This list is biased and incomplete, because I am biased and incomplete.
1) Disaffection
There’s an idea that our generation (or to be precise, mine, those in their twenties) are numb and joyless, increasingly engaged with technology and not with each other. That brand names carry an ideological weight for us on par with a deity. That, in short, this is what people are like now: “I do this. Then I go over here. Whatever. Then I have meaningless sex, which I shall describe to you in a clinical fashion to convey just how alienated I am. List of brand names. Here are some swear words. I am nasty to someone. List of medications.”
I don’t know or care if this is what people are like. It’s dull and reductive, and suggests a snide condescension on the author’s part; that, you know, she/he sees through all that bullshit, welcome to the real world. None of the things mentioned are tedious in themselves, but Christ, say something new. Sex may be joyless. We may be numb. But that’s not even interesting enough to hold interest for a short story. If a character has no desire, no yearning, at least none that is represented in a compelling way, then why listen?
2) Epiphanies
This isn’t even something I would know how to escape. They’re there, and it’s all James Joyce’s fault. Problem is, the bastard was damn good at them (notable exception: the ending to “Araby” is abstracted and terrible). Actually, an epiphany is arguably inescapable in some form. But I still cringe when a protagonist learns something in a moment of crystalline clarity, gets a glimpse of wisdom. Raymond Carver liked to have his characters get inklings of epiphanies, rather than go the full whammo. That works to an extent. I don’t know. This is something I’m going to explore a bit more in my next post (maybe).
3) Nature Fetishism
I want there to be a movie or book… let’s say movie, movies are stuck in more of a fetishist rut. I want there to be a movie where a middle-aged man, living a gentle and wholesome life in the countryside, perhaps self-sufficient, great marriage with little perfect children, smells flowers as a pastime, has friends who express concern for his material-free life and self-reliance, until something happens. Doesn’t matter what. But I want the protagonist to become reliant on technology and filth, on the stink of a good city, on smog, on everything artificial. That this, the modern, is what gives the person ultimate fulfilment. It is not the return to an idyllic natural life that never existed, couldn’t exist. The reverse has been done to death. It’s both the gall of fiction, or rather the people behind it, that peddles this New Age wish-fulfilment to people who buy battery chicken breast, and the fact that the natural world – definitely beautiful and definitely astounding – is also full of death and horror. A bit of both would be nice; terror and beauty and ugliness can be squished together. They should be. To speak of nature with such reverence, to be such a Thomas Hardy about the whole thing, smacks of an authorly fumble of how people actually are. I just don’t buy it. After all, most people are reasonably afraid of nature in all it’s glory (there are yetis outside). To quote Robert Meeks, as I often do:
“Abhorrent though modern life is, let us all rejoice that we can, at least, remain indoors. Dark things wait in the brambles and the hedgerows and the swamps. Children: The fairy-tales your mother read to you were correct.”
4) Lack of Alchemy
John Dee (1527-1608) said that a story without at least a brief scene in which the protagonist attempts alchemy is “of no merit by any mean,” and he should know.
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Some issues here will be investigated further in next blog post that can’t be read, only inhaled, exclusively on slothrop.com (the drink of runners-up!)
WHHAAAT! I love Thomas Hardy, I don’t even care what you think.
More and more in the US, we’re seeing fiction where things take place outside/in rural areas, and it’s terrible. Annie Proulx and Daniel Woodrell, off the top of my head. Not a lot, I guess, but still. And I’m mostly afraid of stuff outside, which is why I prefer closet dramas and drawing room comedy.
And by “it’s terrible,” I don’t mean the fiction is terrible. I mean stuff outside is terrible. Damn proofreading.
Jane, I’m British. You are not. Thomas Hardy is no good. How would you feel if I got all in Mark Twain’s face? It’s not on.
I don’t have a problem with Thomas Hardy exactly, but it seems strange to me that anyone would want to revert to an all-natural idealised state of being (not that anyone would ever do that because they’d have to go naked, hunt, kill, etc). It’s the inverse of the image we all frown upon: the person who buys every brand name, believes every advertisement. Obviously no one like that actually exists, but the idea’s there, so we can say, as we consume, “well, I’m not that bad”. The nature fetishism thing is its necessary antithesis.
Basically what I’m getting at is: wouldn’t you find it a little fake if someone spoke of Coca-Cola with utter reverie and astonishment, in absolute seriousness, or the beautiful golden arches. Actually, someone should do that. As I’m describing it, I want to read it.
Get to it, Jane.
Jack,
I’m not sure that Thomas Hardy is an old fashioned romantic of nature. He seems closer to the Schopenhauer school of suffering and resignation, particularly in Jude the Obscure. Jude’s multiple desires (be good, be educated, do the right thing) always causes him to suffer. Even the other characters represent some aspects of life as suffering (Arabella as the most selfish and stupid, Phlogiston as the denier, and Father Time as the mos perceptive). Both Schopenhauer and Thomas Hardy were pessimists, one by philosophical inclination, the other by aesthetic insight.
Hey, I’m not saying you have to love Hardy. I understand perfectly what your complaint is, although I think you’re stretching it a bit with saying it’s the inverse of McDonald’s worship. And to say that Hardy thinks things would be best if they were all-natural; he is, like most writers of the period, a snob about money and status, and his work is pretty religious (which occasionally overlaps with pastoral tones, but not always).
Reasons I like Hardy:
1. I come from a farming background. I like reading books about the countryside, farms, etc. because frankly, there aren’t that many of them, especially in American literature. Since the Industrial Revolution, and ESPECIALLY since WWII, American lit swims in urbanity, how great it is, and how one cannot live a complete and full life unless one is living in an apartment on one of the coasts. That’s fine and all, but it’s not at all a reflection of my life or my personal background.
2. I like Britishy things. Girl you know how I love me some Jane Austen.
3. I’m a descendant of English and Irish farmers. Yes, it’s probably fetishism for me to want to read about Jude or Tess and sympathize with them simply because they could have been my ancestors. But what can you do. YOU DON’T RUN MY LIFE.
I did a thing sort of like that at a folk festival, Jack. Everyone was wearing straw exclusively and signing four hundred year old songs about ploughs, so I got pissed and started screaming Sonic Youth ‘tunes’ in peoples faces. This was in Yorkshire, where they eat gravel. As a treat.
The North Will Rise Again!! Not…
(p.s. I love the north)
tara,
William
@Zammael: I’m pretty much digging a hole by talking about Hardy… I know very little of his work, and wouldn’t presume to comment on it. It would have been smart if I didn’t speak of things I didn’t know, but I am not a smart man.
Your comments have buoyed up the idea, espoused by quite a few people who reassure me it’s miles above Far From The Madding Crowd, that I should finally creak open Jude the Obscure.
Dear author,
You should read Touch by Alexi Zentner, if you haven’t already. It is exactly as #3 described.
How about this. A guy keeps moving further and further away from city-life till he ends up in some ramshackle lean-to in Kenya somewheres. It could be like The Gods Must Be Crazy, but in reverse.
This actually brings to mind my current work, but I may have blended all the things you hate in a way that undermines the opinions in this post by accident. For instance, the sex scene opinion, I’ve always written sex involving love in a passionate manner, meanwhile sex without love is pretty numb and emotionless. I feel however that the lack of passion with one person in a story highlights the grandeur of sex happening out of love.
In the very opening chapter of my book there is actually a listing of medications, it’s not really in the sense that the character is part of this pharmaceutical addicted generation, or a crazy person in need of dosing. Rather they were bought off the streets to one day overdose with. I used the medication names to express the severity of the situation in the character taking them because in my eyes it looks better than just saying he ate a bunch of pills.
Then again, the title is called “Self-Loathing and Other Forms of Cynicism” and it can most likely be described as a journey into disaffection and back out. I don’t know, I either posted this because I feel like there are exceptions, or maybe because I could be writing everything you dislike. Haha,
Oh yeah, of course there are exceptions. At least, I imagine so. American Psycho does the whole listing of brand names thing very well.
Everything here can be done well. It just particularly grates when they’re not.