I was wiling away another boring, useless morning of work when I saw an ad for the Time's list of top 100 books. Curious, I clicked the link and was presented with a helpfully alphabetical list of what Time Magazine, (or at least, whomever considers themselves the literary expert at Time Magazine) considers the top 100 books of all time.
On the list, I found the typical books you'd all expect. 1984. Animal Farm. The Sound and the Fury. The Grapes of Wrath, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Native Son, etc etc. A round robin of racially, thematically, and time period-ly diverse stories that anyone with an English major or a vague conception of literary canon would agree is "good literature." There are a few newbies thoughtfully entered into the list, but for the most part, they stick to the "greats," or what I consider anyone whose name you bring up in a Starbucks and have people nod knowingly, whether they'd read the book or not. These are people we are expected to read, expected to know, expected to absorb into our own identity as 21st century American writers. There were quite a few I did not recognize, so I clicked on them and read the blurbs. I wanted to get an idea of what it was I was missing, and why these books were continually being taught in sophomore English class.
As I read on, I started to notice a pattern in these books. It's something I've dealt with for a long time, as an avid reader and aspiring writer, this pattern, and I am starting to get an idea of the literary environment I live in. Many of the novels detail "quiet lives of desperation," as Thoreau would say. People who have grown helpless, bored, or unseated by their belief that they have no control over their lives. They are langorous and despairing. They, like my least favorite and only personally trashed book (100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez) tell a story of people who live lives that make no difference whatsoever. They almost revel in the fact that they will never achieve happiness, and that the insanity of a quietly accepting that is more logical than the unflinching desire to chase it. These are people who live with no hopes, no dreams, and no self-respect. They desire nothing and achieve nothing. They have acceptance and apathy. They are worthless.
I feel like I am going crazy sometimes when I read that this kind of thing is popular. Why do people love books that are urbane and spiritless? Why do they rejoice in mundanity? And most of all, why are these books considered an accurate reflection of humanity? I have only inhabited one body during my time on Earth, but I have never felt an inkling of those feelings, and I never will. I feel like that is the most evil thing I have ever heard of, and yet people accept it, laud it, even love it! And why? Why do they like books written about people without even a shred of heroic quality? Why do they want to read about weaklings and cowards and people who willfully destroy themselves? I don't understand it, and I wish someone would explain it to me.
Here is a blurb about a book by John Updike called "Rabbit, Run." If anyone would like to explain to me the merit of this book, please be my guest. I quite honestly do not understand it.
"At the center of the crack-up is Harry ("Rabbit") Angstrom. In the small Pennsylvania suburb where he was born and lives, he had been a schoolboy hero, a basketball player of exciting skill. That was the high point of his life. Now, out of the army and in his mid-20s, he has reached a personal nadir. The old hero of the courts works as a demonstrator of a kitchen gadget. His wife is dull, losing her looks, and spends most of her time before the TV set with an oldfashioned. Not knowing what he wants, but hating what he has, Rabbit walks out on his wife and child, gets into his car and simply runs away.
At his hollow center, Rabbit is ineffectual. He cannot even run away cleanly, gets lost on the road and returns—but not to his wife. He turns to his old high school coach and through him meets a girl who has slipped into casual prostitution. The first night, he pays. Then he and Ruth simply begin living together. Big, shrewd, and without illusions, she knows Rabbit is no prize, but neither is she. It is when the local Episcopal minister shows up to make Rabbit see the moral wrong of his desertion that all the weak strands of his character begin to tangle up. The minister is a weakling himself, but he is persistent. What follows is the revolting zigzag course of a weak, sensual, selfish and confused moral bankrupt. He returns to his wife; he walks out again; a tragic incident sends him back to her once more-and again he runs out. Can he go back to Ruth, pregnant and contemptuous of his weakness? When he goes out on a simple errand, all his failings converge on him at once, and again he runs, runs, runs. "
Why would I want to read something like this? I know people are like this, I suppose, but maybe I try too hard to shelter myself from it. I don't WANT to know people like this. I don't want people to accept this for themselves. I want people to stretch the boundaries of what they are to see what they can be, and to run for THAT with all the will they can muster.
Is my idea of humanity outdated or ridiculous? Is it true that most people have given up trying to be great, and are satisfied with just being relatively good sometimes?
Or maybe my idea of literature is wrong. I read things that I feel will improve me and guide me down my own path to becoming great. I want to read things inspiring and glinting with hope. I want to read things that set me on fire.
Maybe different things resonate with different people? All I know is that despair does NOT resonate with me.
