Violence: the New Calcium

It bothers me when people complain about how it’s all bad stuff the news is showing nowadays. Well duh. That’s what people want to know about–the bad stuff.

It might seem stupid and unfair but the truth is, there just aren’t that many good things to report about. So a group of kindergarteners made a mural. Sweet. Alright. How pretty and peace-loving. The next day, a group of middle school kids paints about recycling. Alright. Alright. Nice. The next day, some kids out east make earth art. Umm haven’t we already heard this story?

But as horrible as it might be, people don’t get tired of hearing about death. Because death has more of an effect on us than earth art and murals. Death is more permanent. And violence, for those of us who live in our bubbles safe and warm at night, is a curiosity. It’s new and it never gets old. Thirty people were killed in a suicide bombing in Afghanistan. Oh my gosh! The next day, twenty dead in a minor earthquake in Cali. Oh no! That could’ve been us! Five troops killed in the line of duty today. Break out the black and the prayers and the grief masks because as much as we’d like it to, pretty pictures of the earth are not as lasting as death. And violence, the stabbing of that kid down the street, the accidental shooting of this-or-that celebrity, it’s an exotic. We all need our daily dosing of violence. Without it we forget that violence exists outside of stories and the past.

Violence: the new calcium. They should put that on milk cartons.

Novels of Literary Scener–ah, Merit

I just finished reading Children of Men by P.D. James and I have to say I love it. Which is definitely not the response it got from the rest of my friends…but I liked it more than 1984 or even Handmaid’s Tale. I’m don’t know if I’ll like it more than Brave New World or A Clockwork Orange, which are next on my list, but I think I will.

I’ve always read books that any sane person would agree are “junk food” of the literary world. You know, the mindless cliched action novels? And then I got into the so-called “novels of literary merit” (more on that in a second), and I realized they write like I think. Who doesn’t love knowing the parallels between how someone writes and how they think? I think in symbols and hidden meanings (more often than not confusing myself), these books are big puzzles for me to unravel. I suppose that’s the reason I do well with literary analyses at school.

It sort of annoys me that there’s a group of people who sit around deciding which books are “of literary merit.” And most people would die if they had to read the whole list because it consists of Shakespeare (not so bad), Voltaire (ugh), and Steinbeck (can you say, drug-free sleeping pill?). I think if we tallied up the number of passages describing the scenery and compared them to the number where something is actually done, Guinness would have a new world record.

Also, the majority of the books on that list were written by old white men in the nineteenth century. Which may explain, partially, the obsession with elderberry bushes and low grey clouds but does little for modern readers. What do modern readers want? Mindless blood and gore, would be the response of those conventionalists who have a deep and abiding love for all things scenery. But truthfully, no one would respect a book of blood and gore as a book of literary merit even if a committee slapped the label on it. No. Constant action and whatnot is good for recooperation (goes well with chocolate), but why not choose more books with deep meanings and a constant plot? No more of that dragging, excruciating descriptions of clouds and trees and rocks (geez, Walden). I swear, there should be a limit to how many pages of description an author can write. Or at least, a limit that applies to books I need to read to pass my upcoming AP exams with a decent grade.

But despite the half a book characterizing everyone’s appearances and the loneliness that is Theo, Children of Men was surprisingly good. Not that childhood memories of smelling old houses and the Carl’s skull-like face aren’t interesting. I’m sure the author intended some deeper meaning that would not have sounded as good if rather than taking five pages and 15 minutes of my time to come to the same conclusion, she’d spit it out in two or three sentences and saved everybody a whole lot of “are we ever going to reach the end?” Okay, so it doesn’t sound as nice if she just says that Carl looks like the Grim Reaper. But really. Surely not everything must be picked apart and left in shreds for other people to meticulously sort through and glue back together.

Which is the reason I always retreat to my junk food books, because I don’t go into a novel about dragons expecting a chapter-long description of the nearby lake. It’s nice, once in a while, to be told what the heck I’m supposed to get out of this.

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6/14/09

Alright, alright, so I loved Clockwork Orange and Brave New World both. And I’ve started reading East of Eden by Steinbeck and I have to say I’m surprised: despite the endless descriptions of scenery, I was able to get through the first few chapters so far. I think once you know what the heck’s going on it really isn’t so bad.

Thus far I’ve read these “books of literary merit”:
-Children of Men by P.D. James
-Handmaid’s Tale by Margret Atwood
-Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
-A Clockwork Orange by …uh. I forget.
-The Warrior Woman by Maxine Kingston (I think)
-All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Marques (something or another)
-One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey

and I’m in the process of reading:
-East of Eden by John Steinbeck
-Empire Falls by Richard Russo
-Candide by Voltaire
and
-Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

It’s a plateful.