Ignorance in Literature

Ignorance in Literature


The public needs to be educated (simple as that); in school they do not teach a view on literature as a whole, or its relation to any other part. Often the teachers consider this subject dull at best, not natural. There are literary masterworks out there, but most of them are not what we think they are. Hemingway, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Joyce ( ‘Ulysses’ his masterpiece is nothing but a reckless Picasso), as was Gertrude Stein’s work, none have what I called masterwork interwoven in them, yes interesting, but far from admitted into the select category, much inferior to the Odyssey. Apologies for selecting these readers, I have most of their works, read all of them, and simple as they are, they are poor versions for a Nobel Price in Literature, or any prize in literature which is suppose to be top shelf stuff. Neither Faulkner nor Hemingway went to college and one can tell that in their writings, full of redundancy. If that is what they are teaching in school then literature is bound to be pushed aside and locked up in an old chest, for something else. The near past has miscalculations, clumsiness in their hammered out selections of junk; Emersion, was right when he said Nathanial Hawthorn was unlearned, and unprofessional, and lazy in his writings, and that is when North America started selecting, second best to be best, and now we are down to fifth best is best. E.E. Cummings, with his vast verity of poetry, has a few I like, out of an uncountable number, and Ezra Pound, a great thinker of his day in literature, perhaps came close to what could have been…but never was.
So where am I going with this? In defiance of this dead-end for the contemporary scene it may be urged that authors in the future attempt a mixture, of everything, not just detail, so they are more expandable and compressible in the categories they choose to write, if they seek the Literature prize, and I do think prizes are a deterrent to good works, most great writers perhaps do not have prizes, simply because they do not have the connections.
Most people do not know the term comparative literature, even college students in literature. We can call these students low-brow readers, what he needs to do is read more books, but we are down to American taste are we not, like the hamburger, and pizza, and chicken concepts, roll them off the assemble lines, put them in a box, and bring them to a bookstore that only sells the run of the mill best sellers, the new born arrivals. Many bookstores are doing that now; I am not making this up.
It is hard for most people to write orderly paragraphs, it surely was for Faulkner, so don’t feel bad, and Sherwood Anderson who seldom had a theme, or connecting plot, but he was suited for his day. I wait for enlightenment, and never seem to find much of it in literature nowadays. The Epic of Gilgamish is great of course, and other such works.

Literature is not as complicated as folks make it out to be, too often undefined, and common sense not used, which is often not common in writing, simple procedures, a theme, plot, and insight, clearly marked; discoveries, define where you are going, make it organized, not fragmentary like Faulkner’s, or Joyce’s, or e.e. Cummings poetry. Does the sentence avoid confusion? No where you are going, state it; approach literature as if it were not a library (or categorical division); don’t divide it up like a scientist. One thing needs to be related to the other—associations. It appears we have accepted unsatisfactory liberties as in our freedoms, in our literature, make it sound like it is suppose to, it doesn’t matter if Charles likes it, and Bill doesn’t, be true to literature, to it right, misspelling is just laziness, that is my hang-up, I even have a computer nowadays, and I misspell more than I did when I had only typewriter, but that is again, laziness not wise to do, but acceptable in the long run, for it can be quickly fixed.