also promising a sense of collective identity and continuity, fascinated Baudelaire. The press typified modernity’s love affair with novelty and progress.
Mallarmé: Bridging Book and Newspaper
Stéphane Mallarmé, often regarded as the paragon of pure poetic aspiration, also found himself entangled in the world of journalism. In one breath, he railed against the crude prose and utilitarian spirit of ‘universal reportage’, suggesting that newspapers were the nemesis of inspired literature. Yet in the next, he was actively publishing in dailies, editing a fashion magazine, or drafting articles on the business of writing.
Mallarmé saw an opportunity to merge the crowd-pleasing energy of the newspaper with the lofty aspirations of the book. He envisioned a ‘modern popular Poem’ that would unite the ordinary reader and the poet in a shared aesthetic experience. His greatest (and never fully realised) dream was that of a universal ‘Book’ – a work so powerful it could become a civic religion of poetry, reviving the spiritual dimension of cultural life.
His final masterpiece, A Throw of the Dice Never Will Abolish Chance (1897), offers hints of that ambition. The text swirls across the pages, with varying type sizes that evoke headlines or advertisements. A single motif of a shipwreck (‘naufrage’) seems to float in the white space, as though it were a fragment of breaking news or a terrifying dispatch that takes on cosmic, poetic resonance. Mallarmé’s poem was first published in Cosmopolis, a high-circulation magazine that paid him 40 francs per page of verse – decent money at the time. Thus, one of the most daring, esoteric poems of French modernism was made possible by a commercial press transaction.
Mallarmé also courted publicity with aplomb. He dropped sharp, quotable lines for reporters, e.g. his famously cryptic remark: ‘I know of no other bomb, than a book.’ He placed essays advocating government subsidies for writers and even orchestrated surveys of authors for major daily papers. Over time, Mallarmé became the ‘prince of poets’, heralded by Le Figaro and other publications. He deftly blended the spiritual grandeur of pure poetry with the promotional savvy of a seasoned journalist.
Apollinaire’s Playful Intermediality
If Mallarmé laid the groundwork for bridging the newspaper and poetic realms, it was Guillaume Apollinaire who took that collision of forms to a new level of playful intermediality. In his poem ‘Zone’ (1912), he dispensed with punctuation, echoed the fragmentation of newspaper layouts, and celebrated the cacophony of ads and headlines as a kind of poetry in its own right.
Apollinaire referred to newspapers in other works as well, cutting out masthead illustrations and adding them to his calligrammes: visual poems that sometimes look like paintings or shaped typography. In ‘Voyage’ (1914), a telegraph pole from Le Matin’s newspaper masthead adorns the page, alongside text arranged to resemble a chugging steam train. Drawing on the collage experiments of his friends Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso, Apollinaire turned the ‘raw facticity’ of the newspaper into a symbol of vibrant modernity.
His own career echoed the themes of these calligrammes. He was a tireless journalist, bouncing from one paper to another, penning art criticism that championed Cubism, and finding himself embroiled in controversies (including a brief imprisonment on suspicion of stealing the Mona Lisa). Apollinaire was underpaid and under siege, but he found a unique, boisterous energy in the hustle of the press. His poems combine, with ironic flair, the ephemeral excitement of daily headlines and the formal sophistication of avant-garde art.
Proust: The Inescapable Force of the Press
Marcel Proust, blessed with a private income, seldom needed to churn out journalism for survival. But he, too, flirted with the press. Early in his career, he published essays, society gossip, and social commentary. These short articles later resurfaced in In Search of Lost Time, where newspapers are everywhere. Characters read them, pore over them in cafes, discuss them in living rooms. The entire social swirl of the novel – from the Dreyfus Affair to war news – flows through those daily pages.
The Narrator’s single visible publication in In Search of Lost Time is a newspaper article: a piece describing some church steeples that he originally wrote for Le Figaro. In the novel, he waits impatiently for it to appear, repeatedly rifling through the paper to see if his item has made it into print. Once he finally sees it published, his excitement instantly segues into disillusionment. He realises that if an artwork depends too heavily on the fleeting approval of the daily press, it risks being shaped by popular taste rather than authentic artistic purpose. Paradoxically, that frustration triggers the Narrator’s resolve to write a different kind of text – one that stands outside ephemeral trends and aims for deeper truths about the self.
Nonetheless, Proust never denied his debts to the press. He reclaimed earlier articles for the text of his novel and never pretended that newspaper civilisation had no bearing on his imagination. Far from the vehement condemnation typical of Balzac’s era, Proust accepted that the rhythms of mass media were part of his literary identity. And, like Mallarmé, he proved adept at press relations, taking journalists out for lavish dinners, lobbying for better reviews, and occasionally penning favorable mentions of his own work for discreet publication. Despite his disclaimers, Proust knew how to hustle in the ivory tower.
Parallels for the Digital Age
The French modernists’ uneasy entanglement with the newspaper world has much to say about our age of smartphones, social media, and 24-hour feeds. Flaubert advised sealing oneself away in an ‘ivory tower’ of artistic solitude, ignoring the fleeting excitements of the outside world. Yet Mallarmé, Apollinaire, and Proust charted a different course. They found ways to incorporate the best of new media into their art – harnessing the ephemeral dynamism of journalism while preserving the autonomy of serious writing.
Today, digital technologies provoke similarly mixed responses. Social media can look like an addictive ‘doomscrolling’ environment that fosters misinformation and superficial reading. Yet it also brings innovative possibilities for playing with texts, forging new networks of readers, and adding fresh dimensions (images, audio, interactivity) to our writing. Some authors respond by declaring that the only path forward is to reclaim the purity of print. Others, like so-called ‘digital modernists,’ experiment by blending literature with apps, hypertext, and e-labs, in ways reminiscent of how Mallarmé once combined the fluid typography of a newspaper with the elevated tradition of poetry.
Ironic Traditionalists vs Digital Modernists
Contemporary authors tackling the online realm often split into two camps. ‘Ironic traditionalists’ – such as Gary Shteyngart, Patricia Lockwood, and Lauren Oyler – write ‘internet novels’ that criticise our hyper-connected, frantic lifestyles. In their works, redemption comes through offline experiences, such as reading physical books or establishing deeper, face-to-face bonds. These novels lament the degenerative impact of social media, but they stay firmly within classic literary structures.
‘Digital modernists,’ on the other hand, treat the web and its gadgets as raw material to be shaped into fresh artistic forms. Jessica Pressman’s Digital Modernism and authors like Joanna Walsh or Kate Pullinger create literary pieces that exist on our screens, weaving in data from readers’ phones, or inviting interactive reading experiences that push beyond the traditional linear path. These works, much like Apollinaire’s calligrammes, fuse the digital and the poetic.
The drawback is that digital literature tied to an app or operating system can vanish as soon as that technology grows obsolete. (Many works from the 1980s and ’90s are already inaccessible.) It is also challenging to maintain ‘deep reading’ on a device that’s constantly pinging with notifications. So the question remains: how to preserve the book’s virtues – stability, beauty, immersive focus – while embracing the digital realm’s potential for innovation?
Reimagining the Book
Mallarmé once wrote that ‘everything… exists to end up as a book.’ Rather than forcing the printed codex and digital media to compete, perhaps we can follow Mallarmé’s dream by fusing the best aspects of both. A few visionaries have proposed augmented books that use conductive ink and other printed electronics to trigger audio, animated visuals, or embedded links. Instead of giving up the tactile reliability of paper, we can layer in digital features that build new reading experiences.
Such a ‘hybrid codex’ might have subtle ways to highlight key passages with light or sound, or offer optional expansions that connect to external sources. Readers could enjoy the mental stillness and physical presence of a printed page without succumbing to the infinite distractions of a smartphone. Like Mallarmé’s quest to merge the ephemeral energy of the newspaper with the enduring architecture of poetry, these projects aim to channel the digital age’s creative chaos into a more enduring, immersive form.
Of course, engineers and designers would have to solve many technical challenges around durability, power sources, and cost. The bigger question is whether such digital–print hybrids could capture the public’s imagination. When newspapers evolved in the 19th century, they found success by offering both mass entertainment and possibilities for artistic development. So a new format could succeed if it meets the needs of both everyday readers – who want convenience and excitement – and the adventurous creators seeking to push literary boundaries.
Finding Space for Art in an Age of Overload
It’s easy to look at Mallarmé, Apollinaire, or Proust and see them as icons of pure literary tradition. Yet each was a ‘hustler in the ivory tower,’ fully aware that art doesn’t survive without an audience, and an audience is shaped by the media of the time. They chafed against the commercial, sensational aspects of journalism. But instead of retreating into total isolation, they found creative ways to subvert, play with, and benefit from the press.
From Balzac’s depiction of the ‘whorehouse of thought’ to Apollinaire’s exuberant collages of headlines and telegraph poles, we find a continuous thread: the newspaper was the ultimate symbol of modern life, with its ephemeral illusions but also its unstoppable energy. In grappling with the newspaper, the French modernists taught us how art could thrive, even in adverse conditions. Their lesson was not to seal oneself away – which leads to irrelevance – nor to wholeheartedly embrace the spectacle of mass culture. Rather, it was to maintain a state of uneasy but fruitful engagement with new media technologies.
In our era of smartphones and social media, the challenges of frantic media consumption are even more pervasive. We face the same temptation: to bemoan the endless feed, to blame it for destroying attention spans and fueling trivial debates. But the history of the French modernists suggests that creative engagement is possible. We can re-engineer the book, the magazine, the blog post – or indeed, the phone app – to preserve artistic exploration and deeper reflection.
Conclusion: An Unfinished Revolution
Flaubert wanted to disappear into the ivory tower, to float above the frenzy of newspaper civilisation. But Mallarmé, Apollinaire, and Proust demonstrated a more nuanced path, one that integrated the ephemeral and the eternal, the mass appeal and the artistic ideal. By borrowing from the new forms and energy of the daily press, these authors revitalised poetry, the novel, and art criticism.
It is a project that remains incomplete. New digital technologies offer us the chance to push it further, to craft books that are not purely inert codices nor purely intangible data, but something in between. We can build forms of writing that absorb the disorienting energy of the online world, just as Mallarmé and his successors once harnessed the chaos of newspaper headlines. What emerges could help sustain deep reading and aesthetic wonder for generations to come.
As Mallarmé might say, ‘Everything… exists to end up as a book.’ But the book itself can be reinvented for this restless age. And in doing so, we may yet discover ways to balance modern media’s relentless hustle with the enduring elegance of literature.
Written with reference to the work of Max McGuinness, a Research Ireland postdoctoral fellow in French at Trinity College Dublin and a theatre critic for the Financial Times. He is the author of Hustlers in the Ivory Tower: Press and Modernism from Mallarmé to Proust (2024) and the co-editor of The Irish Proust: Cultural Crossings from Beckett to McGahern (forthcoming, 2025).