Saturday, May 21, 2005

How I'm Spending my Summer Vacation

School’s out, what did you expect?

It would seem that a break from literary study would call for the reading of some quicker, less dense novels. That was always the case in the past. I’d get a break for a few weeks, or even 3 solid months, and I would read Bukowski, Vonnegut or any other fine, respected writer who offered a damn good story delivered perfectly in a few hundred enjoyable pages. I have never been one for pop fiction. I can’t lounge on the beach with Sidney Sheldon or Harold Robbins and my days of reading Stephen King are over. I have the utmost respect for Vonnegut or John Fante because their books are quite good and packed with uncluttered prose that is fresh and not at all daunting to read. Needless to say, these are not light novels written by light thinkers. Nevertheless, they rarely seem to make it into academia.

Classrooms are devoted to the canonized writers whose work is so revered (rightly so) because it was either innovative or (wrongly so) cumbersome to the point of almost unworthy recognition. I don’t care for James Joyce or Joseph Conrad. I have read them and I am glad, but I don’t get excited over their books and I certainly don’t plan to devote my free time between now and mid July (when summer school begins) to rereading their work. Vonnegut is perhaps my favorite living writer (along with Jeanette Winterson), but not because his books are easy reads. If anything, his work is deceptively simple, further proof of his unique talent. A Vonnegut novel can be read in a day’s time, assuming one has a day to sacrifice to the simple act of reading. Be that as it may, Cat’s Cradle, Jailbird and Hocus Pocus are fantastic books packed with near perfect, lucid prose. They jump around, they tell a story in an interesting way and, like Winterson, Vonnegut is more interested in the way the tale is told then the tale itself. Try and describe the plot of Hocus Pocus and you will sound like an idiot. There are far more interesting things going on than the story itself.

Winterson said as much in her book of essays, Art Objects. She fancies herself to be a writer who loves language and thus the story is secondary to the style. She fashions herself after Woolf in this way. Having little exposure to Woolf (for shame, Vince), I have decided to skip the so-called lighter reading and focus on some of Virginia’s books.

Most academics would say I am not skipping the light reading, as I am reading Orlando. I thought this would be a good way to start off the summer as it is considered by many to be her most accessible book—which translates, to the goons of academia, as least important. What a crock. The sad truth about academics, career ones especially, is that they only seem to judge a work by its difficulty. The canon is full of cumbersome writers and for one of these professors or critical theorists to actually finish an allegedly difficult work is the equivalent—in their mind’s—of crossing the Gobi or swimming from Sestos to Abydos. Orlando is not as difficult to maneuver through as To the Lighthouse. It is (as of page 226) a delightfully written book that presents ideas as well as a story of a man who crosses into womanhood and through centuries. I also suspect it has meet with lesser recognition due to its playful nature and overwhelming sense of fun.

Woolf is considered a serious writer because her books are serious and they deal with serious emotions. Woof was, as we know, victim to serious issues in her life, mostly emotional and certainly psychological. Her suicide is thus interpreted in a myriad of ways, as was her metal anguish. Her work is often judged in relation to her emotional state. As a result, a book like Orlando is considered the pulp of her complete oeuvre. Poppycock. Kafka’s Amerika meets with the same sort of dismissal as it is hardly the absurd masterpiece, “The Metamorphosis”, the paranoid and incomplete The Trail, or the deeply sad “Hunger Artist”. The image of Woolf or Kafka as something other than dour and tortured seems to bother scholars. It is again a case of the image being more important than the work. It happens. I have read some books by William S. Burroughs and a lot more information about him. I find his life more interesting than his work. Ditto Ezra Pound.

After I finish Orlando I will try and decode The Waves. Between the two I feel I will have better understanding of the scope of Woolf’s career. My reasons for choosing these two also correspond to Winterson’s book of essays, as she uses these works as platform for her thoughts on art. Reading the three books at once should prove fun and stimulating and part of me thinks it’ll go some way toward keeping the brain in shape during what is traditionally a time of slacking. I tried to do this while I was a college drop out. I read The Sound and the Fury three times, the last time reading a guide to the novel along with the book. I read “The Waste Land” and a lot of essays about the poem. Too many. I tried to have a balanced literary diet. I could let myself go and just kick back with something a tad less challenging, but what the hell? I might as well try and stay the course until this whole school thing is done. And if I drop out again, I doubt I’ll go running back to Dean Koontz or Anne Rice. We do not need to feel forced to read something more substantial, just as we do not need to feel as though we can’t enjoy a quick read. Some days we want prime rib and some days we want White Castles.

Update if anyone cares:

I finished Orlando and it was wonderful. Read it. I am not going to summer school for a myriad of reasons, mostly financial, as in aid and the lack thereof. I am attempting Robert Musil's The Man Without Qualities which may kill me. But what a way to go.

Have a nice Summer.