Literature

Literature
The dictionary.com definition of literature is “writings in which expression and form, in connection with ideas of permanent and universal interest, are characteristic or essential features, as poetry, novels, history, biography, and essays”. My understanding of literature is that it can be anything that combines words and a general theme or idea. In that respect, literature can be just about anything, from a cookbook or a comic book to an epic novel. Also, I don’t consider there to be such a thing as good literature and bad literature, there’s only literature that is not your taste and every piece of literature is important because eventually, with the age of the technology on the rise, writers and papers and pens could be a thing of the past.
Wells’ Tower’s Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned, was the type of story that fit my idea of literature because the story was well-written in my eyes and it also had a conclusive theme that I really enjoyed reading. The way that it was written in modern language but also was written about a distant time that wouldn’t really be using that language was really interesting to me. Also, the fact that the story was full of gruesome and disgusting images, combined with little pieces of beautiful descriptions, particularly when the narrator speaks of love or his wife and children.
Considering that I feel that literature can be just about anything, there wasn’t a story that didn’t fit my personal description of literature. However, the story that slightly disappointed me was The Girl in the Flammable Skirt by Aimee Bender. The reason being that the story seemed to be very disjointed and didn’t really make sense to me in a few situations. The syntax of the story (full of short, choppy sentences) also disrupted the flow of the story Bender was trying to tell, which, in turn, made me unhappy with the story. Although The Girl in the Flammable Skirt wasn’t exactly my “cup of tea” story-wise, someone enjoys it and it is still categorized as literature. After all, literature is either meant to be enjoyed, or informative, and I’m sure this story is enjoyable or informative to someone somewhere.