Also why I tend to steer well clear of anything that's won a major literary prize. And why the stuff I write may well be popular (I can but dare to dream), but will never be critically acclaimed. At least not by the Critics Who Matter. The ones that expel flatus instead of farting, in other words. AND why the stuff I like to write (and read) is pejoratively labelled "genre fiction".
Long article here:
I came to this essay after reading THE ROAD, by Cormac McCarthy, an Oprah-endorsed, Pulitzer-Prize-winning postapocalyptic novel I had extremely high hopes for. I'd forgotten, of course, that Pulitzer Prize winning fiction must be literary above all else.
THE ROAD is a work of undeniable power. It's a crying shame its author chose to write it the way he did: in complete ignorance of the laws of English grammar, and that's just for starters. The story is chock-full of sentence fragments, there are next to no apostrophes, and none of the quotations are attributed. The pace is glacial, despite McCarthy's stuttering, rapid-fire prose. I was repeatedly lifted out of the story, wondering why a certain word was used, or why the author had abandoned any semblance of sentence structure.
Story, damnit, story!
I want to see people I care about doing things I'm interested in. I want to see people talking in a language I'd use myself. I want action. Not necessarily a roller-coaster ride from start to finish--a crisis on every other page gets mighty boring, mighty fast--but something. I don't want to have to hack through thickets of pointless verbiage, or dig through metaphorical strata until my arms get so tired the book falls shut of its own accord.
And most of all, I don't want author intrusion. Look at me, look at these fine sentences I've painstakingly crafted! I THINK DEEP THOUGHTS! REWARD ME! BOW DOWN BEFORE ME!
Oh, go take your Pulitzer and shove it so far up that you cramp yourself, you pretentious, elitist snob.
This is also what I couldn't stand about Honours English Language and Literature (HELL)...the endless search for "meaning". Why is it that everything has got to "mean" something? In the words of Stephen King, why can't a story just be a story?
2 comments:
Why is it that everything has got to "mean" something?
You just described my OAC English classes.
Teacher: The writer states "The cat is dead?" What does that mean?
ME: Uh, that the cat died?
Teacher: Beyond that, what is the symbol of the cat?
ME: It was his pet?
Teacher: Yes, but more how did he identify with the cat?
ME: *Brain Implodes, eyes open frantically, searching memory for previous sentences about the cat, nothing*
Teacher sighs: Reread the book and get back to me
I reread the book, and I still come to the conclusion that his pet cat died.
I'll go you one better. HEART OF DARKNESS, by Joseph Conrad. We had this feminist teacher who insisted on tackling this work from a woman's perspective. There's nothing you could call a female character appearing in the work, except for a throwaway aunt mentioned on one page. Well, she went on and on and on about this aunt, and then spent the better part of another period blathering about how criminal, how PATRIARCHAL, it was that Conrad saw fit to include but one mention of half of humanity. That this was set sometime in the 1800s, and concerned a steam voyage down the Congo River, the likes of which no woman of the time would dream of journeying on, cut zero ice with her.
That was my OAC year, and the first time I seriously thought about just walking out of class. It really is too bad I didn't stop and think that university was going to be like that EVERY DAY. If I had, I'd be a plumber along about now.
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