The LBH is BACK or at least, I'm back to the grind. The Blue Bookcase sometimes publish reviews the same day they give the hop prompt so I might have missed an episode. But I'm back and so are they. With a great subject this time.
Must all literary writing be difficult? Can you think of examples of literary writing that was not difficult?
My most faithful readers know, I'm from an academic background and it's not the thing I'm the proudest about. I mean, it's not criminal to be a literature scholar or anything but I think many people who career with book-analysis are doing it for social validation more than for the book themselves. So they tend to chose and teach some of the most complicated books, just because they could pick them apart better than anybody else. I've grown critical of difficult books over the years because reading isn't a duty. You're not Hitler if you don't read. So books should be pleasant. Reading is fun and if you make your book overly difficult for some reason, you're thinking very highly of yourself. Of course, you get writers like Joyce and Faulkner who push the envelope but what they do really is broadening the scope of possibilities for other writers. Without those two guys, we wouldn't have the crime fiction I love so much. They broke the hinges of the door, where literature was contained.
But really, unless you have ideas about how to push the envelope like these two, I don't think you're entitled to make your work voluntarily difficult, just to insert yourself in a tradition or whatever. The reader is a friend, not an adversary, said Jonathan Franzen. But it's no reason to write comforting bullshit like EAT, PRAY, LOVE. If he really like his readers like a friend, a good writer will want to challenge them. Every writer has a point to get across, like a parent, teaching a child. A good parent isn't going to raise a child by giving him everything he WANTS, but rather everything he NEEDS. The difference in between those two concepts can be of a complete ball park. I'm currently reading (well, maybe not for long since Josie kidnapped it) A HEARTBREAKING WORK OF STAGGERING GENIUS by Dave Eggers and I think the man manages to bring difficulty to his novelish memoir (or memoirish novel, depends on how you see it) and shrink wrap it like a Christmas present. There's a lengthy introduction, made with a funny, self-conscious approach about what the novel is about. He overanalyses his book on purpose and yet he gives the readers good insight on the such story construction, which is very good to keep in mind because some coarser novels uses a similar approach. Also, Eggers makes a great use of humor to get to more difficult issues like death, abandonment and the awakening to responsibility.
Personally, I can digest funny story structure to a certain degree, but where I like to be challenged is in a book's thematics. I like when a work of art takes a look inside my soul and checks out what I'm made of. Last book that did that, I'm still reading now. CHOKE ON YOUR LIES by Anthony Neil Smith will make you descend into your darkest places and see what kind of person you are. In his no-hold-barred approach, Smith exposes the weakness of the human character. The natural tendency to seek numbing comfort at any price and the price there is to make the lives of your loved ones miserable. It's really a gut-check to read this book, some passages were even physically painful to read. But I'm grateful for that and that is the very reason why I read books. There's nothing better than a story to make you re-evaluate your values and see the beyond the limitation of your own perspective. Difficulty? No, not unless you are trying to revolutionize the medium. Challenge? Absolutely. Stories are like a dry-run for real life. So they should be written in the most defiant and daring spirit, so that the readers are inspired to get better as persons. Easy literature comes and goes. Difficult literature doesn't get very far, but CHALLENGING literature always stays with us.
My most faithful readers know, I'm from an academic background and it's not the thing I'm the proudest about. I mean, it's not criminal to be a literature scholar or anything but I think many people who career with book-analysis are doing it for social validation more than for the book themselves. So they tend to chose and teach some of the most complicated books, just because they could pick them apart better than anybody else. I've grown critical of difficult books over the years because reading isn't a duty. You're not Hitler if you don't read. So books should be pleasant. Reading is fun and if you make your book overly difficult for some reason, you're thinking very highly of yourself. Of course, you get writers like Joyce and Faulkner who push the envelope but what they do really is broadening the scope of possibilities for other writers. Without those two guys, we wouldn't have the crime fiction I love so much. They broke the hinges of the door, where literature was contained.
But really, unless you have ideas about how to push the envelope like these two, I don't think you're entitled to make your work voluntarily difficult, just to insert yourself in a tradition or whatever. The reader is a friend, not an adversary, said Jonathan Franzen. But it's no reason to write comforting bullshit like EAT, PRAY, LOVE. If he really like his readers like a friend, a good writer will want to challenge them. Every writer has a point to get across, like a parent, teaching a child. A good parent isn't going to raise a child by giving him everything he WANTS, but rather everything he NEEDS. The difference in between those two concepts can be of a complete ball park. I'm currently reading (well, maybe not for long since Josie kidnapped it) A HEARTBREAKING WORK OF STAGGERING GENIUS by Dave Eggers and I think the man manages to bring difficulty to his novelish memoir (or memoirish novel, depends on how you see it) and shrink wrap it like a Christmas present. There's a lengthy introduction, made with a funny, self-conscious approach about what the novel is about. He overanalyses his book on purpose and yet he gives the readers good insight on the such story construction, which is very good to keep in mind because some coarser novels uses a similar approach. Also, Eggers makes a great use of humor to get to more difficult issues like death, abandonment and the awakening to responsibility.
Personally, I can digest funny story structure to a certain degree, but where I like to be challenged is in a book's thematics. I like when a work of art takes a look inside my soul and checks out what I'm made of. Last book that did that, I'm still reading now. CHOKE ON YOUR LIES by Anthony Neil Smith will make you descend into your darkest places and see what kind of person you are. In his no-hold-barred approach, Smith exposes the weakness of the human character. The natural tendency to seek numbing comfort at any price and the price there is to make the lives of your loved ones miserable. It's really a gut-check to read this book, some passages were even physically painful to read. But I'm grateful for that and that is the very reason why I read books. There's nothing better than a story to make you re-evaluate your values and see the beyond the limitation of your own perspective. Difficulty? No, not unless you are trying to revolutionize the medium. Challenge? Absolutely. Stories are like a dry-run for real life. So they should be written in the most defiant and daring spirit, so that the readers are inspired to get better as persons. Easy literature comes and goes. Difficult literature doesn't get very far, but CHALLENGING literature always stays with us.