Sunday, October 30, 2005

Literature and salsa: two of the tastiest things I know

So, show of hands, here. How many of you can honestly say, "I want to read a book about a butler"? Yes, that's right, no hands. None of you. If you put your hand up, if you honestly just looked at your computer screen and said, "I want to read a book about a butler," then, I'm sorry, but you're a liar, because nobody wants to read a book about a butler. You don't. Just put your hand back down. Liar.

And this is why book synopses are bullshit: because saying a book is about "a butler thinking about his life" will make the book sound lame, and people won't read it, not the way they should read it, at least.

See, I finished Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day today. (Yeah, yeah, I know: welcome to 1988.) Had I not read and loved another of Ishiguro's books (Never Let Me Go), I probably would have continued to shrug RotD off, because the whole aura around it was one of dullness--literature with a capital L, set in England, about a butler, Ishiguro is some great writer, the book won some awards, think I saw a clip of the movie and the movie looked stuffy, blah blah blah. Really, who's got time to deal with all of that, when there's an internet chock full of porn to be dealt with?

Maybe, ha-ha, I was the only one who felt that way about RotD before going into it. Before being really aware of it as something worth going into. Somehow, I doubt it. Maybe, just maybe, many people actually feel the exact same way--but they don't feel that way about one book. Maybe they feel that way about the very idea of literature itself.

Yes, I know. Shocking.

Earlier this evening, I discussed RotD briefly with friend Chris, from whom I'd borrowed the book, and with whom tonight I ate a great deal of salsa. (It's true, by the way; the best discussion of literature happens with a belly full of good salsa. Or, with dominatrix hookers. But not, nay, never, with dominatrix hookers who are eating salsa, because, then, you've got other issues. Seriously this is all true, because it is on the Internet, where things are true.) Friend Chris was glad I found the book funny, because when he read the book in a class, he enjoyed it and found it hilarious and sad and all that; but, and perhaps one should say "of course" here, the classroom majority opinion held that the narrator should quit whining about being a butler because, dude, yawn. Which--"of course"--Chris and I agree was silly, because, it's actually a really funny book. If you actually read the words on the page.

At least, it's funny, until you think about it, in relation to your own life.

And then it's just depressing.

And then you have to eat more salsa. To cheer yourself up, see. Salsa for team happy.

Politics of classroom inspiration and my own personal deep passion for salsa aside, there is a sort of representative-case type thing going on here, I believe. One of them analogy things, you might say. Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day is to literature, as friend Chris's classroom is to the world; who cares what literature has to say, when it's about stuff like butlers and man who knows, I didn't get past page 12 it was so dull, right?

That things are that way sucks. Because there's lots of good literature out there that, despite appearances, has little to nothing to do with that "capital-L" crowd of books. Those stuffy, important books, the ones we're supposed to read to be learned, and, whatever. Ishiguro's stuff--at least the two books I've read this year; and yes, I continue to feel the need to point out that one probably shouldn't start reading Ishiguro with The Unconsoled because, whoa--is not capital-L stuff. Sure, it's literature, but it's so of the deeply readable, thoroughly human sort, the kind of book you should be able to relate to and be affected by, not have to write a fucking term paper about. Sure, critical analysis is great and all for that honors-roll overachieving-nerd top-two-percent crowd of literature readers who dig that sort of stuff. (Here's to admitting that I do, in fits and starts, enjoy that kind of and level of discussion, despite my pretensions towards anti-snobbery. Dammit, I'll stand by my lit-nerd brethren when the chips are down; I did my time, I wrote my 50 page analysis of feminist and marxist themes in Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Aurora Leigh; I've got nerd cred out my pores, man. Shit.) Ishiguro's books lend themselves well to that kind of analytical reading. But what they lend themselves better to is making you laugh and making you feel fucking heartbroken by the time you finish them. It's the kind of relationship with literature--or, art--that maybe you can't teach but wouldn't it be sweet if you could? If you could make the rest of the class see that this isn't all brain surgery, that sometimes, it's more like brain punching?

(It's funny, I guess, that while so much genre fiction feels the need to struggle towards being taken seriously as literature, so much literature needs to (whether it knows it or not) struggle towards being taken less seriously--to market itself as experience every bit as impactful as film or whatever else the kids are getting all up into these days.)

So, you know, in conclusion, somewhat rough and suddenly, because this blog entry has taken me far too long to write for too little valuable purpose: maybe you haven't read Ishiguro. Maybe you should think about reading some Ishiguro. Because he's good. His words make for excellent human experience. Hint: he's not talking about being a butler, or a student, or whatever else. He's talking about being you.

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