(This is non-Asperger's related. I am also sounding the language alert. F-bombs! S-bombs! All of the good ones.)
I hear smart people ask, "Why don't more people read?"...and I find it to be ironic. Answer, smart person: because you ruined it. Reading. You did that.
Like...wait a minute. I'm losing track of my point. (I just injected coffee directly into my heart. Hoo.)
When I was 15 I decided that I wanted to read 'The Metamorphosis' by Kafka.
I read a lot as a kid...big reader...but in junior high I went into my Idiot Phase. I read nothing, I watched unimaginably stupid television shows, constantly, to the point that I developed a brain cavity. It's like a tooth cavity, but with dumbening and forgetting.
Anyway, I kick-started the reading in high school and basically followed the Alienated Teen formula: the requisite 'Catcher in the Rye' phase ensued. Kerouac followed. 'The Fountainhead', like shit, happened. But I started with Kafka.
So I pick up a copy of 'The Metamorphosis' and it's much larger than I had anticipated. It's supposed to be a short story yet the book I have is hundreds and hundreds of pages long. So I open it up and find: an author bio; a translator's introduction; another introduction by...I don't know, some guy. I just know he's not the translator and that he summarizes, explains and analyzes every single aspect of the story before you even start it. This guy is annoying.
After making it through this second intro you are then subjected to the torture of several long, dull essays that deal with god knows what. Finally the story begins...only it's littered with footnotes, translator notes and tiny little numbers that refer you to the back of the book where lengthy explanatory notes await. The story itself? 50 pages long. I'd worked through all of this totally unnecessary horseshit when 'The Metamorphosis' itself was just this tiny little sliver hiding in the middle of the book. Boop. There he is. There's Kafka.
I flip back through all of the intros and essays and think, "Fuck these people." Here's who can understand Kafka: humans. Period. I want the translator to translate...but then I want him to go away. Introduction guy? Die. And if you happen to share an office with Explanatory Note Guy, take him with you.
I'm even more infuriated when I see all of these barnacles attached to the works of Shakespeare. Shakespeare! If, in order to the understood by people, he needed the help of clinging, mediocre academics, he wouldn't be Shakespeare. However, being who he is, I'm pretty sure he doesn't need the assist. He's got this one. Like Kafka, Shakespeare is not an acquired taste. Anyone can read him.
People have been brain-washed into believing that truly good books are dense and inaccessible. Consequently, our best seller lists are filled with crap. By elbowing it's way onto the pages of great literature, academia has sent the message: "Stephen King? Dan Brown? Yeah, read that you morons. Go crazy. But Proust? Kafka? Leave those guys to us. I mean come on, it took is years to get these fucking degrees!"
I wanna see King and Brown analyzed to death by the academics...and Cervantes in every single grocery store right next to the celebrity magazines. Lit majors: read Twilight. Fatties on the beach: read Tolstoy. I will be in the world I want to live in when Chaucer is fluff and Kafka is bathroom reading.
Intellectuals, don't worry, I've got your back...here's a one word review of 'Ulysses' by James Joyce, okay? One word. Are you ready?
Flun.
I know, it's whorish. It's not even a word. Hurt me.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
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4 comments:
OMG, i love this .. LOVE it ..
but then again, i'm probably not one to talk as i'm currently reading 'sleeping arrangements' by sophie kinsella .. i found it in the book store under 'pringles for the brain'
i can't help it, sometimes i just need a nap, damn it
I never read those introductions and editorial notes. Ever read Conrad? Half the book is someone else's interpretation. Totally defeats the purpose of reading, if you ask me. I'll go it alone.
I've always thought that Stephen King's works tell us a lot more about people and about society than William Shakespeare's works ever did.
Take the pulpish novella; "The Mist" a story about monsters who attack a town and the people stranded in the shopping mall hiding from them. It's a simple story (which was recently made into quite a good movie - with arguably one of the best endings hollywood has had in recent years).
The point about "the mist" is that outside the shopping mall, there are monsters. After a while though, it becomes clear that it's actually people who are monsters. Even the most innocent person in the book is capable of great evil.
Don't get me wrong, Shakespeare's tales are quite good but I don't see any point in persisting in a "dead language". They'd be more relevant if they were updated to modern English. Then the words wouldn't get in the way of the tale.
Oh, geez, you slay me.
I was, once upon a time, a lit major and a book snob.
If I wasn't so damn tired now I'd go for something a bit deeper myself.
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