Some More About “LIT-ra-cha”

Some More About “LIT-ra-cha”

I believe I’ve mentioned this problem before. I aspire to be a writer of “LIT-ra-cha” – that is to say, prose that has some meaning beyond the obvious, and that aspires to be an honest reflection of time, place, mood, or experience.

But here is the problem. I am not nearly depressive enough. Oh, I’ve been depressed. Make no mistake. My standard comment has been that if you are not depressed you either don’t have enough information or you are stupid.

Happily, the removal of the brain tumor vastly improved my own depression, and the meds putty up most of the remaining cracks.

So now I am writing and reading serious prose to see where I stand in my quest to amaze by my words. Sadly, I find I am too sunny by half and more. For my research, I am working my way through some classics. Mostly I’m crawling through one of my son’s textbooks – a 1600+page tome entitled, appropriately enough, “Literature”. It is one of those giant and expensive textbooks that everyone has to buy for an English Lit survey course.

I would bet anything that no student reads all of any of this material. I didn’t. I’d read the first part of the piece, then the end, then I’d work my way back to pick up the plot. I’d study the “compare and contrast” questions at the end, write the essay and move on to the next assignment.

I obviously had no integrity as a serious student of what is deemed to be good literature. So now, after all this time, I am doubling back to read some of these famous pieces – I recognize many of them from my own college days because they’re still in the book. Chekov, O’Connor, Poe, Hemingway, and the rest of the expected cast of characters are all here just as I remember. “The Lottery” is even included, which is guaranteed to ruin your day so may I say I need to up my dosage of antidepressants. This is heavy ground to cover.

There must have been a snooty committee somewhere long ago that decided what would be deemed serious literature. To be worthy, the writing needs to be dense. The topics should be dreary, threatening, or just plain creepy. It is entirely satisfactory if the story is virtually plotless. The characters walk around, bumping into emotional furniture, perhaps inflicting mayhem (silent or noisy) on their fellows.

There seem to be no bright skies shining in these worlds. Redemption is to be treated as you would sniff tainted meat.

In short, said the snooty committee, if you would be a serious writer you have to write serious stuff. But I doubt they said it that briefly.

Here is a perfect example of the problem. James Thurber is not usually included in the ranks of “serious” authors, although he is widely considered one of the greatest American writers. He was by turns funny, amusing, or at least darkly comic. His cartoons are compared to Matisse. Today, though, if people remember him at all, it is for “Secret Life of Walter Mitty”. Pity.

I am a student of James Thurber. I’ve read everything he wrote, along with a very serious 1000+ page definitive biography. In this biography you find out where he rented a cottage in the Bahamas in 1932. You learn more than you want to know about his fumbling romances. His bad eye gets blinder. (His brother shot him in the eye with an arrow. Mothers are sometimes right about these things.)

He bred poodles. And Scotties. He was a mean drunk. As he got older, he was meaner and drunker until he was finally diagnosed with the brain tumor that killed him. His life was far more serious than his writing. But I suspect, had his writing been more “serious” he would be hailed today as a literary lion (if such still exists).

My impatience with seriousness has often gotten me in trouble, or at least has held me back. The world rewards the furrowed brow, the fretful whine, and the impatient tap of a pencil on the table.

But back to LIT-ra-cha. There is one story in the anthology by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (who is a very big deal and taken very seriously) that concerns an “angel” that is really a dirty old man with dirty old wings missing a lot of feathers. I would say it’s really more of a character study of the man and his wife who are very poor when they find the angel. They charge admission to see him, make lots of money, but take terrible care of him. I would call it elder angel abuse. Then one day he flies away.

The questions at the end probe for multiple layers of meaning, of which I suppose there are plenty. Maybe it is a warning about how to treat angels. Maybe it is talking about how badly we treat others, including angels. I don’t know. Perhaps Mr. Marquez did but he’s not telling.* But he is on that high, serious shelf.

But here’s what I do know - the only way I will make it up to the serious shelf is to climb the bookcase like a third grader.

*I swear…this is directly taken from a study guide about this story: “How does magical realism reveal new perspectives of reality?” Obviously the snooty committee wrote that.