Maybe I'm Just Shallow

I have a theory that no matter how heavy and serious literature is (fiction, poetry, articles, essays, etc) it should be basically understandable the first time you read it. Later readings may reveal deeper and deeper layers, but it should be readable at first go.

I base this on, first of all, Scripture. Especially if you read it in a current version of your first language, you can sit down and read without pausing to scratch your head and say, "Huh?’ and backtrack in bewilderment.

Time and further study of Scripture of course reveals depths unseen at first read, phenomenal symbolism with the temple and sacrifices and all kinds of things. But first God made it accessible even for the depth-challenged among us.

I have an issue with much modern poetry on this point. I’m fine with mystery and subtlety, but please give me words that I can actually read, not:
Calibrate and cynicism
And cats painting
A mother’s denial
Reticulates

In high school and college, we read The Great Gatsby and For Whom the Bell Tolls and Huckleberry Finn, and learned to dig and scratch like hens for Themes and Symbolism and Deep Hidden Meanings.

Then I took a literature class in which we read Tristan and Iseult, and at the first discussion all the recent high school graduates started talking about all the Subtle Themes and Deep Hidden Meanings they had found. And the teacher said, "Listen, it’s first of all a story. Learn to enjoy it first as just a good story."

Now that was liberating.

On a slightly different angle, right now I am on a Jane Austen kick and just read Mansfield Park for the first time.

Personally, I found it a good read, with passages that made me laugh or think, but I was disappointed in the ending--not because things didn’t turn out right, but because to me it reads as though her editor was emailing her every day that she was way past deadline so she quickly tied up all the loose ends and sent it off.

I don’t read that much fiction but when I do it’s often Lori Copeland or Lori Wick or something else that happens to show up around here that I can read in a hurry and finish in a day or so. I don’t especially like either author but sometimes I just want a quick story to digest. This is very poor preparation for reading Jane Austen.

There’s not much action in Jane’s books. Minute events are expanded into whole chapters. We have the garden, and how it’s laid out, and what the weather is like, and who walks down which path with whom, and who they meet, and what they say, and what happens while one fetches the key to the gate. Another chapter revolves around which necklace to wear to the ball. Long conversations composed of lengthy flowery sentences cogitate about the minutest details of life. The plot advances as effectively as any modern one, actually more so. But it’s obviously from a different time period and a different pace of life.

So, we wade through 367 pages of this, waiting, waiting, waiting, for Edmund to finally, finally, finally, come to his senses and realize that Mary Crawford is NOT the girl for him and Fanny IS, (DUHHH, Edmund!), and I confess that we are hoping for some really flowery rapturous paragraphs where he finally sees the light and apologizes and tells her how wonderful she is and what an idiot he was and how fitting she will be as a clergyman’s wife and begs her forgiveness and so on, and she finally feels loved and cherished and vindicated. Considering how they can go on about taking the carriage vs. walking, this exchange should take two or three pages at least.

He does rattle on for almost six pages about how disappointed he is in Mary Crawford. But he doesn’t yet think of Fanny in any romantic way. And so we wait for the Big Declaration. And do we get it? No. All we get is this:

"Scarcely had he done regretting Mary Carwford, and observing to Fanny how impossible it was that he should ever meet with such another woman, before it began to strike him whether a very different kind of woman might not do just as well—or a great deal better; whether Fanny herself were not growing as dear, as important to him in all her smiles, and all her ways, as Mary Crawford had ever been, and whether it might not be a possible, an hopeful undertaking to persuade her that her warm and sisterly regard for him would be a foundation enough for wedded love.
I purposely abstain from dates on this occasion. . . I only entreat everybody to believe that exactly at the time when it was quite natural that it should be so, and not a week earlier, Edmund did cease to care about Miss Crawford, and became as anxious to marry Fanny, as Fanny herself could desire."

Aarrgghh.

So maybe I’m just shallow and all the literary people out there are sighing with disappointment like my English teacher, Mr. Rubis, did in 1980 when I suggested Moby Dick should be condensed, but is it so much to ask that a novel have a good tasty satisfying ending?

I’m sure there are Deep Things that I completely missed in Mansfield Park, but why not give even a shallow reader a reward for plowing all the way through?

Quote of the Day:
"If you don't come right now I'll put 5 bows in your hair!"
--Amy, waiting in the bathroom to comb Jenny's hair. Jenny tends to dawdle but doesn't appreciate a lot of fluff and frou-frou in her hair