Outside, the rain is barely loud enough to patter over the whirl of the washing machine. Having no money,working with spitting babies, and owning only two pairs of scrubs, results in frequent laundry whirling this summer. The humidity is smudging up against my window, a fan flips quietly above me, and at my left elbow is a pile of untouched fiction. Tonight was library night.
I'm not pleased to report that I'm a library snob. I have this sneaking suspicion that every librarian thinks exactly as I would, if I were a librarian:
"Really? Six romance novels? Someone hasn't had a date in months... Is his life really so starved for excitement that he only reads mysteries?... This person has checked out nothing but paperback, 100-pagers. Guess who doesn't have reading level above the fourth grade."
Yes, I know. I'm a horrible person. And there have been times when I've snuck a skimpy, 4th-grade level novel in between my Dickens and Chaucer, however, for the majority of my life, I've reveled in the "classics." I love their sentence structure, the vivid vocabulary and tangential descriptions which loop back around to relevance (Dickens doesn't always do this, consequently I do not always approve of Dickens). A little bit of my world shattered when I found that Sir Walter Scott described all his heroines the same way ("eyes like diamonds, teeth like pearls"), but for the most part, my allegiance has held steady to the ancients. In high school I had a tutor for English (something about two engineering parents being at a complete loss of what to do with me). She made me read some modern classics (i.e. "To Kill a Mockingbird," "Cry The Beloved Country," etc.), but every now and then she would put down a paper, look at me sternly and say, "Courtney. Did you read Jane Austen this weekend?" Apparently, when you read only eighteenth century literature, you begin to write like eighteenth century literature.
So reader, I have a confession. Lying here, in a tempting pile, are an assortment of books which probably can't even claim the term "emerging classics." The theme of this library trip was "books-which-aren't-happy-with-where-Jane-Austen-ended." I've turned up my literary nose at such items in the past, but always with a sneaking interest. I have now caved to this interest. What person, after falling completely in love with characters, doesn't grieve a little when the author writes "The End"? (The one exception to this would be the Elsie Dinsmore series which drags on for 60+ inane books, the only interesting characters being the "sinful" errant children. The readers of this series must cry "uncle!" long before the final book in order to preserve their sanity.)
I can hardly wait to curl up on my couch, licking a popsicle and reading without needing a thesaurus. I now bid you adieu, dear reader. I'm about to imbibe some fluffy, girly nonsense to the tune of rain drops and the washing machine.
2 comments:
... I can't lie, dear, I hated Pride and Prejudice, I couldn't get past page 5 without rolling my eyes and swallowing my vomit. Congrats to Ms. Austen for breaking down barriers. Boo on the content. It's going to take more than "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies" for me to love it. But I really, really hope you are not reading Twilight. I did and survived but... turn away!
A journalism professor turned me on to Robert Gunning, who studied readability and consulted for newspapers and press associations, way back (the prof was an old newspaperman, and I took his classes a long time ago). But Gunning contended that most classics are written in a simple style -- short sentences and paragraphs, words that everyone understands, etc. A book he wrote, The Technique of Clear Writing, had a big influence on me and was a big help in developing my self editing skill, be that as it may.
Coincidentally, I was thinking about Gunning recently, probably because I can make no headway in my own writing, and I found his book online. It's way out of print, but I found one and ordered it, only to be told later that Sorry, it has been sold.
I guess my point is, some writers can dazzle you with language, like Faulkner, whom I admire and enjoy. But to me he's throwing a lot of glitter into the air. When it comes down, what is there? With him it's there, but also with you, with your writing, the there is there. I feel.
Post a Comment