Friday, February 14, 2014

For Tai-the Rebuttal

Tai-I just want to say that it's been 2 years and I finally feel the need to respond to the wonder-of-a-masterpeice which you so elegantly wrote for me.
You say that we have to consider today's authors. You say that they represent our culture and our society. You say that-yes-you do hate them, but that's not important. Erroneous!
Today's authors may stem from a form of popular culture, but I argue that the dribble we see on television and in today's entertainment is not our culture. These authors make up a small, insignificant amount  of shelf that we, in a state of grogginess and confusion, are drawn towards. Maybe it's the every increasing work week, or maybe it's just the fact that today's popular authors overtake and conceal the more accurate writers in our generation. Let's face it, to be in front of the crowd of Target-goers today you have to write for what sales. Is that literature? Should we call today's popular authors today's significant authors?
It is a mere fraction of what makes up American ideals and a mere fraction of what makes up the population's core interest. I say that today's popular novels, although intriguing, are remnants of a rubric that works. They say that the Mary Tyler More show was written off of a template that produced the same show, different dialogue every night. Why? It sold. Every night viewers tuned in to watch a successful recipe flourish in real time. The books today sell copies and turn pages; the novels on the shelves today, with the exception of a few, do not report the overwhelming fears and celebrations of our society. They are the Mary Tyler More of textual language.
In their credit, most of the popular fiction today does label itself as Young Adult literature; to write such a novel, you are intending to appeal to a certain audience. An audience that primarily does not entirely understand their own feelings let alone the feelings of an entire country.
No, the true American novel, since the early 1900's, has been The Great Gatsby. 
"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."
Our culture can still be summed up in the one line that Fitzgerald so accurately pins onto the tail of that ever-wanting, ever-selfservicing culture. The green light Tai is continually growing, dimming, and growing again. We will never be satisfied and, therefore, I will never be satisfied with today's authorship. It's the winding gyre that Yeats warned us about. Circling ever so closely to my world, but never achieving it's goal of contentment. No, today's authors cannot summarize American culture because American culture does not want to be understood. We are the Wanting.

1 comment:

  1. There be gold in those hills. This conversation ain't over.

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