So what's literature?
I was out watering my plants to get them through the heat of the day, thinking about literature and books. In the discussion the other day, several folks differentiated between literature and other kinds of books. I don’t want to fall into the pit of ‘what makes bad books’--that just seems to me a dead end, with the unpleasant potential of a lot of sneering, and the heat of argument when someone’s Bad Book turns out to be another’s Best Beloved.
Instead, what I would like to mull over with anyone interested in this topic is what makes literature, if literature comprises those books we admire, love, that affect us, that we come back to again and again over the years--in thought if not actually in rereading.
It seems to me that what’s laid at the keel, so to speak, is the intensity of emotional engagement. That of course can be defined in a whole lot of ways. The romance genre knows right off how to define it: they want the reader’s engagement in the romantic lives of the characters. I believe, and feel free to argue since this is not my point of view, the reader who insists that adult reading is primarily an intellectual activity is overlooking the fact that her emotions are still engaged--they just are evoked by different elements.
Nabokov, who really disliked his students to discuss books from the perspective of identifying with characters, called them bad readers. But to say that he is not emotionally engaged is to both misread him and misjudge him. Here he talks about the reading experience, which he feels--
….is thus marked by a kind of spiritual thrill which in English is very loosely termed inspiration. A passerby whistles a tune at the exact moment that you notice the reflection of a branch in a puddle which in its turn, and simultaneously, recalls a combination of damp green leaves and excited birds in some old garden, and the old friend, long dead, suddenly steps out of the past, smiling and closing his dripping umbrella. The whole thing lasts one radiant second and the motion of impressions is so swift you cannot check the exact laws which attend their recognition, formation, and fusion . . . it is like a jigsaw puzzle that instantly comes together in your brain with the brain itself unable to observe how and why the pieces fit, and you experience a shuddering sensation of wild magic . . .memory played a essential though unconscious part and everything depended upon the perfect fusion of past and present. The inspiration of genius adds a third ingredient: it is the past and the present and the future (your book) that come together in a sudden flash; thus the entire cycle of time is perceived, which is another way of saying that time ceases to exist.
It is a combined sensation of having the whole universe entering you and of yourself wholly dissolving in the universe surrounding you. It is the prison wall of the ego suddenly crumbling away with the nonego rushing in to save the prisoner--who is already dancing in the open.
Try to convince me that that is not emotional engagement! What Nabokov seems not to value as highly as the sharp pleasure of the jigsaw-puzzle fitting together is the sharp pleasure some readers get in living inside the skins of the characters. This is the target of romance: at least I think it’s fair to say that the assumption from the start is that the reader is going to identify with the protags. And into that form some writers inject not just super-powered sexual attractions that most of us never had or will have, but also wit and skill. That’s why I adore Jennifer Crusie, for example. She takes those familiar human emotions of chemistry and love and examines them not just with compassion and insight but with wit.
Many of us are genre readers and writers because we want to imagine, as best we can, wearing the skin of the alien. Not only can we see the universe differently, but we can turn around and view humanity differently--see how things are, how things might be--and to extrapolate change.
Sidestep, because my smog-tortured sinuses have driven the Smith brain into hibernation. I can’t even say if I ever had a point, I just know I lost it, so here’s an observation, then I’ll stop maundering and turn back to grading papers:
For me, invoking the alien can get old--too much of an attempt to play outside of human experience finally causes my emotions to disengage. My particular gasp of surprise whooples when someone takes on a familiar element. Presents it in a new way so that it becomes fresh, and regains some of its original power. Jo Walton did this in Tooth and Claw. She took dragons, which have certainly become familiar over the past thirty years in particular (and they weren’t new then) and by mapping them over an oh-so-civilized Victorian novel full of invisible social rules, makes a fun story that shows us just how close to the civilized surface savagery really lies. Isn’t that the essence of literature?
If I had a whole bunch of money--in other words, to pay people for their work--I’d issue a challenge. Heck, there are a lot of writers who cruise by here (that’s not to assume anyone’s even read this far--I know this is gassing on rather long) who could take, say, vampires, and give us something fresh--vampires that matter. Vampires as literature. Yeah.
Well, off to breathe more steam, drink tea, and return to that pile of papers to grade.
Instead, what I would like to mull over with anyone interested in this topic is what makes literature, if literature comprises those books we admire, love, that affect us, that we come back to again and again over the years--in thought if not actually in rereading.
It seems to me that what’s laid at the keel, so to speak, is the intensity of emotional engagement. That of course can be defined in a whole lot of ways. The romance genre knows right off how to define it: they want the reader’s engagement in the romantic lives of the characters. I believe, and feel free to argue since this is not my point of view, the reader who insists that adult reading is primarily an intellectual activity is overlooking the fact that her emotions are still engaged--they just are evoked by different elements.
Nabokov, who really disliked his students to discuss books from the perspective of identifying with characters, called them bad readers. But to say that he is not emotionally engaged is to both misread him and misjudge him. Here he talks about the reading experience, which he feels--
….is thus marked by a kind of spiritual thrill which in English is very loosely termed inspiration. A passerby whistles a tune at the exact moment that you notice the reflection of a branch in a puddle which in its turn, and simultaneously, recalls a combination of damp green leaves and excited birds in some old garden, and the old friend, long dead, suddenly steps out of the past, smiling and closing his dripping umbrella. The whole thing lasts one radiant second and the motion of impressions is so swift you cannot check the exact laws which attend their recognition, formation, and fusion . . . it is like a jigsaw puzzle that instantly comes together in your brain with the brain itself unable to observe how and why the pieces fit, and you experience a shuddering sensation of wild magic . . .memory played a essential though unconscious part and everything depended upon the perfect fusion of past and present. The inspiration of genius adds a third ingredient: it is the past and the present and the future (your book) that come together in a sudden flash; thus the entire cycle of time is perceived, which is another way of saying that time ceases to exist.
It is a combined sensation of having the whole universe entering you and of yourself wholly dissolving in the universe surrounding you. It is the prison wall of the ego suddenly crumbling away with the nonego rushing in to save the prisoner--who is already dancing in the open.
Try to convince me that that is not emotional engagement! What Nabokov seems not to value as highly as the sharp pleasure of the jigsaw-puzzle fitting together is the sharp pleasure some readers get in living inside the skins of the characters. This is the target of romance: at least I think it’s fair to say that the assumption from the start is that the reader is going to identify with the protags. And into that form some writers inject not just super-powered sexual attractions that most of us never had or will have, but also wit and skill. That’s why I adore Jennifer Crusie, for example. She takes those familiar human emotions of chemistry and love and examines them not just with compassion and insight but with wit.
Many of us are genre readers and writers because we want to imagine, as best we can, wearing the skin of the alien. Not only can we see the universe differently, but we can turn around and view humanity differently--see how things are, how things might be--and to extrapolate change.
Sidestep, because my smog-tortured sinuses have driven the Smith brain into hibernation. I can’t even say if I ever had a point, I just know I lost it, so here’s an observation, then I’ll stop maundering and turn back to grading papers:
For me, invoking the alien can get old--too much of an attempt to play outside of human experience finally causes my emotions to disengage. My particular gasp of surprise whooples when someone takes on a familiar element. Presents it in a new way so that it becomes fresh, and regains some of its original power. Jo Walton did this in Tooth and Claw. She took dragons, which have certainly become familiar over the past thirty years in particular (and they weren’t new then) and by mapping them over an oh-so-civilized Victorian novel full of invisible social rules, makes a fun story that shows us just how close to the civilized surface savagery really lies. Isn’t that the essence of literature?
If I had a whole bunch of money--in other words, to pay people for their work--I’d issue a challenge. Heck, there are a lot of writers who cruise by here (that’s not to assume anyone’s even read this far--I know this is gassing on rather long) who could take, say, vampires, and give us something fresh--vampires that matter. Vampires as literature. Yeah.
Well, off to breathe more steam, drink tea, and return to that pile of papers to grade.