I seem to be developing some bad habits when it comes to this endeavor. The mix between my final exams and my lovely girlfriend's imminent journey home for the next month left me little time to devote to my other important responsibility. Again, this is none of your concern, gentle reader, so I'll move on to my entry.
The description on this page says that I will not always write about games. This is the first of those times. I've spent the past three and a half years studying literature, so I'd like to talk about that, but be aware: at the moment, drinking a beer, not sipping wine, and I'm fairly certain that most of my professors would disagree with what I have to say. This is not the usual high-brow discussion of literature around a fire that will put anyone but Lit. majors to sleep.
I would like any reader that was tempted to stop reading when I brought up literature to ask him or herself why. Why would you consider not reading because the topic is on high literature? Because it's boring, that's why. The only people that find this kind of thing entertaining is an English major. The truth is that we too are often bored by some of this. I don't think that this is the way it should be.
I wrote a paper on P.D. James, an English author who writes mystery novels that are considered high literature. James writes excellent characters and places while intriguing the reader with a mystery. One of the critics that I cited for this paper said that he enjoyed James because she allows him to read a thriller without feeling guilty that he wasn't reading high literature. My question is this: why should he feel guilty about reading something that he likes? Why can't a normal thriller (or fantasy, or horror, for that matter) be high literature if a literary critic with a Ph.D. likes to read it? Because we place so much important in character and scene development? Sure those things are really important and no novel or short story should be without them, but so often in high literature, those things are focused on so much that they come at the cost of good storytelling. This critic likes P.D. James for nudging in the direction of genre fiction (fantasy, sci fi, horror, etc), but James is still pretty dry for my tastes.
My Creative Writing professor for the all of last year once said that literary fiction could stand to learn a lot from genre fiction. I agree more strongly than I think he intended. I think that Cormac McCarthy made a mistake in the way he wrote The Road, because it is a novel about the apocalypse that is extremely slow and dry because it focuses on the setting and characters so much. It's brilliantly written, but it can be really boring at places.
I think that this is enough for this rant, but in the next one, I've got it in for popular fiction too. Just you wait, gentle reader.
I hope this didn't bore you,
Zac
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2 comments:
Another example would be Les Miserables by Victor Hugo. The story itself is very interesting and well written with developed characters. The problem is that every chapter or so he'll interrupt the narrative by literally writing a discourse on his life and the various effects of the French Revolution on the people and the countryside. While it is interesting, it is not written in a necessarily interesting manner and doubles the length of the book with what is essentially a series of short essays.
Ditto with what Dillon said. In the case of Les Mis, my high school lit teachers only assigned us to read the chapters that had bearing on the plot or characterization. As a result we only read 1/3 of the novel. I sat down and looked at the rest, and yes, it was well written, but honestly I didn't care. Especially when I was desperate to find out what happens to Jean Valjean and Cosette.
Also, this was a cool post. (Especially the first paragraph. :D)
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