For Bri

Recently, one Ms. Barber of the blog, “Between Two Waves of The Sea” wrote a post about the vapidity of adolescent fiction, specifically the breed which calls upon the memetical forms of vampire fiction and boobs. Although I whole heartedly agree that a staggering majority of her referenced works can be considered trash, there is one thing we tend to forget as students of literature (and even something that Barber references in her piece).

At one point, much literature was once considered trash, and indeed, at some points, the form of literature itself has been under question. I would even go so far to say that we are currently trying to reassess what the form means to us as a society.

In the Victorian era, the novel was under attack as an irrelevant form for pattering women who had nothing to do but involve themselves in the ramblings of Mrs. Dalloway or Jane Ere. These critics saw the reading of fiction saw the form as a distraction, enactments of a veil constructed from pretend people wandering around a pretend world doing pretend things.

In many way they may have had a point. There is a kind of impudence, a kind of childlike tendency, required to spend your time immersing yourself in the revelries of fictional characters. Hamlet existed, and it is safe to assume that both the political workings of Denmark as well as the reflected item of Elizabethan England was a far more complex place than even Shakespeare can truly speak to. The number er sociological threads, which even weaved into a social space in a specific hermetic time, are fucking staggering and impossible to truly behold. Even in our time.

Trash literature, the vulgate, lack the certain depth which makes the works of the canon so interesting as historical markers, they are still part of the literary milieu which speaks to the growing forms whose existence has resulted in this giant clusterfuck we call 'culture'. The great works speak to the dominant narrative, which although very white and very hypocritical, is unarguably important and continues to effect the things we do and think. However, I would argue that the vulgate, stuff like Twilight or Game of Thrones or Harry Potter, make up for what they lack in memetical verisimilitude with pure relevance.

This is where I start to digress from the structuralist doctrine I have been waving the flag for for the last few paragraphs. In a sense, these pieces are little landmines of our time. Markers which, beyond the pure esthetics of the pieces, are encoded with the basic forces which dictate how we love, fight, hate, fuck, and make money. Although not obviously deeplu decoded with our tools of Marxism or New Criticism or Feminism, they are indeed pieces which are deeply complex in the very medium they inhabit. They are still created from the same thread which leads to the immaterial stuff that the literatures of humanity try to approach and I think their placement in the very heart of our current mindscape thingamafuckashit that we live in make them articles which deserve consideration. However, I would argue they hold certain presence which historical pieces do not. They are breaths of the animal that is artistic dialogue.

I suppose presence is what we have been talking about-- always been the batteground (lol Krishna) for the great dialogue of what the hell actually is. Woo Sophism, but hey, I think there is, ironically, an argument to be made that all arguments end up in this realm.

Maybe all things we do are pretend, and the true uplifting of the veil is the realization that we have created a good portion of reality for ourselves. We require tools to consider our reality which, in and of themselves, act as mediators. A mediator always has an element of obfuscation, just because something is an artifact of the past, it does not make it any more legitimate as a form for study.

Let's consider the concept of study for a moment, it involves analysis, using the most explicit tools to broaden our understanding of a form into realms we never thought related. Connections require an open mind.

But let us not forget that these so called. Frivolous works are pieces made from our time. Like it or not, they are products of our time, and it is up to those who find use in fiction itself to give them due consideration. It feels good to hate Stephanie Meyer and JK Rowling. Disliking is a whole of a lot more fun than liking. However, I think it is the duty of the literati to think beyond the realm of small 'c' criticism, must needs stop throwing rotten tomatoes. If we are going to consider our subject of inquiry elite, if we are going to even consider our dialogues beyond those of the like/dislike duality, we must begin to look at our own time with the same lens of fairness and holistic contextualization that we treat the past.

That said, Dean Koontz and Dan Brown, although more talented than I will ever be (this could even be said of fucking Joey Fatone), make my blood run cold.