Literature

Alora Young
Intro to Writing and Literature
9/22/2010

Literatrue

C.S. Lewis once said, “Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it.” Literature should make you feel, make you think. The best literature can change your life. But who’s to say a piece of writing that makes me ponder life and all its heart-breaking horrors will have any effect at all on the person who sat beside me on the bus last Tuesday? Who decides what literature is or is not? Ronald Banthes wrote about ‘jouissance’, a more uncomfortable sort of pleasure, and about the point in reading when one finds themselves lost within a text – when a person becomes so involved that the outside world has no impact on their reading of the world within the text. Surely that is literature. Again, however, not everyone will find jouissance in the same pieces of writing.

Some stories we read challenge our perceptions of literature, and some stories conform to them. My idea of literature was challenged in my reading of ‘Sea Oak’ by George Saunders. If it is indeed considered literature, then in my opinion it is bad literature. It began with promise, implying taboo themes with an opening at a male strip club. It wanted to shock me, and I wanted to be shocked. And then Saunders seemed to try too hard, took it too far, so that it quickly surpassed shocking. It became stupid. I didn’t care about the characters or their clichéd, bottom class struggles, or the fact that Min and Jade “debate about how many sides a triangle has” while studying for the GEDs that they apparently skipped because they couldn’t keep their legs shut any better than they can keep their foul mouths shut.

I think for something to be shocking it has to be plausible, and I didn’t believe for one instant that any of the characters in this story were real. Aunt Bertie almost succeeded in being a little more than two-dimensional, and then she came back from the dead. When she was “basically just a pile of parts”, I caught myself scoffing at the stupidity of the whole thing. “’Show your cock,’ she says, and dies again” just topped it off. I thought the piece was entirely pointless, it didn’t conform in the slightest to my opinion of literature, and I just didn’t like it. Under normal circumstances, I would have stopped reading part-way through, and would have promptly forgotten about it.

Wells Towers’ ‘Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned’, on the other hand, I liked quite a lot. There’s a fine line between successfully and unsuccessfully writing a historically-based fiction in modern language, and I felt that this piece was quite successful. Once you read enough to gather that the characters are Vikings, and get used to the profanities and way the characters talk in modern-day slang (“Djarf get at you yet?”), it becomes really enjoyable. It achieves this, I think, because within all the pillaging, berserking and talk about a curse of having “horns like a goat” and “shit[ting] little shits like a goat” verses the curse of “a seven-foot dick that you had to have hanging out of your pants at all times”, there are moments of true, relatable emotion.

“When I got back in bed, she tucked the covers over her face, hoping I’d think she was angry instead of crying” was a sentence that I felt. It was real, and my empathy for the characters grew with every well-placed and well-written sentence like it. At the story’s end, when our protagonist Harald says, “You wish you hated those people, your wife and children, because you know what awful things the world will do to them, because you have done some of those things yourself”, it brings to the surface an awful reality that many of us don’t ever want to think about. Sometimes we do wish we loved nothing in life because it would make so many things easier. And then we hate ourselves and wish we were better people, and resolve never to think a thing like that again – let alone put it down on paper and get it published. I was sure after reading that sentence that this story was indeed ‘literature’ to me, because it resonates for both good emotions and bad. It makes me feel, makes me think, and adds to reality by taking us almost entirely out of the one we know, yet managing to keep the unfamiliar storyscape and supposedly barbaric characters utterly, unexpectedly real.

What is Literature?

For this week’s assignment we had to read five stories and refer back to the discussion we had about what is literature. All these stories were very different, but all of them had something comical to them. But while being comical they brought out multiple feelings that made me see them all very differently. In the next few paragraphs, I will talk about my feelings toward the pieces, and why I believe they are literature.

I actually really enjoyed George Saunders’ “Sea Oak”. I like how Sanders was not afraid to be real and at the same time unreal and over exaggerated. It’s a good mix. It also brought a very satirical feel to the whole peace. I found the main character’s job humorous, and wondered if there was an actually place like that. If there is not, my mind my now believes there is. Though I really doubt I would ever want to go to a restaurant where the men were pretty much naked. The place reminded me of Hooters, and I really bloody hate Hooters. Though, I have heard they have good chicken wings. The dialect made me believe they were not from a fortunate family. That made them and the area they lived in seem more real, but at the same time it was extremely stereotypical and filled of hyperbole. And to me it was literature because I got more than just pleasure from this story. Though it was pleasurable. I liked how it changed the cliché story about the American Dream, because not everyone who works hard gets everything. After reading this story I felt more dedicated to my future. I did not want to end up like a zombie who came back to life because she never did anything.

I actually did not like Wells Towers’ “Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned”. I was lost through out it. The mix of modern language, dragons, and what I assume were Vikings was just not my cup of tea. I did like a lot of the dialogue and found it filled of irony and humor, but it only made me like it a bit. After the workshop, when I understood a little more into the detail of it, I began to appreciate it more. Since while I was reading it I did not realize that it was a satire. I feel extremely stupid that I did not. The point is that now that I understand that is a satire about the recent war in Iraq: I like it. I now understand how it is literature, because it is more than just a satire. It is about a guy doing something he does not like, because if he does not he will feel inferior and since he believes it is his duty.

I liked A.M. Homes’ “Do Not Disturb”, because it strays from the cliché cancer story. Since in most cancer stories, the person with cancer becomes a completely new person. She or he allows all the good to flow to top, and does some extreme acts of kindness. Since cancer has opened his or her eyes. But in this story the cancer patient, who was a complete bitch before, becomes only a bigger bitch. This is also changes the cliché role of the love interest in a cancer story. Since usually they are heart broken over the fact that the love of their life is going to die, but this guy is heartbroken that he has to stay. Yet at the same time there is part of him that would be shattered if he did actually leave. And he really does not want to be the douche bag that leaves her. Though in the end he attempts to leave, but he becomes paralyzed. It’s ironic, but they were not cliché relationship to begin with. She was the caregiver, the doctor, and he was the housewife, the patient. So when she gets cancer the roles are reversed, and they don’t how react to this. It’s probably why she becomes a bigger bitch, and why he just wants to get away. Since before their relationship worked, for them, and after it was not confortable. This story is literature because it changes the roles in what would usually be a cliché story. It makes you think and actually feel sorry for the husband.

Now Mark Richard’s “Gentlemen’s Agreement” touched my heart, sort of. Though, I will admit, that there were parts where I was completely lost. I liked how the author portrayed innocence in the story. Since when you’re a kid the simple little games and acts make you happy, but adults, who know best, always have to ruin the fun. Though they usually have a reason for it. Since in the end if you keep throwing rocks one might crack your head open. It’s kind of like those old tales that have a moral, but with a weird twist. I would classify it as literature because it had a moral, and you can relate to it.

Aimee Bender’s “The Girl in the Flammable Skirt” was my favorites from this week’s reading, because I could actually really relate to it. Since I always have those bizarre tragic thoughts of what could happen to me and my family in the future. This also connects with the part at the end about the girl that gave this story its title. Since whenever I hear about a disaster story like that I just wonder about what the person was thinking. I also loved the plot of it, because it jumped to scene to scene. It also jumped to some random bits that actually made the story more interesting. I liked her relationship with her parents, because my father also has disabilities, but his only makes him crazier and unapproachable. I liked how it seemed like her father was okay with joking around with his own disability, but when she joked about disabilities, in general, she would get in trouble. It makes her father more real, because I know my father gets angry when I even say one thing about his problems. I also enjoyed her relationship with her lover boy. Since in a way their households are complete opposites, but at the same time they are not normal and that makes them quite similar. Even how both houses are quiet, but in quite different ways: “I imagine in Paul’s house everybody is running around in their underwear, and the air is so thick with bourbon your skin tans from it. He says no; he says the truth is it’s more a pointy silence, he says. A lighter one with sharper prinks. He say’s in his house there are moisture rings making Olympian patterns on every possible wooden surface.” I can keep adding bullet points, because this story has so many attributes. It has to literature, because if it’s not I don’t know what is. It was more than just a pleasure for me. It was something I could relate to and understand. I guess it is one of those stories that takes you somewhere else, but at the same time brings you deeper into reality.