If you’ve ever taken a college English course, you know what it’s like to read stories you may not necessarily enjoy. More often than not, the books, stories or poems are chosen not for the content of the tale but for the way it represents the format. Many times a book is required because it offers an insight into the life and times of a person, group of people or location from a personal perspective. Fiction is magical that way.
Novels - regardless of genre - are snapshots of a particular moment (event or series of events) in the life of a character or group of characters. Hopefully, that moment is interesting enough to capture the readers attention and hold it until the ending which - I’m sure you’ll agree with me - is hopefully satisfactory.
On the whole, I’m not a fan of literary fiction. Yes, there are exceptions to every rule and yes I have read literary fiction that I absolutely adored. They’re out there but they are few and far between. When I think of literary novels that I’ve enjoyed, they are almost always filled with characters I can actually like who are experiencing a plot that is gripping, interesting and different from my daily comings and goings. This is why I don’t usually enjoy the literary genre. Too much of it is a snapshot of a depressed individual who goes from one bad scenario to another for the sole purpose of letting the author wax lyrical about their pain and suffering without really giving us a respite or a hopeful conclusion.
Please correct me if I’m wrong.
Give me a character who’s down on their luck, who has had the bottom drop out from their life and are sitting in the proverbial muck and mire when we meet them. I love a good underdog story. BUT give me an ending that shows that the character has not only had a journey of self but who has also physically removed themselves from the catalyst which propelled them into the muck. Please, please don’t allow the character to stay miserable, continue to fail, begin and end the book depressed, beleaguered, or worse off than they were when the whole thing started. That’s not art. That’s just down right awful. If I want bad stories with awful endings, I’ll watch the news.
Which I don’t watch. Ever. So that tells you what kind of stories I like.
There’s an interesting little off-shoot of literary fiction that exaggerates real life, gives us characatures of people, places, things and ideas, stretches our belief of situations to the max and forces us to take a good, hard look at the why behind the what in our communities. It’s called Social Satire and I’ve recently made an enlightening discovery:
I don’t enjoy it.
Hear me out. I know that’s not a popular opinion. Social Satire includes many, MANY of the Classics. But where many stories contain some satire about the human condition, some are written for the sole purpose of poking fun at the way things are done in certain situations or at certain levels of society. While I do love a good laugh at my own expense, an entire novel filled with over-wrought characters doing ridiculous things that I as the reader can tell are over-exaggerated does not fill me with joy.
At all.
And I know I’m pretty much alone in this opinion which is fine.
What started this thought process was my most recently completed reading experience : Stella Gibbons’ Cold Comfort Farm.
(Isn’t that cover hilarious?)
I’d heard of this book and seen it at the local B&N for years. There’s not a single indication what it’s about on the back of the book. I don’t know a soul who has read it. I refused to look up a review and even skipped the introduction by the incomprable Lynne Truss. I was completely and totally in the dark when I bought this.
And when I started reading it, the light just kept getting dimmer.
Five chapters in and I was lost. So I paused, stuck in my bookmark and flipped back to the introduction. Now, I usually avoid these because they always preface a classic and assume you’ve already read it. There are spoilers and I don’t like spoilers of any kind. At all. Like don’t even tell me you hated the book and think it should be buried in the compost heap. I don’t want anything to color my thoughts when I begin reading something. However, reading the introduction did shed some light on what was going on. Turns out, Cold Comfort Farm was written to poke fun at the bucolic, over-wrought stereotypes coming out of the “poverty stricken farm tales” of the day. Gibbon’s wrote a satire on the ridiculous cast of characters every “failing farm” tale gave the public and it worked. If you’ve ever read D.H. Lawrence or Thomas Hardy, you’ll understand where she’s coming from. And to be fair : once I fell into the rhythm of her writing and understood why she wrote it, it was pretty hilarious.
Still. It shed some light on other books I’ve read that I just didn’t enjoy. Books that people adore and read over and over and proclaim that I just need to give it “one more try!” It completely gave me peace about not liking Pride and Prejudice.
Maybe it’s my disinterest in social commentary that has set up a fine mental block for me against social satire. Perhaps this genre is only written about times periods I’m not the least bit interested in visiting. Or maybe I’m just that socially awkward that I don’t understand that cultural norms that are being lampooned. Whatever the reason, I can breathe a sigh of relief knowing that I’m not broken; I just don’t care for a particular genre.
You know what’s coming. I’m going to ask you what YOU think. Do you enjoy the mocking of societal norms? Am I, perhaps, missing something when I approach these books that poke fun at what “everybody’s” doing? I really am curious!
Thanks for reading and commenting x