I’ve read more than my fair share of anemic books, bestsellers wrought with redundant storylines and mind numbing dialogue. Love triangles, YA post-apocalyptic three part pointlessness, and big budget blockbusters waiting to happen. I’ve read and yes positively reviewed literature that cushions my imaginary comfort zone and provides temporary escape akin to some drug on the brink of legalization and already sold in some liberal state’s vending machine. I’ve read books because television offered no real mental stimulation and mainstream Hollywood seemed intent on releasing unimaginative and narrow narratives.
There are so many books, so many options available. Pick your favorite genre and there will be droplets of choices so numerous that they could fill Lake Superior. And sometimes, what rises to the top are little more than pop culture byproducts of great publicists and ssuccessful marketing strategies? So then you find yourself re-reading essentially the same book by a different author when you aren’t actually rereading a book you love just to avoid literary disappointment.
My literary tastes are a bit scattered, I love Jane Eyre (Charlotte Brontë) just as much as I love Kindred (Octavia Butler), Dune (Frank Herbert), Eleanor & Park (Rainbow Rowell) or Catherine the Great (Robert K. Massie). I hand my money over to Amazon or some used bookstore in exchange for what can be a perspective altering experience. I could see the lifetime impact of a neglectful mother with one character. What it means to overcome the impossible with another character. The dangers of love idolatry or science without conscious or any number of actual or made up repercussions to realities that are boundless. Bibliophilia can give a perspective to the world around you that is a rich and varied as your literary tastes.
I’ve been in a literary rut, often reading books because they are or were about to be made into some film or TV series; the outcome, often disappointing and sometimes freaking amazing. A few days ago, after the recommendation of a hardcore bookworm friend, I picked up my third Margaret Atwood book. I had mentioned to her that my mind was still flying on the high of The Blind Assassin. I was still traveling through the labyrinth of that novel; the richness of the dialogue and the characters and the multilayered complexity of the narrative. Then I picked up book 1 of the MaddAddam series and a week later I had consumed all three books, and gravely neglected my never-ending to do list.
I started reading Oryx and Crake with no knowledge of the storyline (or the fact that it was a trilogy) and I went on this illuminative journey in a fictional world so stratified and so lost to intellectual elitism and the endless pursuit of efficiency and profit maximization that the society described in Atwood’s book was slowly caving in own itself. There were so many parallels to what is happening in our own civilization that I often had to take a long pause and let the picture she was painting just ruminate. Damn you Margaret Atwood and your brilliance, I’m at a loss for words. While I am actually writing words, they can’t make you (dear reader) understand how it feels to read a book of such fine workwomanship, a shrewd tale about the world both as it is and as it could be. Especially after reading a bestselling novel recently that was so bad I felt embarrassed for its scribe. Reading Atwood has forced me to press reset on my literary standards and raise that bar more than a few notches. There is something so crucial about literary art so honest and daring that it dislodges you from your comfort zone and forces you to reexamine your own self and surroundings.
What did you say?