American letters
Nov. 12th, 2003 11:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
threeplusfireSamantha's responsible for this post, as I can't stop thinking about it. I even wrote a lengthy poetic piece that was lost to a bad connection and my pathetic Compaq work computer. Seeing as I've taken more than my fair share of certifications tonight, this is a much better task. This thought has potential for so many academic essays and it needs much more time to come together. But here I can begin.
American Literature and I do not get along. We dislike each other intensely, but smile at parties and in classrooms, find the occasional nice thing to say to each other while furiously whispering behind backs about all of our most hated qualities.
Twain's wit was brilliant in his non-fiction, but I can't stand to read his novels. My attempt to read Faulkner for the first time has failed miserably because I threw The Sound & The Fury across the room and have not picked up since page 62. Willa Cather should have stuck with journalism instead of those profoundly dull novels. Kerouac began to grate on me once I wasn't sixteen anymore and he started talking about mysticism. Steinbeck left me unmoved, and I stand by my assertion that it sounds more fun to eat cardboard pancakes under a freeway overpass than ever read one of Salinger's pretentious works ever again. The ponderous canon so often excerpted and read in classrooms across the country leaves me on the whole unmoved.
I could not begin to explain why I feel as if a gulf seperates me from these books, or why Slavic literature crosses the room to dance with me. I can only speculate that some accident of nature or nuture cut me loose. It's not in the subject matter, the plots or the style alone. It's all, it's one, it's not any of those. In the 10th grade, I discovered Dostoevsky, I read everything Kerouac had penned, I struggled past the headaches to get to heart and brains of Burroughs and I read exactly one story in my American literature class that wrenched me into it. Tom Godwin's The Cold Equation made me cry, caused a fight in our classroom and our teacher to assign us lengthy essays on why we were bad children. So far as I know, Godwin is American but I would only give you a wry smile if you told me he was not really one.
What will save American literature from itself is time. As American culture grows more fractured, authors can break away from the dusty, dull monotholith of Great American Classics. The massive connection of the 21st century will bring new voices. My favorite Americans are ones whose work reflects a disconnection from the culture of their day. Edith Wharton, Hawthorne's The Scarlett Letter, William Burroughs, Bret Easton Ellis, and a handful of others will join me at the bar. We'll knock back the hard liquor and make sly comments in low voices, while American Literature sips her punch and frowns from the other side of the room.
American Literature and I do not get along. We dislike each other intensely, but smile at parties and in classrooms, find the occasional nice thing to say to each other while furiously whispering behind backs about all of our most hated qualities.
Twain's wit was brilliant in his non-fiction, but I can't stand to read his novels. My attempt to read Faulkner for the first time has failed miserably because I threw The Sound & The Fury across the room and have not picked up since page 62. Willa Cather should have stuck with journalism instead of those profoundly dull novels. Kerouac began to grate on me once I wasn't sixteen anymore and he started talking about mysticism. Steinbeck left me unmoved, and I stand by my assertion that it sounds more fun to eat cardboard pancakes under a freeway overpass than ever read one of Salinger's pretentious works ever again. The ponderous canon so often excerpted and read in classrooms across the country leaves me on the whole unmoved.
I could not begin to explain why I feel as if a gulf seperates me from these books, or why Slavic literature crosses the room to dance with me. I can only speculate that some accident of nature or nuture cut me loose. It's not in the subject matter, the plots or the style alone. It's all, it's one, it's not any of those. In the 10th grade, I discovered Dostoevsky, I read everything Kerouac had penned, I struggled past the headaches to get to heart and brains of Burroughs and I read exactly one story in my American literature class that wrenched me into it. Tom Godwin's The Cold Equation made me cry, caused a fight in our classroom and our teacher to assign us lengthy essays on why we were bad children. So far as I know, Godwin is American but I would only give you a wry smile if you told me he was not really one.
What will save American literature from itself is time. As American culture grows more fractured, authors can break away from the dusty, dull monotholith of Great American Classics. The massive connection of the 21st century will bring new voices. My favorite Americans are ones whose work reflects a disconnection from the culture of their day. Edith Wharton, Hawthorne's The Scarlett Letter, William Burroughs, Bret Easton Ellis, and a handful of others will join me at the bar. We'll knock back the hard liquor and make sly comments in low voices, while American Literature sips her punch and frowns from the other side of the room.
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no subject
Date: 2003-11-12 09:49 pm (UTC)I think steinbeck is incredibly moving, I have been amazed by every book of his that I have read. You might want to try out "the winter of our discontent", the name scares people away but it's actually a mostly funny book.
I think that Bret Easton Ellis is total crap.
If you ever have any desire to read faulker, I think that "as I lay dying" is easier to get into that "the sound and the fury", but it is written in dialect, and I know that some people have issues with that. (I love writing in dialect, it totally enhances the book for me.)
I have never read much slavic literature, just the Dostoevsky that we had to read in high school which I found thick and often boring.
no subject
Date: 2003-11-12 10:04 pm (UTC)The dialect indeed does drive me nuts. I understand it's artistic purpose, but I find it inherently frustrating. Yargh.
no subject
Date: 2003-11-12 09:52 pm (UTC)The Cold Equations is a great story.
no subject
Date: 2003-11-12 10:06 pm (UTC)Some days I wish I had a time machine so I could back and beat Willa Cather until she promised not to ever write again.
no subject
Date: 2003-11-12 11:08 pm (UTC)But ixnay Faulkner? Ack. Y'know, he's right up there with Ellis. Just as dark and cynical and twisted. And, as y'know, not all AmerEnglish lit isn't bad, though I agree that it needs to save itself from itself, but more like getting away from the Airport bestsellers. And I'm a lil surprised I didn't see Dorothy Parker or Flannery O'Connor coming to knock back shots with you at the bar.
What's your take on Pynchon? ;)
no subject
Date: 2003-11-12 11:22 pm (UTC)I haven't read Pynchon, honestly. I should probably give hime a go.
no subject
Date: 2003-11-13 12:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-11-13 12:02 am (UTC)Like that.
To me, Kerouac only wrote only one good novel; Steinbeck is good at times; I really like Salinger (but that's just me); Bret Easton Ellis I like even when it's too nasty, because he does 'details' :D
*jumps out*
no subject
Date: 2003-11-13 12:06 pm (UTC)I definitely agree about Kerouac. ;)
no subject
Date: 2003-11-13 05:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-11-13 12:03 pm (UTC)Bret Easton Ellis is my guilty pleasure because his writing is flat and emotionless, and it's the awful 80s. I hate it but I love it.
no subject
Date: 2003-11-13 12:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-11-13 12:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-11-13 10:45 am (UTC)love and books,
Samantha
no subject
Date: 2003-11-13 12:01 pm (UTC)love and books,
Amanda
I stirred up a commotion myself
Date: 2003-11-13 07:14 pm (UTC)when I bitched about having to edit down "The Cold Equations" for an adapted lit textbook. A large chunk of the Bitch was about how I found it to be a Bad Story, where a little forethought and planning by the company could have made the whole thing unnecessary. A guy named Dick Harter wrote a long critique of the story (link from my journal entry) that explained its problems lots better than I could manage to do. Check it out.
Re: I stirred up a commotion myself
Date: 2003-11-13 08:38 pm (UTC)Actually I happened to run across that critique while I was reading last night and trying to make certain Godwin was an American. ;)