thrillers - stuff blows up







for some reason i am unable to distinquish between what is considered literature and what is considered plot junk. this could either be my failure or my unwillingness to go along with a label that is meant to statusize humanity rather than unite it.

when i was a kid reading under the covers with a flashlight, science fiction held me spellbound. i tried to read some a while ago. what once was thrilling, mesmerizing, transporting had become not that good. what used to transport me now pancaked on the page.

i think it's about insight and how beautifully that insight is framed. When a piece of writing can open worlds of meaning, it has become literature. practical writing holds no place in this exalted category.

take james joyce, for example. i've never finished one of his novels even though the writing is often beautiful. i've heard people tell me they've finished ulysses and then we talk and what i end up hearing are coles notes. i find joyce being revered because it is literature. in other words they revere him because they revere him. that denies a practical nature.

i'm going to say something crass here. but i'm allowed. i can't help but think that if joyce had shit blow up, he would have transcended literature. now before the literati begin calling me a neanderthal, let me suggest they're too much in love with labels. joyce wrote the only way he knew how. that apparently did not include a wider readership or stuff that blows up. to my mind there is a beauty about putting a character in the midst of stuff blowing up.

for example 'do not go gentle into that good night' - a phrase that has haunted me for years. that phrase blows up. or ts eliot and 'quiet and meaningless as wind in dry grass or rats' feet over broken glass'. i don't care if that's considered literature or shoot'em ups, it is absolutely brilliant writing, it blows up. and worlds are opened as it does.


i don't do brilliant writing. i do writing. some of it isn't bad. overall, it's entertaining. at least, i think so. read some. you be the judge.