The other day, I read a review of a new novel in Oprah magazine, and slammed right into this line: “What’s more, this is real literature—so we know happiness can’t last.†(Oprah Magazine, October, p. 149)*.
It stopped me cold. In disbelief, I read it again, first surprised—did he really say that?–then irked, and then incensed by the smug certainty of the critic. The fourth time through, I read the line aloud to my significant other in exaggeratedly exasperated tones. “Happiness can’t last!†I shook the magazine. “And that’s the measure of literature?â€
Who says? It’s ridiculous, an exaggerated sense of ennui and cynicism that reminds me of something my father used to say. When I was a child and in a whiney mood, complaining about some petty string of troubles, he would tease me with his stock phrase: “Well, life is a swirling, sucking eddy of despair in an ever-darkening universe.â€
It was a joke, meant to make me laugh, and it usually worked. How can you take that life view seriously unless you’re an angst-ridden adolescent who has yet to understand that morality is not romantic?
How can that be the only measure of our literature? How did we get here, to a place where death, sorrow, loss, and destruction are the only worthy subjects for literature, when the (uncorrected) fatal flaw is the only interesting angle of humanity?
It is true that none of us gets out of this life alive. I get it. I bet you do, too. It is also true that no matter what you do or how you live or worship or exercise, bad things will fall in your path, sometimes really terrible ones. As a reader, I’ve long been a fan of well-executed, redemptive tragedy (please note that the key word there is “redemptionâ€, as in “order is restored by the tragedy”, i.e. “…a glooming peace this morning with it brings.”) I don’t mind a dark book, and I am happy to occasionally read literary novels that explore death, despair and dysfunction along with my more steady diet of uplifting women’s fiction, romance, and memoirs.
Unhappiness, wrong choices, and tragedy are not the only meaningful subjects for high-quality novels. Shocking as it is, happiness happens, too. People fall in love. They have children they welcome with exuberance. They do the right thing. They make their way through the challenges of falling to despair, and navigate themselves away from it to—dare I say it?—triumph. As a writer, I am endlessly exploring the question of why some people thrive in reaction to the challenges of life, while others whither.
Cynicism and despair are easy. Laughter, perseverance, and joy are much more difficult—and, in this writer’s opinion, a lot more interesting. Achieving joy requires patience and honor and a willingness to be open to life in all of its messy glory—which strikes me as a fine, fine subject for a novel. Achieving happiness is not a matter of luck, it is largely a matter of decision and character and…gusto. That to me is a much more interesting angle on fiction. Much more subtle. Much more honorable and moral.
Why or how do you think we came to this place of darkness = quality in fiction? Why is joy a less valued subject?
*Vince Passaro reviewing Generosity, by Richard Powers.
No related posts.
In today’s world, it seems we’re all just trying to hang on and get by until it gets better. That climate makes HEAs a survivial tool.
Laughter and joy and romance that matters and lasts are more valuable and more valued than ever. Time Magazine says more people are buying romance than any other single genre. 1 in 4 books sold is a romance and our books made 1.4 Billion $ last year.
None of us needs more cynicism and despair. Romance is keeping publishers afloat and inspiring survivors to smile as they hold on a little longer.
I think we’ve been there for quite a long time, actually, at least within certain circles. And beyond literature, a sober disposition has been thought more mature or more serious or more wise or learned than a sunny, optimistic disposition. And note how “cool” just automatically implies cynical, detached, and at least a little snarky. Bubbly optimists aren’t cool, and pessimists find it easy to mock optimists, for whatever reason.
There you go.
I’m pretty cynical myself, I’ll admit, in the normal way. But maybe that makes me even more appreciative of stories — whether books or movies or whatever — which give me a believable happy ending, which show me people in trouble who solve their problems and find some happiness. No, life isn’t always like that. But I think that truth makes it that much more important to have happy-ending stories to help us keep pursuing happiness, even though we know we’re not always going to catch it.
Angie
I agree with you Barbara.
I studied literature for my A-levels, English, French & Spanish and only one – ONE – of the combined twelve books we had to analyse – touched on happiness, joy, love or family (Shakespeare’s As You Like It).
The measure of literature has long since been the analysis of life’s dark side.
This is why romance, chick lit, fantasy, sci-fi and many other genres which choose not to wallow in that belief of life as a swirling, sucking eddy of despair in an ever-darkening universe (thank you, Barbara’s Daddy) will always be the poor relative to that which proves that ‘happiness can’t last’.
But as with anything, popular opinion – even critical, high-falutin popular opinion – can exist comfortably with my own differing world view.
As long as women’s fiction, romance and chick lit (my steady diet) continue to be sold in stores, I’m not bothered that I don’t get to call them ‘literature’. It’s not a fight I deem important. But it does succeed in often getting me riled up.
Dalia
I ordered a book yesterday. I think it’s going to be dark too. But not too dark, maybe.
http://bashinginminds.com/2009/09/18/buy-jeff-strands-book-and-subdue-your-homicidal-impulses/
Though I have to admit. I almost never read “literature” or watch dramas because I don’t like to be depressed. I don’t need to be reminded every second about the misery of the human condition to feel smart. Go genre!
All the writing workshops I’ve taken at conferences differentiate between “commercial” fiction, which is what the attendees write (romance and mystery conferences) and “literature”.
Doesn’t matter the topic — plot, suspense, characters, whatever. Basically, they all will give their tools and tips and say, “Of course if you write ‘literary fiction’ you don’t have to do any of this. You can be boring.”
I find ‘Literary’ fiction tedious, and I want to read to escape reality. I want to dream happy dreams, not have depressing nightmares. Doesn’t mean the tone of the book can’t be darker, or have bad stuff happen. It just needs to end on a note of HEA.
I’ve been happily in love for the past 16 years. Yes, there have been dark moments, just as romance novels have dark moments, but overall, life has been pretty darn good.
I suspect my attitude is BECAUSE I read romance novels. I don’t need help getting depressed. I DO need help getting happy and romance novels provide that help.
As a writer, I write romance because I want to leave the world a better place. Happy, in my mind, is better.
Beats me.
I still haven’t figured out why
Middle Grade heros’ parents are dead
why YA heroines hate their mothers
why the above hero’s fathers are either idiots or complete jackasses
why Kick-Butt Heroines never get knocked up no matter how often they do The Nasty
why Captain Kirk could bed half the alien females he met and only father one child, but Captain Janeway had to make do with a hologram and never had any kids at all
how a medievel heroine can have had a secret baby, but her boobs are still big and round and stand up by themselves even the bra hasn’t been invented yet
or why, oh, why, can’t Susan Grant include the words ’space’ or ‘pirate’ in her space pirate novel’s title.
It seems like the most tragic and horrible things we can dish out to our characters is what’s expected these days. One of the reasons I think romance is held in disregard by the broader literary world is because of the happy ending. There is a theme of redemption and forgiveness in romance that is not as prevalent in the rest of the world of literature, or so it seems.
For the critique to say that happiness cannot last, I agree. No one is perfectly happy all the time but life goes in cycles. Are you generally happy with your life? With your choices? Or are you miserable, constantly bemoaning the hand that fate dealt you and not making any effort to overcome the obstacles in your life.
In romance, we focus on the good that comes out of love. Yes, we assume that upon finding the soul mate there will never be an argument about doing the dishes or dirty socks in the middle of the bedroom floor.
But the happily ever after is painted as something different in the world of literature. It’s seen as a righting of the wrongs or rebalancing of the world. How is that anything other than another shape of the HEA?
Ultimately, the romance genre deals with life and love. And yes, in our worlds, happiness does last. If that means we’re not ‘literary’ then so be it. Enough people seem to enjoy our genre and those that don’t?
Well, they’re missing out.
“In romance, we focus on the good that comes out of love. Yes, we assume that upon finding the soul mate there will never be an argument about doing the dishes or dirty socks in the middle of the bedroom floor.”
Well, I see the black moment in romance as being a hint that everything CAN go terribly wrong and love can still survive. If the couple can survive assassins or death of loved ones or … they can survive dirty socks in the middle of the bedroom floor.
The pendulum swings both ways. I’ve seen genre authors chastise literary fiction for being too depressing, and I’ve seen authors of literary fiction write off romance as being fluff. It’s just a stereotype, and those don’t mean much. Truth is, I’ve read literary fiction I found to be uplifting, and read romance novels that depressed the hell out of me, so when I read the kind of stuff that reviewer wrote, I think, eh, whatever.
I think that way of thinking mostly stems from social context. Let’s face it, most classic literature was either written by aristocrats, clergymen, or people in debtor’s prison, so it’s not like they had a lot to smile about. Well, maybe the aristocrats did, but still. Books were looked upon more as a cautionary tale, a what not to do, than a guide to life. Even Jane Austen’s contemporaries despised her writing and called it shallow.
Nowadays there are more people unhappy than happy, so it makes a sick, twisted kind of sense that there would be this great divide between what’s “real” and what isn’t. I guess unhappy people don’t enjoy being uplifted any more than happy people enjoy being depressed.
I agree with you. The other day, I watched a movie expecting a love story. Instead, it ended with a divorce and the two people not liking each other very much anymore. All I could think was, “And what was the point?” Because, really, if people wanted to know that the world was a dark, cruel place, they’d hang out at homeless shelters or domestic violence shelter all day taking life stories. It’s usually not what people read for.
Life is hard and you will go through times when youare not happy, but you can choose to find joy in a situation. You just muddle through and do what you have to to get through the hard times. They will not last forever. My greatgrandparents were married for nearly 75 years. My greatgrandmother died a few months before their aniversary. They went through hard times The South in the years before the Depression was a hard place to live. They lost their home to fire on more than one occation and had five sons at war at one time. On a side note all of the sons came home in once piece, and went on to live many years. Most of them are still alive today. My greatgrand mother had a stroke when I was three, and was put in a nursing home ofter that. My greatgrandfather drove over to see her nearly everyday untill his kids told him he couldn’t drive anymore. When it was time for him to go in the home he was in the same room as his wife, and did what he could to take care of her untill the day hse died. Towards the end my greatgrandmother was on a feeding tube and would try to take it out, and did on several occations. When this happened the nurses would find my greatgranddaddy tryin to put the tube back in. He never stopped lovin her, and she was never any easy woman to live with. Greatgranddaddy lived to be 100 years old, and died a very quiet death. He and his wife had heard times, but never stopped loving. People can love and be happy for a lifetime if they choose.
There are worthy books that have happiness in them. I read to ecscape. I am going through sometough times right now. It does me no good to wallow in that. I like to read something that can take me away from all the bad stuff. That may be why i like sitcoms so much even though they can be a little stupid and shallow. they are fun and enjoyable. I thik the world would be a better place if we would stop and enjoy things more offten. I may even help to act like a kid. Think about the joy that three year olds find in simple things like runniing bubbles and peek a boo and just paying.
Good point, that maybe unhappy people don’t want to be uplifted. Makes perfect sense.
Heather, thanks for the tale of your ggrandmparents!
Personally, I think it stems from what we consider to be “literary classics”. Even books that aren’t the most well-written (LOTR anyone?) receive greater than life status and end up setting the benchmarks for today. Most were written by men and most of those men were morosely depressed and/or angry about the current life’s circumstances.
Since “only women” like Jane Austen, Little Women, etc then there is little hope that commercial fiction (which is considered to be favorites of women) will be looked at as “literary classics”. Sad but so very true….
I smile all the time. My facial muscles are trained that way. Even at rest, I’ve got a smile. It’s effortless. I even smile when I talk.
I can’t tell you the number of people who have said to me in an angry voice, “Why do you smile all the time?”
Huh? Usually I answer, “Why don’t you?”
I never understood that question, but I do understand that for some people, happiness is a threat.
I don’t know why. I’m not them. If I’m “stupid or simple” because I smile, boy they should try to pull one over on me. Because I can smile while taking someone’s butt to the curb.
I don’t know. I do think that some people think if you believe in a state of happiness, you must be stupid because life isn’t happy. Well, is seems pretty stupid to me to wallow in self-pity and misery trying to enlighten oneself instead on trying to find the purpose in your life that uplifts you.
I’ll keep smiling until the day I die, and then I’ll smile beyond that. Because there is great joy in an infinite number of places all around you at any moment. All you have to do is find them, and smile.
You’ve nailed exactly why I’ve never read an Oprah book. I’ve checked them out, seen what downers they were (despite her insistence that they’re “hopeful”), and reshelved them for some other poor sap to buy. I had enough of that kind of “literature” in college. I want my happy endings.
And yes, they do happen in real life, too.
Oprah once asked Toni Morrison something to the effect of why she had to read her paragraphs several times in order to make sense of them. Morrison replied something like, “That, my dear, is literature.”
It’s no wonder that gifted storytellers–Stephen King, Carla Neggers, Harlan Coben–are on the best-seller list while writers of “serious fiction” are ignored by all but the most egg-headed of academics.