Dead White Authors

Slate.com runs these sometimes interesting, sometimes annoying "conversations" about various topics. They've been doing one where mob experts discuss The Sopranos, for example. They just started one, in commemoration of Bloom's Day—the day when the events of James Joyce's Ulysses take place—in which novelists Jeffrey Eugenides and Jim Lewis discuss the heirs of Joyce and the other early modernist writers.

I can't say I've read a lot of what they're going to be talking about. I've read A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Malcom Lowry's Under the Volcano (which I think qualifies), and that's about it. I have to admit that I found reading them akin to being punished. Actually, more like eating cauliflower. Sure, it's good for you, but why can't it be enjoyable? I don't mind being challenged, but why can't challenge and fun go together? (And yes, I realize that my idea of fun might be different from other people's ideas of fun.) I have no idea how much post-Joyce modernist fiction is like that—some people say it is uselessly impenetrable, some say it is joyous exercise for the brain, and I guess the rest find themselves somewhere in between. I'm sadly behind on most modern "literary" fiction, although I did just read White Teeth by Zadie Smith.

Ulysses was recently voted #1 on the Modern Library Association's list of the 100 greatest novels written in English in the 20th century. Because I view lists like that as challenges, I'll likely read it someday; I've already read a quarter of the books on that list, and around ten of them I read simply because they were on the list. My reaction to lists like that is a combination two things: my inferiority complex at not having gone to a good school, and my belief that there are a lot of great works of literature that I wouldn't read unless someone (like the MLA) tells me about them. Some of the books I read because they were on the list have become my favorite novels, including Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner, The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford, and Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson.

Back to the subject of the Slate exchange: here's a good quote from Jim Lewis that somewhat illustrates my feelings about "serious" literature (although we could have a good discussion about the merits of novels that aren't "serious literature").

Above all, I would insist that novelists who think they're smarter than their characters, and more sophisticated than the idea of the novel itself, and who cannot resist the temptation to demonstrate as much, ought instead to find deeper characters and better stories to write. I want a book to break my heart; everything else is television.