Here.
Fall Break is upon Oberlin, and what a glorious break it is. I'm taking the time to catch up on reading, do some homework, and work on a variety of projects. It's wonderful.
Well, almost. The problem is, so much--I'd venture to say the majority--of "serious" literature is just depressing. I finished Cormac McCarthy's The Road today. It's just bleak. And, interestingly, science fiction. But mostly just bleak. It's also an incredibly engaging and quick read.
While I enjoyed and appreciated The Road, both for its blatant, yet updated, American-ness, it's sci-fi undertones, and it's luminous, almost furiously desperate writing, I found myself grateful for the slow rise of Comics as a respected medium and genre-bending authors.
I don't want to always have to read sad, depressing, bleak books. I want to be able to read Local and Fables, too. I want to be able to read Chabon and have that be okay.
Of course, when I say okay, I mean respected. Or at least considered to be a worthwhile use of time. Perhaps I'm projecting here, but I get the sense that to be a serious consumer of literature, one ought to read books like The Road all the time. This, to me, sounds like locking myself in a small, dark room, never seeing the sun, and avoiding human contact. Don't get me wrong, The Road was good--great even. But if I only read these Serious works, I would go quite mad.
Maybe I'm full of shit. Maybe not all--or at least most--serious (or serious considered) fiction is depressing. But looking back on those "canonical" books I had to read in high school, I'm remembering a certain profound sadness to them all. Perhaps it would be good to read some more upbeat books. And I don't mean the Vonnigut, Robbins school of upbeat. Granted these books can be great and Serious, too. But, I think there's more ground to cover. I think that, in those spaces between genre-work and high-art, we can find some books that deserve to be Serious and Canonical.
On another note, I just finished Sam Harris's Letter to a Christian Nation. It was very, very interesting. But, that said, I do have a problem with the kind of militant atheism he propounds. Of course, I have a lot less of a problem with that than I do with religious fundamentalism, so I think I'll just go ahead and pick my battles. I think there's more to this high intellectualism as preached by Harris, though. I'll do some thinking and get back to you on that.
Happy break, everyone.
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