The Problem with the Canon

So I've been thinking a lot about literary fiction lately. It shouldn't be a surprise, I guess, what with my Master's degree in English Literature and all. I guess the surprise comes from my writing genre fiction after having studied literary fiction for that many years. The thing is, I don't want to write literary fiction because I don't think people like to read it.

That's no big insult to the millions of novel readers who keep the publishing industry in business. On the contrary, I don't think the people buying romances and thrillers and young adult novels are less intelligent or less educated than those who buy and read literary fiction -- I think they just like the other stuff better. And I don't blame them. I'm going off that old premise (from my theory class many years ago) that literature is meant to delight and instruct. And I'm further insisting that literature which does not delight cannot possibly instruct.

So here's the problem I see with the canon: it is no longer delightful. Honestly. Maybe it used to be. It seems like, before the rise of the novel, and even during its early romantic period, it was possible to write delightful, entertaining poetry and prose and still find a place in the hallowed halls of revered literary giants. Not that I always found joy in "Paradise Lost," but with the right instruction...anyway, then the novel came along, with the realists and the modernists and the post-modernists and, honestly, it seems like a lot of writers, whether out of snobbery or just fear of selling out, decided to dispense with the time-honored tradition of making their writing delightful altogether.

Take James Joyce, for example. I read every word of Ulysses when I was an undergrad. Every word. I'm lucky I didn't commit suicide at some point during that semester, too. Had I possessed health insurance, I probably would have started on Prozac to help me cope with the mess my life had become just from reading that book.

This is not a tirade against Joyce, however, or any writer in particular, although he does make an easy target, doesn't he? It's just that he's a good example of how many literary writers, in my opinion, try so hard to write something worthy of the canon that they forget what I think is the entire point of writing: so somebody -- hopefully lots of somebodies -- will read their work.

Now I'm sure there must be a balance. We don't all have to write about vampires just because vampires are popular. But can we not, as a collective group of writers, include some happiness in what we write about? some comedy, some good endings, some hope?

I'll be the first to admit that I don't read much literary fiction anymore these days, so I'm not an expert on contemporary trends. But I'm guessing, from having spent more than a decade (as a student and a teacher) in academia, that the canon is not going to be adopting J.K. Rowling's works anytime soon.

And that's too bad, because I don't think we're doing our students or ourselves any favors by creating two mutually exclusive circles of writers and works of fiction. Just because a book sells millions of copies doesn't mean it has no literary value. And just because everyone in the novel battles against and fails to overcome their own particular neuroses doesn't mean we should force freshmen everywhere to read it and write essays on it.

I'm not renouncing my education, and I still love teaching literature (even though I haven't and probably won't for some time, given the four young children and all), but when I grab a precious hour or two here and there throughout the week, I'm definitely going to use it to write something delightful. Chances are, it won't be literary.

Leda

*Disclaimer* This is not the entry I submitted for Round 7 of NPRs Three Minute Fiction contest. 
This post is the entry that didn't even pass my personal screeners: Fiona Ostler, who blogs at www.fionaostler.com, and my husband, who doesn't blog unless it involves a yearly physical or flu shot. As a prelude to the story, however, I must quote "Leda and the Swan" by W.B. Yeats.

A sudden blow: the great wings beating still
Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,
He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.

How can those terrified vague fingers push
The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
And how can body, laid in that white rush,
But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?

A shudder in the loins engenders there
The broken wall, the burning roof and tower
And Agamemnon dead.
Being so caught up,
So mastered by the brute blood of the air,
Did she put on his knowledge with his power
Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?

Spurred on by that fascinating and masterful poem, and possessed of the knowledge that the ancient Leda had a sister named Althaea, I wrote (and then discarded) the following piece of flash fiction for the NPR contest:

The last time I saw Leda, she was perched on top of her trunk, waiting for the 11:15 train to Troy. She wore a white, organdy dress with a full skirt that fluttered a little in the wind. I thought she might at least stand on the platform next to her luggage, like any normal person would do, but then, Leda never could keep her feet on the ground. She was that kind.

She was only my kid sister, but after she left, life lost all its good colors. Oh, I kept going. I had plenty to do until the end of the tourist season. Even after the busses stopped for the winter, I still had next year's merchandise to order and the holidays ahead of me. But sometime after New Year's, I looked up to find all the greens turned to celery, all the reds to mauve, and everything else to just plain white. Then it was a lot harder to get out of bed in the mornings.

"I'm restless," she'd said. "I've been here too long." And, "Everyone knows. I can see it in their eyes." She could have come up with a better excuse -- something original for once -- or told the truth. Because I knew the truth, and that's what kept me from going after her in the first place. Women like her can't put down roots, even with family; it's not in them to stay still. Especially not for Leda; not after what happened.

I thought back to the day I had met her at the train station when she got into town. She'd thrown her arms around me like we were still fifteen, sleeping in the same bed and playing guessing games in the dark, even though we hadn't spoken in years. She had the kind of charm that endeared her to everyone she met, and even though I knew what she was doing, it still worked. Plus, she was the most beautiful creature imaginable, and I'm not speaking out of jealousy. Not even a little. I took her to my house and put her up in the second bedroom.

The first few months, she helped me in the store. The customers all raved about her, and I saw business pick up a little, too. But too soon, the pains came, as I knew they would. Her legs ached from standing all day long. Her feet got swollen and tender. She began to battle a strange lethargy I'd seen before but never could explain. And I thought maybe it was time for her to go.

"I'm not leaving, Althaea," she'd said. "Not this time. I can stand it."

"Good," I'd said. "I've finally got you with me. I'm not letting you go."
But in the end, how could I hold her down? She wasn't mine anymore; she never had been. The bonds of sisterhood only stretch so far, and Leda had known divinity.

When she started to show, she packed her trunk and begged me to buy her a ticket.

"Where?" I'd asked.

"Anywhere but here."

I had a friend in Michigan, a midwife who could take her in and help her when her time came, so I called to ask her a favor, and she said to send Leda on up.

"What's in Troy?" she'd said, a frown etched into her forehead.

"You will be, soon. Besides, what does it matter? It's not here."

It didn't take much convincing. A few days later, she'd climbed onto the train and waved at me through the window until the sun's rays struck the glass and whited out her face.

She wrote me from Troy, after the babies were born. She barely mentioned the boy, but the girl...

'She's the most beautiful girl in the world -- more lovely, even, than me. I've named her Helen.' And that was the last I ever heard from my baby sister.

All Saints' Day

I am throwing away the Halloween candy, feeling, to borrow a well-worn phrase, grim but determined. Grim because I realize, with each step I take toward the garbage can, that I have, once and for all, become my mother. Determined because I now know that she is, and has always been, right.

My children will wake up in the morning and hurry downstairs in anticipation, hoping against hope that some remnant has missed my vendetta against refined sugar, that I will not have discovered all their secret hiding places. But I have. I always do.

It was bad enough that Halloween fell on a Sunday this year. They will never believe that they ate just as much candy and may have had more fun handing it out to underaged beggars than if they had been with the scores of other ninjas, witches and princesses trolling for sugar among the neighbors. And it certainly wouldn't have helped if I had told them that my mother sometimes forbid trick-or-treating when Halloween didn't even fall on a Sunday! I doubt they'd believe me anyway.

Then again, maybe I am worse than my mother. On those years when she did allow us to carry a small pillowcase door to door down our street and around the corner, she always confiscated our loot at the end of the night. It was then combined with everyone else's candy and hidden in a "safe place," to reappear as Christmas approached and she needed something with which to decorate gingerbread houses.

This practice turned the month and a half between Halloween and Christmas into a daily treasure hunt, as her children banded together in search of the hidden candy. The moment she left the house unaccompanied (not often) or turned her back on a room, my older brother deployed teams to distract, stand watch, and search. We knew that if we took too much, she would notice. But even when we were careful and frugal, she always knew. Every day following a successful reconnaissance mission, the candy would disappear again, and the quest would begin anew.

The problem was that by the time Christmas arrived, the good stuff had been devoured, most of the remaining candy was stale (or would be once it had sat on a gingerbread house for a week), and none of it was the kind of candy that looks good on a gingerbread house in the first place. It stretched out the process, but the end result was always the same; the majority of the candy ended up in the trash.

I'm saving my kids the heartache of hoping, of searching all the desperate corners of the house when my back is turned and coming up, most of the time, hungry and empty-handed. I'm pulling off the band-aid in one quick motion rather than dragging it out so the agony lasts that much longer. It isn't fair, and it isn't nice, but I didn't make up Halloween, so it's not really my fault.

I will not say to them, however, when they turn their little, crestfallen faces toward me, that someday they will thank me for it. I know they won't. I have never thanked my mom for taking away my Halloween candy, and I never will. She may be right--I can acknowledge that much--and I am doing the same thing to my kids because it's the right thing to do. But the most I can ever expect from them, now or twenty years from now when they have their own children, is the admission that I was--that we have all been--right.

The Halloween candy has to go. Happy All Saints' Day!

Published

I've been blogsurfing lately, and it's making my head hurt. By blogsurfing, I don't mean clicking the links on our family's blog to read our friends' updates and see the pictures of their kids. I mean, I start at QueryShark and read the latest query that has been (artfully and usually rightfully) ripped to shreds, then sort through the comments about it to see if I can glean something useful. After that, I usually make my way over to the blogs of a couple of literary agents (Janet Reid and Nathan Bransford are some of my favorites lately) to see what they've said recently. Their posts usually have hyperlinks to enough other blogs to keep me busy until the sun goes down, the baby goes to the sleep, and the house is dark enough that I can't see the mess I've left until morning. And then I think I ought to start writing.

You see, ever since I started writing my first novel, over a year and a half ago, I've become obsessed with getting published. It's not vanity, really. At least, I don't think so. It takes so much more time to write a novel than other stuff I've written; the only way I can justify this selfishness is to actually see it in print. A poem dashed off here or a short story there is no big deal. But a novel is page after page of husband and kids pulling the house apart in my absence, dishes piling up in the sink, laundry growing moldy in the baskets, and toilets growing a fungus that I never knew existed before I started writing novels because I used to clean them every week.

I've gained a whole new vocabulary, diving headfirst into this market of agents, publishers, queries, synopses, partials, fulls, and weblogs. I don't know how much of it I would have learned, had I opted for the MFA instead of the MA, but if that's what it takes, then bring it on, by gum.

But...I am also coming to realize, as I blogsurf on my iPad while I nurse the baby and the toddler watches Go Diego Go!, that I'm going to have to get into the conversation if I want to make a presence for myself as an author. And I'm not sure how that's supposed to happen the way things are now. WHEN I have a few minutes, I sit down at the computer and dash off a page or two. This blog consists mostly of posts written at very odd hours of the day or (usually) night, and certainly isn't one that would consistently jump to the top of people's lists of blogs ordered according to most recent posts. (Ack. That's a very awkward way to state it, but thereagain, it's so late, and I'm too tired to revise.)

It's just that I want to say something. I want to contribute to these discussions, to be out and about electronically, even while I am sitting at home, talking about body functions with a two-year-old, and listening to my seven-year-old read from the Monster Book of Jokes (who wrote that anyway and did they realize what it would do to me?). Because even though I spend my days with these sweet, little terrors whose collective knowledge base does not extend beyond animals found in Florida and singing the months of the year to the tune of "O My Darling Clementine," I still have my own thoughts. And they're good thoughts. Grown-up thoughts. Thoughts worth listening to. I think.

2:30 a.m.

At 2:30 a.m.
waiting for the baby to sleep again
I discover
why the electric bill is so high.
The A/C has been running for an hour--
some contest to outscream him?
or try to get ahead of the Florida summer?
I wonder who will last the longest
in this battle of wills and lungs?

Surely I can outwit the air conditioner--
turn up the thermostat and
make it go to sleep.
But the baby?
He must struggle along as he can,
screaming his anger out alone
in the dark
to uncaring gods who will wean him
of bottle and breast
and make him learn.

Life is not fair, baby.
For you, whose body and soul
I cradled nine months inside me,
who has no complaint I do not feel,
must now find your own way
back to sleep.

Joe Pulling Weeds

Joe squats in the garden,
his clawed fingers scrabbling
at the dirt.
He mutters bracingly--
the vague mantra of a reluctant gardener--
and fistfuls of weeds,
their roots choked with potting soil,
go spinning overhead.

His sister, two years old and still cherubic,
toddles around him with a plastic bottle cap,
filling it up and dumping it out,
tilling the soil, in her little way.
She loves the dirt for its own sake,
quite apart from any politics.

They work quickly, he at his sporadic weeding
and she at her admiration,
but a storm is coming.
The smell of rain soaks the air and
the wind, free of its leash,
whips their hair into their faces.

He looks up, scanning for thunder
in the vacant-eyed clouds,
tasting the air,
for the shock of lightning upon it.
The first drops hit,
a languid avant garde,
and the sister pauses in her errand
to find the spots of skin
painted clean on her arm.

Not yet.
There is still time.
But a storm is coming.

He pulls more frantically at the stubborn weeds,
lashing against their roots,
his whole weight thrown into the business
of upending them.
The wind grows wilder and the rain
more pointed.

And then a distant peal of thunder,
like an angry dog,
rumbles overhead.
Lightning arcs across the sky and paints
the day’s end in bas relief.
The signal has come!

Joe and his sister leap from their perches,
scattering toward the house in terrified excitement,
dirt and weeds trailing behind them,
she, squealing, but he,
mute.

They reach the door,
dart inside,
and pull it closed behind them--
an unfailing talisman against
the perilous weather--
then huddle, silent, against the glass
as the sky turns black and the rain screams toward the earth.

The earth.

The earth...

the sweet shoppe (another story idea)

So this story idea concerns a sweets shop in a small village in Switzerland or somewhere else European and slightly medieval. The shop produces excellent sweets and candies of all kinds, and is a favorite of children for miles around, not only because it sells good things to eat, but because the sweets are magic. Each candy, depending on its type, bestows a kind of magical power on the child who eats it. Swedish fish, for example, allow a child to breathe underwater for about an hour or so after eating one. Lollipops, when successfully licked, grow larger rather than smaller, until they reach the size of a large balloon, whereupon, if the child holds tight to the stick, he is lifted up into the air where he floats around for an hour or so until the balloon pops and he is let down.

Each year, the candy maker creates a new sweet, and the children who know about the shop line up for blocks to try it out. But one year, the new item--peppermint sticks--go dreadfully wrong. The sticks make the child who eats them invisible, just as planned. Unfortunately, the effect does not wear off after an hour or so. Furthermore, not only can the children not be seen by their parents or others who have not eaten the candy, they cannot be heard either. In trying to make their parents understand what has happened to them, they only succeed in spreading the rumor that ghosts have descended upon the little town.

Finally, the children approach the candy maker, who is, after all, a sort of magician. They write him a letter and he dusts them with confectioner's sugar so that he can see if they are telling the truth. When he consults his recipe book for an antidote, he finds the recipe for a stick of chewing gum that will make the children visible again. The ingredients in the recipe, however, would take years for him to collect, for they are nearly all difficult to find and in remote areas of the globe. The children decide to divide into groups and assign a different ingredient to each group. They scatter across the globe in search of the item on their lists, encountering all sorts of adventures along the way. The details of their adventures comprises the subsequent books of the series, which end only with the last one in which the children finally come together to create the gum that will render them visible again.