What is Literature?
All the readings made me refer back to Monday’s Lecture on plasir vs. jouissance (The Pleasure of Text by Roland Bonthes). All five included a surprising depth in the unexpected outcomes of each. This creates an expected unexpectedness in Literature. As readers, we hope the writer will surprise us.
In Sea Oak, George Saunders used his creativity to bring back the dead. As a reader, I am challenged as to why? But, with literature, anything is possible. The writer may control this imaginary situation; however, the story in itself is real. The characters within the story all react according to how Saunders chooses to write them. Does death reveal more about the living? It wasn’t until the classroom discussion of Sea Oak, I understood that all the surreal characters and situations were purposefully written. These choices made the author ask questions about the ridiculousness and compare it to reality. When in fact, as humans we tend to ignore the nature of things such as the cycle of poverty and this “American dream”. But as readers, we see things differently.
In Wells Tower’s Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned, the author chose to drag out the beginning with details impertinent to the moral of the story. But, does there have to be a moral, or a reason to which he includes everything? Of course, it sets up the story, pulls you in. This challenges the reader to figure out what is going on instead of being directly told. The uncomfortable lifestyles of being a pirate are expressed in how Tower’s sets up the story. Also, by choosing the narrative as more humanly connected to love and family, the writer juxtaposes the two lifestyles. Again, it wasn’t until after group discussion that I was able to understand the irony of choosing a modern voice with a Viking-like situation. The narrator doesn’t choose battle, but feels obligated as if it were a man’s duty. He is also skeptical of their unnecessary and harmful presence. This is a familiar modern feeling for our soldiers in the Iraqi War. In retrospect, Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned is a fascinating story, but only because of Wells Tower’s writing choices.
My favorite story was Do Not Disturb by A.M. Homes because there was so much humor in the complexity of the couple’s situation: being obligated by marriage and by death. The cancer and the marriage are both headed for death. Homes’ choice of dialogue proves humor to be a symptom of uncomfortable situations. As a writer, he creates more tension in making the wife with cancer as the bitch that we cannot sympathize with. However, I think all who have been in long, intimate relationships can understand the frustrations and annoyances that come with it. Also, in modern times, reversed gender roles are a common issues in that feminists want to be more like men and men’s feelings are often made less important because of their history as a gender. But, these are my thoughts and not necessarily what the author meant, which makes good writing even better- that it is left up to the reader’s interpretation.
Gentlemen’s Agreement disturbed me. Mark Richard uses a child’s relationship with his parents to build guilt and anticipation. The child mentions covenants and agreements made with his father but the child is always alone. He justifies his relationships with his rocks and ironically ends up being smashed by one. I don’t understand what the father is doing at the end though.
Aimee Bender’s Girl in the Flammable Skirt uses other stories and characters within the story to define the little girl who is narrating. She is shy because her parents ignore her. She cannot be loved because of her father’s lack to show unconditional love. And she longs to feel the heat caught in the girl’s skirt which she read in a newspaper story. Bender uses everyone else to define the narrator.
All these stories contained unexpected challenges for the reader; Nothing was given, every choice had depth. Literature is complex in the writer’s choices. But the best writer always leaves enough room for the reader’s imagination.
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