Displeasure Reading
By Dave King | September 17, 2019 |
Not long ago, a friend who has been reading literary novels for years recommended one to me – Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami – and gave me the Kindle version. Murakami is award-winning and well-reviewed, so I launched into the book with considerable hope.
I immediately met a protagonist who didn’t care much about his own life and whose memories were dominated by a love affair with a woman who barely registered as a character. I got thirty pages into it before I decided I didn’t care enough about either of them to keep reading.
I should have known better. Years ago, before the advent of Kindle, I brought home a few promising-looking books from the library for Ruth, a voracious reader. Ruth glanced through them and rejected one out of hand. “It’s won awards,” she said.
I’ve written before about my frustration with modern literary stories where nothing happens – stories that are beautifully, skillfully written, but ultimately pointless. But there’s more going on in Murakami’s book than artful stagnation — I’ve read the summary of the plot on Norwegian Wood’s Wikipedia page, and it confirmed my decision to abandon the book. His characters are in a desperate search for meaning while being driven by forces beyond their control through an uncaring world. It’s a dark vision of what it means to be human.
Murakami is not the only one who shares this vision. I got about halfway through Cormack McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses, another recommendation from a literary friend, before I realized that I didn’t care enough about Grady’s increasingly painful and meaningless life to wade through the unconventional punctuation. My interest in English history was the only thing that got me to the end of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall, where I watched another honorable man slowly flattened by forces beyond his control.
The problem may be getting worse. Back in the eighties, I read and enjoyed E. L. Doctorow’s Billy Bathgate. It was a beautifully-written and fast-paced coming of age story, with an engaging protagonist and an intriguing supporting cast. A couple years ago, I tried Doctorow’s more recent Andrew’s Brain, and while I found parts of it technically interesting, I was once again faced with a character about whom I didn’t care very much, a story that required considerable effort to follow, and an ending where the protagonist is simply ground down by life.
Why are so many gifted writers drawn to the dark side of life? Why are they driven to present characters who are hard to love or lovable characters in situations that are either hard to follow or hard to endure? Why does it feel like work to read them? And why are they winning awards for this?
Before I go any further, a major caveat — taste plays a part in my feelings about these books. I’m inherently sunny by disposition and don’t enjoy watching people crushed by life. A lot of you may love Murakami or McCarthy or Mantel or the later Doctorow, and that’s fine. Still, I suspect that most readers aren’t hungry for stories that leave them wanting to slash their wrists.
I also realize that the best writers can challenge you to expand your thinking. Doris Lessing’s The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four, and Five opened my mind in a lot of ways. I cried at the end of John Crowley’s Engine Summer when I first read it. The best books can transform your life, and that kind of transformation is never easy. But most of the books I’ve left unfinished have asked me to transform my life by resigning myself to the fact that life is a hollow void in which I should just try to grab what happiness I can before it grinds me into the dirt. Thanks, but no thanks.
I think this attitude has legitimate roots in history. WWI undermined faith in the hereditary aristocracy that had run Europe for centuries. A lot of crowned heads were involved in the pointless march to war, and it was clueless aristocrats who ordered the lower classes over the top in the face of machine gun fire. Afterwards, many people replaced their faith in authority with faith in technology – in the power of science to create a brighter future for mankind. WWII put an end to that, between the industrial efficiency of the death camps and the massive carpet-bombing campaigns culminating in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In the aftermath of these blows to society, good writers could rightly help readers face hard truths about the new world with courage and grace.
Things have changed. Yes, there are still major problems in the world — I’m as frightened by global warming as anyone. But there is far less reason for despair than there was in the wake of the world wars. I don’t think we need writers to wake us up to the dark side of humanity or stand next to us and compel us to stare into the void. There is less reason to believe in the void, and much of the relentless bleakness of modern literary writing seems more like an affectation.
This habitual literary bleakness also put readers off of genuine literature. Our great-niece just started ninth grade and encountered Mark Twain for the first time. She was shocked to find that she not only identified with Tom Sawyer, but that his adventures could make her laugh out loud. I remember having the same reaction when I first read Candide in college. For both of us, great literature was supposed to be dry and bleak – work to get through. It certainly wasn’t supposed to be fun.
There’s no reason it couldn’t be. Yes, there was a time when an optimistic outlook on life seemed naïve or willfully blind. But we’ve survived those dark times, and now there’s no reason a penetrating insight into the human condition couldn’t lead you to think that, yeah, there’s meaning there after all.
It certainly would make reading for pleasure more enjoyable.
Dave King has been editing for nearly 40 years now. He is co-author of Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, a former contributing editor to Writer’s Digest, and has contributed more than 100 articles over the last 12 years to Writer Unboxed. He lives on 25 acres in rural Massachusetts with his business partner and wife, Ruth Julian, who also edits his work. His other day job, at least on Sundays, is as the organist at a Lutheran church in Greenfield, Mass.
Inspiring thoughts.
Note, tales that grim are uncommon in genre fiction — and that might be another reason why “literature” pushes itself into them. If the larger crowd wants a happy ending or a clear storyline with a purpose, the first thing a Serious Story can do to impress Serious Writers is avoid those, right?
And then there’s the writers ourselves. A profession marked by begging for agents, losing editors, and seeing contracts getting tighter every year does force us to fight hard to stay solvent, and then fight harder to see the hope in it.
But finding enough hope to share ought to be part of our job too. I’ve never understood what value “so give up” has as a message.
There are some exceptions — Kurt Vonnegut was technically a science fiction writer, and a friend who reads a lot of noir tells me that there is a bleak, meaninglessly violent school of writing coming out of England known as Brit Grit. But in general, you’re right about genre. It is the place to go for satisfying stories about characters you’re supposed to like.
So, yes, keep up the hope. I think it’s justified.
Actually, there’s a long strain of bleak crime writing, from Cornell Woolrich to Jim Thompson to Ken Bruen and Derek Raymond etc. But the effect of such stories is much like the effect of truly frightening horror stories — this isn’t true, but it might be, and if so … oh my god.
I think that post-WW2 writing, especially as inspired by Camus, sought to stare the terrifying abyss in the eye while simultaneously asserting that meaning is created by each individual. Remember, Camus claims that Sisyphus is happy — not because he is stupid or numb but for the exact opposite reason, he is totally aware.
Two of my favorite literary novels of recent reading are both historicals with a certain crime/mystery/adventure element: Star of the Sea by Joseph O’Connor (“A page-turner of a masterpiece” — Daily Mail), and The North Water by Ian McGuire. Both have very dark elements, and neither ends on an unadulterated merry note. But both affirm the human spirit in sober ways and reveal a genuine effort on the part of both the author and his characters to illuminate what is noble in the human heart, even if that does not save the day. The stories were uplifting because of their commitment to revealing the honest humanity and pathos of their characters and the situations they faced.
I feel this way about another “dark” novel, Ian McEwan’s Atonement. My wife considered it too heartbreaking, but I found in that heartbreak an expression of the tragic element of our lives–and tragedy is not nihilistic.
And there is the difference, imho, between a viably dark story and one that isn’t–its commitment to an honest portrayal of the human condition. And an honest portrayal does not leave out our longing for truth, dignity, love, authenticity. That longing may often be misguided, it may go astray in the act of its attempted fulfillment, t may even get crushed by authoritarian corruption and thuggery, but its existence points toward something in the human heart that not even the carpet bombing of Europe, the devastation of Hiroshima, and the genocide we’ve seen since, have been able to extinguish. To write fiction that maintains otherwise is to shirnk into cynicism, rather than rise to the true measure of who we are.
Well said, David.
A number of you are drawing the distinction between dark stories and nihilistic stories — a distinction I wish I’d drawn more clearly in the article.
I had thought of mentioning Camus as an example of legitimate search for meaning in a meaningless world, but I didn’t feel I’d read enough of him to comment.
Well said, David. Camus and Sartre are perfect examples of moving through and on from the abyss to look at what’s next and what the horror we create for ourselves could mean. There is hope and nobility in simply walking forward, and asking these questions.
Brilliant!
This immediately reminded me of my opinion on F. Scott Fitzgerald: he displays great technical skill in portraying the lives of characters in whom I have no interest.
I have the greatest respect for these authors’ ability to portray nuances of emotion, so agree they are worth studying for English or Creative Writing; but there are authors writing equally nuanced fiction about complex and realistic characters that doesn’t leave me less cheerful than when I decided to take a break from a grueling day.
I’m not sure I agree with you about Fitzgerald, though I can see your point — Gatsby was a more interesting character in the social context of the twenties than he is today. But you are absolutely right about both the literary author’s ability to create character and the fact that this ability can be coupled with satisfying stories.
Dave, thanks for your post. I especially appreciated hearing your great-niece read Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. I write a middle-grade fiction series, with each one set in a new state. #10 in the series will be set in Hannibal, Missouri. I’ll be doing some additional research there in a few weeks. I was beginning to be concerned about how many of my readers would have encountered Mark Twain. Hopefully enough to enjoy the references to him in the book😅 In typing these comments, I’m beginning to have memory flashes of protests against the book…not only in its own time but more recently for racism. My goodness, am I overthinking this or what? I’m pushing bravely forward because I love Mark Twain’s wit and ways…I’ve discovered I have an older audience too…and the world will keep on spinning no matter what I write (and I’d rather my book was out there in this world than not)!
Twain is a fascinating man. He eventually did give in to the dark currents of his times — The Mysterious Stranger is a very dark book. But the work for which he is most celebrated is richly human, optimistic, and often extremely funny. I still chuckle at a passage from Innocents Abroad, where he and his travelling companions deal with guides in Rome — all of whom they call “Ferguson.”
As to the controversy around Twain . . . I’d rather not wade into it. Besides, it’s worth a column on its own.
Agreed! I’m looking forward to writing this mystery with thoughts of my readers enjoying the story as they read it, and remembering the story with a smile…I would say with a laugh but I don’t do humor and wit like Twain.
Right on, Dave. Life is too short for displeasure reading.
All I can say is – Ain’t that the truth!
I’ve got one semi-redacted word for this: A-FU***ING-MEN.
I’m a fiend for English history and was so excited about reading Wolf Hall. Couldn’t slog my way through it. Movies as well as books are guilty of perpetuating this bleak new ethos. Elena Ferrante’s “My Brilliant Friend,” for instance. It’s set in Naples. Neapolitans are notorious pranksters. They have marvelous senses of humor, even in the midst of darkness. But no one in that series smiles. Ever. I live in Italy and know that’s neither fair nor true.
I hope this trend ends soon. Enough existential dread. I’m heartily sick of it. But then, I’m of a Somerset Maugham frame of mind: stories should have a point to them.
Two movies come to mind for me — The Descendants, and Beasts of the Southern Wild. We got sucked into them from the trailers, which made them seem funny and sweet, respectively. And then we got to spend two hours watching a child deal with a parent who is dying slowly.
Fun.
Dave, I agree with the literary bleakness you point out in a lot of today’s mainstream fiction. Normal life can render its own bleakness, so I’m not one to want to spend my time reading about it in fiction. I read to be informed; I read to be uplifted; I read to feel emotional experiences. Taste, of course, is key in all of this as you say. Thanks for the perspective on this.
I agree. I suspect that the writers of bleak fiction would argue that they are giving you emotional experiences. Ennui, for instance, or despair. It’s just these are emotional experiences I go out of my way to avoid.
Oh well, rewrite 47 coming up.
I can understand this mindset. And I personally agree with the pointlessness of reading a gorgeously written book with no plot (“The Essex Serpent,” anyone?) However, I’m one of those readers who loves – craves – dark, sad books that will make me FEEL, cry, rage. I used to say I would only read books that made me cry. Now, with life pressing in on all sides, I also enjoy lighter books. I’m a sucker for cozy murders and books by Sarah Addison Allen (who has a beautiful way of writing both sad and joyful at once). But in the end, a really tragic ending or something with exquisite emotion is going to be my go-to. But it still has to have a good plot, interesting characters, and meaning. Not just pretty writing and experimental form. I say that for my own writing, too. I write sad. I always have. But I try hard to have something interesting to say, something meaningful and memorable to bring to the table.
Please understand, I’m not talking about tragedy. I can appreciate a sad story, as well. What I’m talking about is something else.
It’s been said that the opposite of love is not hatred but indifference. The mindset I’m objecting to is not that life can be hard and sometimes cruel, but that life is meaningless. Even in the greatest tragedies, things end badly for the protagonists because of some underlying cause — societal pressures (Romeo and Juliet), the need to sacrifice themselves for deeper principles (The Power and the Glory, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold), or simply hubris (just about anything written by the Greeks). The tragedy means something. With Murakami et al, the attitude is more that nothing means anything.
Another excellent article, Dave. I might be the outlier in this opinion, but I take the position that dark, nasty, and unpleasant is easier to create as a writer. The dark imagination comes easier to most people. I think for this reason many people find Dante’s Inferno so mesmerizing but fail to forge ahead towards his third and final, Paradiso, which was the poet’s vision of Why he wrote The Divine Comedy.
There’s an argument that writers want to convey the realistic world. Hence, the violence and the profanity, etc. Writing can entertain and it can also provide social commentary. Huck Finn still gets banned because of ‘offensive language’ and unresolved racial issues with us today. Pulp fiction reflected its time, but there was Justice, albeit unconventional. If you read James Ellroy’s current definition of noir, it’s nihilism. Nothing matters.
The frustration today for many readers is they can’t latch onto a character they can root for. A character can be flawed, difficult, eccentric and unpleasant genius ( hello, Sherlock Holmes and Nero Wolfe), but the author creates a world around them in such a way that readers want to see the mystery solved and learn something along the way. Twain questioned technology. Dickens exposed the abuses of children and those in prison for debt.
True, “literature” has provided case studies into the pathological (Hubert H in Lolita or Thomas Harris’ Lecter) but I think those are one-offs, a case study into something so unique and remarkable a creation, before other authors and publishers saw dollar signs and flooded the shelves with imitations of serial killers, sociopaths, vampires, etc. However flawed and ‘difficult’ a protagonist might be, there has to be something there for the reader to want to spend virtual time with that creation. Lecter is not someone you’d want to meet, or have in your home, but you can admire Spade or Marlowe trying to find the Truth.
I’ll dare say that there are cadres of writers who write a lot of something and do it in oh-so beautiful language with ten-dollar words until you realize it’s all nothing at all. They are guilty of two cardinal sins: caught up in their Ego and in violation of the contract between author and reader, to tell a story. They write for literary showmanship of page after page with no commas and other pyrotechnics. They can make you feel stupid because you feel you’ve missed something, or their world is so dark and unforgiving that you want to take a shower. For what? “Humankind cannot bear very much reality” said T.S. Eliot. I’m not sure looking at the dangerous animal behind glass makes us better people, or does much for the creature.
Publishing moves to the sound of cash registers; it’s a business. I’m optimistic, though. People hunger for a story. True, critics shape opinion and are supposed to offer an informed opinion. Keyword: opinion. Sometimes what they say yields a great new find, but oftentimes it’s the Emperor with No Clothes from the latest MFA program. Readers are smart, and I think this is why YA and other “genres” have exploded in ways that agents and publishers could not have predicted. The challenge for writers in the word mines is being heard above all the noise, or getting their books onto shelves at libraries and stores.
A lot of good thoughts, Gabriel, particularly about the showcasing of dark, unpleasant characters. I think that drove a fair amount of true crime stories, as well — In Cold Blood and Helter Skelter come to mind. And you’re right that Inferno gets a lot more press than Purgatorio or Paradiso, just as it’s been said that Milton’s devil is a far more interesting character than any of his angels. There is something fascinating about exploring the dark side of humanity.
You’re also right that the exploration is ultimately rooted in meaning. So many of the characters in the novels I mentioned are not dark, simply bland and ineffectual.
I am one of those people who read through to Paradiso, though. As I say, inherently sunny disposition.
Interesting post, Dave.
My daughter is currently reading Cormack McCarthy’s The Road. She is bored out of her mind. Over sixty pages in and she says she’d stop reading if the book wasn’t a mandatory read for grade twelve English. Apparently the book, according to my daughter, is “depressing as hell.”
Seems to be a strange read for a bunch of high school students. And we wonder why kids are reading less these days. …
McCarthy is high school reading now? That’s a little disturbing.
Of course, I can still remember having to plow through Carson McCuller’s The Member of the Wedding, which was not exactly fun.
Perhaps point your daughter toward some Twain? One of the first adult books I read at a single sitting was The Prince and the Pauper.
An admirable post, Dave. My own “mansplaining” explanation for the negativity in so much literary fiction is that popular literature is dominated by its opposite: upbeat, positive stories. Criminals are punished, lovers reunited, dogs saved. The protagonist is transformed in one way or another, and things turn out well.
This won’t do for a certain kind of “serious writer.” Besides, don’t we all know that in real life, that’s not how things often or usually turn out? (Translation: isn’t the serious writer often crushed before the sordid commercial realities that control publishing?)
Ergo, serious literary fiction needs to eschew the happy endings and closure that figure in most films, TV shows, and popular fiction.
What’s missing from this point of view is a grasp of a basic ingredient in human nature: the survival mechanism that leads people to hope for the best, and imagine a livable future. Those who live without this pov are probably doomed.
So, in the name of “art,” the serious novelist, unblinking before collapse and nihilism, is free to create stories and characters that deny a basic reality. And the publisher decides it’s time again to demonstrate the company’s gravitas by bringing out another doomsday tome.
Or so it seems to me.
I have speculated before that literary writers tend to avoid plot out of a fear of falling into cliche, and you may be right about their avoidance of happy endings. But I think what’s often going on runs deeper than having the protagonist end well. The Murakami and Doctorow books had protagonists who didn’t even begin well.
Oh, My Goodness! It is as though you have read my mind or that we have met and had long discussions about the state of what passes as “literature” these days. The awards gods can look down their noses at genre fiction all they wish, but well developed characters, high tension, and a riveting plot trumps doom and gloom all day long for the majority of readers, myself most especially.
Perhaps the trend you describe has something to do with the old saw that an artist must suffer for his art. Perhaps, by extension, it is believed that the reader should suffer (mostly boredom?) in order to grow as a person. Ok. Whatever. Even authors writing about truly horrific events can leave readers uplifted while educating them about the depravity of which human beings are capable. The novel Schindler’s List comes to mind. No one could accuse Thomas Keneally of having glossed over the horrors of the Holocaust, and yet, the story is an outstanding example of the triumph of the human spirit in the face of extraordinary evil. Oskar Schindler was about as flawed a hero as one could find and his motives were not altruistic in the beginning, but he evolved. He became a better man for what he did and what he witnessed. Now that is a story worth reading!
Schindler’s List is a good example of an exploration of the dark side of humanity that still manages to find meaning and hope.
And I have sometimes suspected that readers read these books because they’re “good for them.” Either that, or buy them and put them on their coffee tables to impress their friends with their sophistication.
Dave-
It’s more than serious versus entertaining. It’s more than thought-provoking versus escape. It’s more than genre versus literary. Genre can be serious and literary can be fluff.
As you note, our dissatisfaction arises when fiction does not reflect 1) ourselves and 2) our times. There are two levels on which we can connect to a work of fiction, and entertainment fails on both of those fronts as often as literary fiction does.
Genre fiction can be old-fashioned. In the mystery field, that can be true (though not always) of both cozy and noir. Genre fiction can also be founded in values too simplistic for our actual world.
“Love conquers all!” Between soft covers maybe, but in the real world of hate? “Rocket ships to the stars!” Oh, really? Wonder and optimism were wonderful and uplifting in the Golden Age. This age is not so golden. We live in a world where handmaidens and hunger games don’t seem far-fetched. We’re not heading for a new start for humanity on Alpha Centauri.
Bleak literary fiction–a “desperate search for meaning”–also fails to connect with us for the same two reasons. In our world of hate, most of us are not haters. In our totalitarian times, we resist. We endure because we have not forgotten what freedom feels like and means. We cheer for Hong Kong just as surely as we cheer for Katniss and urge Offred to hang on. We may not be optimistic but our spirit is not crushed.
I’m not against escape. I’m not against fiction that changes our thinking. I am against fiction that is false. Fiction that falls back on simplistic values, phony stereotypes and comforting tropes, and that can be as true of escapist genre fiction as literary fiction that beautifully captures existential emptiness.
If fiction is going to connect, it has to reflect who we are and how our world really is, and the truth is that while we may live in a bleak world we are not empty inside. Our world may be hostile but we don’t pretend that it is peachy keen, predictable and safe.
I think it is possible to be both realistic and entertaining. We want heroes, yes, because there are heroes in the real world. We want good to triumph and love to save us because we’ve seen that happen.
I don’t think our dissatisfaction is about needing escape. I think it is because some fiction–both entertaining and serious–feels false. It fails to reflect our faith. Because it aims only for easy, old-fashioned effects we can’t connect. Style isn’t substance and fluff isn’t real.
Such fiction robs us of hope, and that is why we are dissatisfied.
Thank you, Don. I think you’re absolutely right that what underlies my dissatisfaction with nihilist literature is that it feels false. Whether the writers are sincere or the bleakness is a literary affectation, it doesn’t match my experience of life.
I can handle unpleasant characters, because I know a lot of unpleasant people. I can handle unhappy endings, because life doesn’t always work out. But a world with no underlying meaning? That’s not the world I’m living in.
Exactly, Dave, succinctly put.
Finally I see I am not alone in my distaste for pointlessly depressing stories. I find this seems to be a trend particularly in shorts. I don’t require or care for cheesy upbeat, either, but I will stop reading if I find characters and/or plot relentlessly dark (Gone Girl, for example. Hated it, and i am well aware the author is excellent). Now, wading through dark to get to the other side, that I can get behind if, like you say, i care about characters. Stephen King is one of my fave authors ever and does this so well. Good post!
I didn’t even get into short stories, although I’ve long since given up reading New Yorker fiction.
The hard part is when you wade through the dark, then find out there is no “through.” I once got sucked into Kurt Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions. Read it in a sitting, and I’ve been regretting it ever since. That experience was what I was thinking of with the “slit your wrists” comment in the article.
I write what I label ‘literature’ – mainstream fiction with good literary values in the writing, but also a strong focus on character and plot. The purely literary novel with a narrow focus on language seems self-indulgent.
Our world constrains people with disabilities, to the point where aspirations are distant for those who’ve already been wounded. My stories’ purpose is to ask if it’s possible – and more importantly, how is it possible – for us to get what we want, given the obstacles.
I say it is – because, like you, I’m a realist but an optimist. The novel trilogy will prove my point: Yes, you can. There is hope.
There’s enough of the dark out there already, and more than enough writers who cosset it.
I’m with you, Dave. I’ll take a story where s*%t happens any day over “the vaguely dissatisfied in Connecticut.” (I think that quote comes from Dennis Lehane, on why he gravitated to crime fiction.)
“Vaguely dissatisfied in Connecticut” is one of the best descriptions of that type of fiction that I’ve read in a while.
I LOVE this post! Love that you spoke the usually unspeakable. :) I frequently rail against this kind of book–not necessarily because I prefer stories that leave readers with at least a feeling of hope or redemption, which as you point out is just taste–but because as much as I, like most editors (and readers) love language, I read for STORY, the holy grail. Beautifully written prose in a book where nothing happens leaves me unengaged, as you say, and doesn’t offer the golden escape into the fictive dream. And awards seem to become more a marker of a book’s worth than how it reaches readers.
I think of Toni Morrison’s BELOVED, a book that is indeed a bit of a dense read, and yet one of the most profoundly affecting, engaging stories I’ve read. “Literature” doesn’t mean abandoning plot, character arc, story–at least in my book (pardon the unavoidable pun). Thank you for this terrific take! I see from the comments that this view is far from uncommon.
The thing that first got me into editing was a love of story — of watching events unfold in a book in a way that was surprising, engaging, and ultimately satisfying. That passion might also be affecting my impatience with so much of modern literature.
I looked in my pocket for a comment worth 2 cents and found only 1 cent, so here it is: Are the authors of these bleak dark meaningless stories stuck in adolescence, a stage of life where depression can be a normal phase?
When I was writing the piece, I was reminded of the line from Sondheim’s A Little Night Music. Henrik, speaking of his cello music, says, “It’s not depressing. It’s profound.”
You may have a point.
Here’s another penny’s worth of observation: I’ve been reading more works by African-born writers lately. I find the characters more engaging and relatable (going back to Gabriel’s point above) and the narratives more hopeful. Maybe it has to do with the authors’ life experiences and traditions, growing up in a part of the world where, historically, hope and faith have been as essential to everyday survival as material wealth.
As an English Major – I think you have well represented why I have given up on contemporary literary fiction and much of what are the hot best sellers. I tried really hard just now to recall the last true book I adored that I would consider literary – an came up with A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving.
I find most current stories to either be 1) full of lovely language, without story, signifying nothing or 2) full of truly unlikable characters with a driving plot, which at the end leave me angry and empty.
So I read mysteries. And Science Fiction. And Regency Romances.
I do need to give a shout out to truly escapist fiction however. I have been in a decent place in life for many years ago, but am not so far removed from a time when I had a horrific job that often left me in tears daily on my commute home. What saved me? Two things – Harlequin Regency Romances and Star Trek books. I didn’t want to see “realisism” – reality sucked! I wanted to be taken away to a safe place. Those books weren’t literature- or the best I’ve ever read – but they gave my soul what was needed at that time and place.
Part of the reason I never finished my Masters in English was I couldn’t get past the class on literary criticism. I often feel the average reader – and what they love and what gets them through the day – is overlooked.
There is a reason so many adults read YA fantasy novels these days. They tell strong stories that take you somewhere that is not here. It is a very special writer who can deliver that much needed medicine. And I am grateful to them.
Deb, I too was an English major and for much of my youth was quite the literary snob. Like you, several years ago I went through a very bad time and was helped through it by a six-volume high fantasy series, very well done, that was coming out, book by book, at that time. What’s more, my teenagers were reading it also, and that gave us much fodder for conversation.
I wonder whether your problem isn’t just with modern literature but with academia in general. I actually got my bachelor’s in philosophy and after graduation planned to go on for a master’s. What turned me off was subscribing to Mind, the Oxford journal of philosophy. I think it was an article on twenty-six finely parsed definitions of some word (I forget which one) that convinced me it wasn’t worth the effort.
By the way, I think many wouldn’t consider John Irving to be literature because he has too much story.
Thank you! I think sometimes it is me–that I am just not “on trend” enough. But I care less and less if that is so. Much more appreciated are stories that captivate me with honorable struggles, compassionate inspiration, connection with others and nature (and some spirituality in the mix) that enliven and illuminate.
I strive to uphold and share these when I write, too. Have I had resounding hard knocks in life? Of course, and I am not much interested in the blatant, even overkill focus. Such viewpoints have been amply demonstrated by humanity’s ongoing miseries–and a variety of writers throughout history (but Dickens I yet appreciate even though what scoundrels and grief he reveals with precision and well-placed intensity).
Let’s strive to amplify more the hopeful, creative possibilities life invites, and share heroes/heroines we might even want to emulate or at least root for as we turn each page. I am grateful for every writer who does so in our beautiful, maddening world.
I appreciate your succinct words and honesty.
As I say, taste does play some role in your feelings about modern literature. But I think Don Maass got it right when he said that much of it is out of touch with our times.
Dickens — and John Steinbeck and Sinclair Lewis and Orwell — critiqued their times, but they did so with the understanding that the critique mattered. Pointing out that something’s wrong assumes that there is such a thing as right and wrong, and that the difference makes a difference. That in itself can be uplifting, even if things don’t end well for their characters.
I guess it depends on why people write and why they read.
Some people write stories that uplift and inspire, and some people read enjoy reading those stories, and I hope are inspired by them.
Other people write bleak and nihilistic stories, and some people enjoy reading them, for reasons I may not ever understand.
Of these two literary ecosystems, which one does the world more good?
I’d wager it’s the former.
A couple of people have already mentioned that they were pulled through tough times by escapist reading. Good books have both shaped and challenged my worldview my whole life.
So, yes, I think you’re right.
Dave, I think you have disturbed a hornet nest…
Ruth’s remark about awards reminded me on awards in the world of paintings. A landscape or anything realistic, no matter how beautiful or uplifting would never win an award. But if you convert the same picture to an abstract which no one understands, it’s a different story.
Similarly in the literature world. I book which gives pleasure and satisfaction is widely ignored.
Mind you I am not a professional, just an avid reader….
I’m not familiar with the art world. But I’m not really surprised by your comment.
Literary writers may hate me for saying this, but reading many literary novels feels like watching the Star Wars prequels: the inexorable slide toward darkness and atrocity is not made up for by the quality of the special effects.
Personally, I aim to write stories like cups of tea: the kind of thing you can put your feet up with, but that leaves you more ready to face the world again, not less.
I’ve heard that a lot of writers we now consider to be authors of literature (e.g. Dickens) were not considered literary in their time. But they entertained people and made a difference to the world they lived in, e.g. Dickens’ Nicholas Nickleby and the Yorkshire schools; Wilkie Collins’ The Woman in White and laws allowing husbands to commit their (sane) wives to insane asylums.
Yes, there’s a lot of crap in this world. But it’s better to grab a spade and start shovelling than roll around in it complaining how much it stinks.
At least, that’s my opinion, born out of my belief in the hope of Christ. I hear the voices pushing despair and peddling emptiness and deep in my heart a fire glows and a voice says No.
Literary novels as flashy Star Wars prequels. I’m going to steal that *so much*…
I think genre often makes a difference. A crime story or a monster hunt says that awful things happen mostly because of the subject — the classic horror experience is ending the story relieved the critter isn’t in your own closet. It uses that to justify its darkness, and it also suggests that regular life is somewhat free of it. Plus, genre is often partly about characters who choose to get into the action.
Literary characters have their whole lives pulled into the story, and if they try to back away and get back to normality everything stays changed around them. That might be a more organic storyline, but either it includes a respect for hope or it’s saying life is the horror.
I agree with you about the Star Wars description.
And you have a point about genre. A satisfying ending is built into most genres. The murderer is caught. The loving couple gets together. The spy uncovers the truth. The endings are not guaranteed to be upbeat — the ending of The Spy who Came in from the Cold comes to mind. But they satisfy the structure that the genre imposes on the story.
Literary novelists impose their own structure on their fictional worlds. And a lot of them apparently either believe the world has no structure or they affect structurelessnss because that’s what their readers demand.
In fact, I have sometimes considered whether the literary novel should be considered a genre, with its own standard tropes and reader expectations.
I once read, though I haven’t been able to locate the quote since then, that a nineteenth-century social critic complained that young people, instead of reading real literature, were wasting their time on Dickens and Scott.
I could not disagree more with every word. Some of us just aren’t sunny, but we deserve for our stories to be heard too. Amen to difference, brother.
And hear, hear. As I say, taste does play a role in my feelings. And you know what they say about accounting for tastes.
Great discussion generated from a great post. Lots has already been said, so I’ll just add a “Hear, hear!” and an “I wonder…”
First, “I Wonder.”
I wonder if a lot of writers who write bleak, dismal stories that simply conclude life is meaningless so why bother do that initially because they are rewarded for it in college, MFA programs, and contests and by literary journals. We also read a lot of kind of dismal stuff in high school and college as English majors, and surely that makes aspiring writers think that “serious” fiction is gloomy. It’s the kind of subliminal message that makes some aspiring writers despair of having had good childhoods and lives generally free of tragedy, thinking they need a lot of personal pain in order to write books that people admire.
And now, “Hear, hear!” to Don’s comment, especially this: “I am against fiction that is false. Fiction that falls back on simplistic values, phony stereotypes and comforting tropes…”
This is the other extreme from “displeasure reading,” right? Instead of “All is darkness, all is nothingness” (a bizarre direct quote from my four-year-old out of nowhere one day…) it’s “All is rainbows and unicorns if you’ll just ignore the glaring realities of our existence, please.”
I think this is why so many people also don’t connect with genre of Inspirational Fiction/Christian Fiction (though it really doesn’t explain why so many people love Hallmark movies). So much of it is too easy, it’s preaching to the choir, and it rarely presents people in all of their complexity.
I am especially aware of this as my first two books have been published by a Christian publisher but are not your typical Christian books (they are shelved there solely because of who the publisher is). Most reviews are very good. People love the writing and the story, but from Christian reviewers who are used to the more typical fare from this publisher, there are always caveats…
Several have mentioned they’re disappointed faith didn’t play a bigger role in the protagonist’s life (well, she’s not a Christian, so why would it?) and the ending didn’t wrap everything up in a neat and tidy bow (you know, like life). One person even complained that one of the characters said mean things to another one (seriously).
What world are these people living in that they don’t encounter ambiguity and people who aren’t their version of perfect? My church is full of people with real problems. With doubts and addictions and depression and prejudices and anger issues and all the rest. They’re real, whole, imperfect people. And I want to write about real, whole. imperfect people. I want my fiction to tell the truth, not perpetuate a false, rosy view of life. Because I have a worldview that is framed by hope and love and ultimate peace, they will have a positive, redemptive theme, but they’re not going to be pleasant the whole time. Because that rings really false to me.
The truth lies somewhere between dismal and saccharine.
I do suspect that modern nihilistic literary fiction is a genre of its own, with its own tropes. Those tropes may well be taught in MFA programs, and they are certainly reinforced by most reviewers and awards.
The bleakness, though, may be a reaction to the kind of false, excessive sunniness that, as you say, is so often found in Christian circles. Odd since, in traditional Christianity, one of the signs of true spiritual growth was the dark night of the soul.
When I think of a genuinely Christian book, I think of something more like Greene’s The Power and the Glory rather than Hallmark Specials.
A great article! I don’t have much to add to what has already been so brilliantly stated by you and the others, Dave, but I just wanted to nod and agree with you. I have a joke with my book club that if the book won the Pulitzer and sometimes the National Book Award, it must be miserable to read. (Obviously this isn’t always true–The Light We Cannot See, for example?) And Don’s point about fiction reflecting a deep and innate sense of truth is right on.
Thanks for bringing this discussion to the table. It has me in a deep state of mind this morning over my coffee and writing warm-up exercises.
Years and years ago, I read a parody article of a computer program that would write novels. You input your choices for various parameters, and the program would churn out a novel. One of the most basic menus was “genre,” and one of the choices was “Unreadable work of genius.”
That phrase has stuck with me all these years.
I consider myself a joyful person, and an optimist. Haruki Murakami is a favorite of mine. I recently read Norwegian Wood and since the main character Toro is reading The Magic Mountain, I read that right after. The setting in both books is a sanatorium and to an extent both are books of ideas. I remember 1969. Both Murakami and I were in college at the time. Toro is looking back with sorrow and nostalgia, relaying the story of his college friends. The friend who committed suicide, and his girlfriend who Toro loves but cannot save. ‘death is not the opposite of life, but an innate part of it.’ The pain, angst, and romanticism and passion of being that age and trying to understand sorrow and love. (knife to heart). “And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.” Haruki Murakami from Kafka on the Shore. McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses and the other 2 books of the Border Trilogy are also in my top 10 forever books. It is interesting you picked two powerful coming of age stories. I love best the books where it appears nothing much happens. In truth everything happens, Norwegian Wood and Pretty Horses aren’t bleak. Both are transformation stories. And Cormac McCarthy is a gorgeous writer. Now for my recommendation. Have you read Legends of the Fall?! That one stays open on my desk as a talisman. Oh, and hat tip to David Corbett for naming my other most favorite author, Ian McEwan — for Atonement, Amsterdam, Chesil Beach and… wait for it… The Comfort of Strangers (now that one is bleak!) But McEwan gets my heart beating!
I’ve got to say, Luna, your description of Murakami almost makes me want to pick up the book and try again. But . . .
As I say, taste matters a lot in these sorts of decisions. I’m glad you found so much to love in Murakami.
At last someone agrees with me about this. Of course it’s okay to write about negative events, all part of conflict in novels, but what about passion, hope, love and transcendence? My first novel, “Karrana” has a motif, like an extra persona, permeating it: the Australian bush. All you have to do is to look at nature to realise that nothing is ever hopeless and that beauty reigns if you wish to find it.
As Luna’s articulate and civil post makes clear, there are people who find passion, hope, and love even in Murakami’s works. But those of us who don’t are often made to feel like we’re missing it because we’re too dense to see it.
I don’t think we are. It does come down to taste.
Darkness and unhappy endings are nothing new. Frankenstein? Most of Shakespeare? 1984? Nor are unlovable characters. Picture of Dorian Grey? Kurz in Heart of Darkness?
The difference between these classics and much of recent literature, happy ending or not, is that a lot of modern stuff is capital-B boring. Personally I am of the school that thinks that books with happy endings should be in the fantasy section, but I’ll read anything well-written, happy ending or not, as long as I’m not bored.
As long as the happy ending isn’t simply handed to the characters, I’m comfortable with them. I’ve kind of lived one myself. But, yes, I do find meaningless boring. Especially if you have to work to understand what’s going on.
Yes! Yes! A thousand times yes!
I’m constantly on a campaign to find writers who can make me laugh and think at the same time. I generally avoid ‘literary’ or ‘award-winning’ or ‘critically acclaimed’ books for reasons which you have articulated perfectly, here.
I just finished a re-read of The Handmaid’s Tale and tore through “The Testaments”. I LOVE Margaret Atwood’s writing, but she leaves me feeling so upset (even though she considers both books hopeful…) that I can’t read her stuff very often, and only when I’m feeling strong.
While I’m loving The Handmaid’s Tale on HULU (if only because it proves Alexis Bledel can act), it’s been thirty years since I read the book. It is true that it’s got an ambiguous ending and a pretty dark setting, but there is a lot of hope in the characters. Offred and Nick manage to keep their humanity despite the horrific circumstances. The cling to moral, humane principles even under terrific pressure.
Yeah, nothing meaningless going on there. In fact, it’s an excellent example of a book that can be hopeful despite its darkness.
Nolite te bastardes carborundorum.