What I read: Doctor Fischer of Geneva or the Bomb Party by Graham Greene.
Graham Greene is one of those writers whose names I knew but about whom I knew absolutely nothing. In some recess of my brain, I think I thought he was a Southern writer, like Faulkner or Flannery O'Connor.
He's not. He's English. But the comparison to O'Connor may not be totally off. The story by O'Connor that always sticks with me (it's probably the only story by O'Connor that I've read) is "A Good Man Is Hard to Find," a super depressing short story about human fallibility and random acts of violence. "A Good Man is Hard to Find" is often located in anthologies alongside another depressing story, "The Story of an Hour" by Kate Chopin. "The Story of an Hour" is the sort of the story that gives feminism a bad name: so much poignancy resting on the poor woman's fragile nerves--yes, I know the ending is ironic, but I still stand by the fragile nerves description. (On the other hand, Charlotte Perkins Gilman's fragile nerves--"The Yellow Wallpaper"-- don't bother me, mostly because Gilman's fragile nerves are so darn interesting and Gilman herself so potentially constructive rather than self-pitying. Chopin just strikes me as self-pitying. "Oh, get over it; life is hard for women in any age; at least you weren't married at 12 and aren't dying from plague" is my usual response.)
Chopin is also Southern.
Not that that means anything necessarily. O'Connor is an excellent writer, and I quite like Faulkner (I love "The Bear"--it's one of the few novellas I own).
But this type of depressing short story is the type of short story that made me detest High School English--and made me promise, "I'll never write a sad ending!" (I haven't kept that promise, by the way.) In any case, Greene reminds me of all those classic writers I disliked reading in High School.
Just to clarify--I don't mind tragedy: MacBeth, Hamlet, Lord Jim--or weird funness: "A Rose for Emily," "Roman Fever" (Edith Wharton). It's depressing angst I dislike. I clarify the difference in this way: tragedy or weird funness is about sad events; depressing angst is about how pointless and stupid life is.
The former I can handle. The latter seems . . . kind of pointless.
By its very nature, writing is an act of construction. I suppose every generation has to have one writer who postulates that creation achieves nothing and has no purpose but since the position is obviously contradictory (since millions of English students everywhere are immediately put to the constructive task of providing the writer's work with meaning), I think it is rather self-indulgent.
And boring. And surprised angst (I can't believe how fallible human nature is!) is even more boring--well, exasperating and boring.
This is a very long-winded way of saying that this was my reaction to Graham Greene.
I read Doctor Fischer of Geneva or the Bomb Party. It's very well-written. I read the entire book (it isn't long) in about two hours. I didn't lose interest, and I found the character delineations interesting. But not exceptionally so. I did not discover that Greene has a "gift for exploring the deeper recesses of human nature" as the flap claims. I've learned more about human nature from watching Star Trek. Writing a depressing book about greedy people doesn't make it automatically profound, even if the book is pretty good. To be fair, the actual reading of Doctor Fischer isn't boring, but Greene's insights aren't exactly fodder for a thousand dissertations (besides, I think he is wrong: human pride/self-image is a far stronger variable than money although the two can be related).
Sometimes, I think the study of literature suffers, not because it isn't respected (which I think it should be) but because people who write about it are so darn gullible. They always insist they've located the Holy Grail when they've really just found a very nice mug.
Books I Read in High School That I Deem Depressing Angst
Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
The Pearl by Steinbeck
Tess by Hardy
Nectar in a Sieve by Kamala Markandaya
A Separate Peace by John Knowles
Books I Read in High School That I Deem Sad but Not Depressing Angst:
Lord Jim by Conrad (voluntarily)
Cancer Ward by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (voluntarily)
Shakespeare's Tragedies
The Crucible by Arthur Miller (which I LOVED although I don't much care for it now)
The Scarlet Letter by Hawthorne (which I've since reread--interesting book: Is Dimmesdale a jerk or a to-be-pitied guy?)
Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes (I'm iffy on this one: I'm not sure if it is angsty or not, especially since I don't care for it. It's short though!)
Lord of the Flies by Golding (voluntarily, in the summer--amazing book; too violent to be depressing)
Tale of Two Cities by Dickens (I adored Sidney Carlton--ooh, la la. I don't read any Dickens now. Way too much exposition.)
BOOKS
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