Hierarchies of Literature

From “Anatomy of Criticism” by Northrop Frye:

 

“Every deliberately constructed hierarchy of values in literature known to me is based on a concealed social, moral, or intellectual analogy. This applies whether the analogy is conservative and Romantic, as it is in Arnold, or radical, giving the top place to comedy, satire, and the values of prose and reason, as it is in Bernard Shaw. The various pretexts for minimizing the communicative power of certain writers, that they are as obscure or obscene or nihilistic or reactionary or what not, generally turn out to be disguises for a feeling that the views of decorum held by the ascendant social or intellectual class ought to be either maintained or challenged. These social fixations keep changing, like a fan turning in front of a light, and the changing inspires the belief that posterity eventually discovers the whole truth about art. 

 

“A selective approach to tradition, then, invariably has some ultra-critical joker concealed in it.”

 

Just as most people choose their novels to meet their emotional needs, social groups rank novels by its needs as well.

 

When I was a kid, I devoured Asimov, Heinlein, and Star Trek fan fic (that Paramount endorsed to profit off of in book form) because those kinds of novels suited my emotional need to spend a few hours in a world in which intelligence was linked to heroism. As I grew older, I read more difficult texts like Tolkien, Donaldson, and Rand, but the basic idea was the same. I also read Jane Austen because she seemed to be the only woman author who liked intelligent, sensitive, guys such as myself.

 

I’ve also had a period of my life when I only read books by authors whose name I couldn’t pronounce. That was literally my criteria because I wanted to read authors from other cultures. I also spent a year reading popular books just to figure out why they were popular. I read lots of Chinese literature while living in China, as a way of engaging with the culture and having a ready topic of conversation with the people around me.

 

And I could be a snob about it; I maintained my own ego by making sure I was reading “better and more interesting” books than other people. As a writer, a friend of mine teased me about all the kick ass Asian heroines in my novels, and it’s occurred to me that I was writing about women who are strong enough to be the heroes of their own stories; these women kill their bad guys. Marrying such a woman myself would relieve me of the need to be the hero of her story and give me time for my hobbies instead, which I suspect many actual women would resent.

 

And professors like promoting books that are hard to understand; being hard to understand as a virtue in literature keeps professors employed. Proving that books are best understood in the context of other books also keeps professors employed.

 

Bestselling and unpublished authors alike have reasons to argue over the relationship of quality of literature and quantity of sales.

 

If you think the most important quality in a novel is characterization, might you also think individuality is a more important virtue?  If you think the best thing about a book is the plot, might you also think an active and purposeful life is more important? Doesn’t the very assumption of ‘heroes’ place too much stress on individualistic heroism and deemphasize collective action?

 

I don’t have the answers to those questions. Tolstoy thought he did, disregarding his masterpieces in favor of novels that used emotional intimacy with characters to impart moral lessons.

 

One of the ironies of Frye’s position is that sometimes the Powers That Be who rank books don’t know what they are talking about. Back in the 90s, in that brief decade of domestic policy’s triumphal ascendance over foreign policy in the news, there was a lot of argument over ‘the canon’ being taught. Conservatives wanted to keep the established classics as the focus of literary education, which basically meant living white guys wanted dead white guys’ books being taught in college classrooms, while liberals wanted books by women and minorities added.  What conservatives probably didn’t realize was that books that are established canon today were, even if written by white guys, radical in their day. The canon includes Marx, Sinclair, and Steinbeck; the majority of writers in the canon are at the very least liberal anyway. This leaves me to suspect that the true reason we have greater literary freedom today is that the sort of people who would ban books are too busy watching television to know what we’re up to. “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” probably did more for gay rights than any novel.

 

And the hierarchy is more complex than before.  Publishers and readers have a chicken and egg relationship in determining which writers get published; editors have to really push to get a different sort of book published.  With the triumph of marketing research and methods over criticism and editing, the cultural determinants over writers are the publishers’ perceptions of what people will buy.  Book sales, television ratings, and elections are not pure evidence as to the desires and norms of society, since they are often manipulated, but word of mouth, grassroots movements, and social media still demonstrate public desires that eventually demonstrate what we want from our writers, no matter their medium.

Schopenhauer and “Fringe”

“…the representation of a great misfortunate is alone essential to tragedy (which may be caused by a) character of extraordinary wickedness…blind fate…by the mere position of the dramatis personae, through their relations, so that there is no need either for a tremendous error or an unheard of accident, nor yet for a character whose wickedness reaches the limits of human possibility; but characters of ordinary morality, under circumstances such as often occur, are so situated with regard to each other that their position compels them, knowingly and with their eyes open, to do each other the greatest injury, without any one of them being entirely in the wrong. This last kind of tragedy seems… to surpass the other two, for it shows us the greatest misfortunate, not as an exception, not as something occasioned by rare circumstances or monstrous characters, but as arising easily and of itself out of the actions and characters of men, indeed almost as essential to them, and thus brings it terribly near to us. In the other two kinds we may look on the prodigious fate only from afar, which we may very well escape without taking refuge in renunciation. But in the last kind of tragedy we see that those powers which destroy happiness and life are such that their path to us also is open at every moment; we see the greatest sufferings brought about by entanglements that our fate might also partake of, and through actions that perhaps we also are capable of performing, so could not complain of injustice; then shuddering we feel ourselves already in the midst of hell.”

I’m not a big fan of Schopenhauer, since it appears his best ideas were better said by the Buddhists, but when I was reading this I couldn’t stop thinking about “Fringe.”

On the surface, “Fringe” is about people suffering from either blind fate or the actions of wicked men and the heroes fighting back, but as “Fringe” evolves as a show, it moves towards the superior sort of tragedy. The wicked man turns out to be the wronged man, for his son was stolen by one of the main characters, and yet the kidnapper, from his point of view, was saving the boy’s life.

As the curtains of the plot are pulled back, we see again and again that the heroes and villains are not good vs. evil, but relatively normal people pitted against each other, seeing themselves as the heroes and the others as the villains. Some of the most interesting moments in the show occur when they realize how their own mistakes are causing the problems.  It is their abnormalities that make them interesting to us, but their abnormalities were created in part by each other’s decisions.

Writing From the Bottom Up

“Having made an utter failure of my life, I found myself one day, in the midst of my poverty and wretchedness, thinking about the female companions of my youth. As I went over them one by one, examining and comparing them in my mind’s eye, it suddenly came over me that those slips of girls – which is all they were then – were in every way, both morally and intellectually, superior to the ‘grave and mustached signior’ I am now supposed to have become…I had brought myself to this present wretched state, in which, having frittered away half a lifetime, I find myself without a single skill with which I could earn a decent living. I resolved that, however unsightly my own short comings might be, I must not, for the sake of keeping them hid, allow those wonderful girls to pass into oblivion without a memorial.

 

“Reminders of my poverty were all about me: that thatched roof, the wicker lattices, the string beds, the crockery stove.  But these did not need to be an impediment to the workings of the imagination. Indeed, the beauties of nature outside my door – the morning breeze, the evening dew, the flowers and trees of my garden – were a positive encouragement to write. I might lack learning and literary aptitude, but what was to prevent me from turning it all into a story and writing it in the vernacular?”

 

From the first chapter of “Dream of Red Mansions” by Cao Xueqin

 

And so the inspiration of the greatest novel China produced began when a writer hit bottom and looked beyond himself. The books of mine other people have liked the most had the least to do with me.  The novel I wrote that came the closest to publication was about a samurai who was duty bound to kill himself, but did not so he could help save a child. The conflict between honor and compassion defined his character… the editors loved it, the marketers vetoed it. I had simply wanted to illustrate the most difficult part of Japanese culture for Americans to understand.

 

I wonder what hitting bottom would mean for me.  I’m not sure it’s possible, since I always have the cushion of family to land on. To ‘hit bottom’ would require a Bruce Wayne-like determination.  In one of the movies, the crime lord scolded Wayne for being too soft to understand crime, so Wayne gave his coat and money to a beggar and went hunting for the bottom, not so much to join it as to understand it. It took a certain arrogance on his part to assume he would survive it, of course, but that’s what happens to obsessive people.

 

The narrator, which commentators have assumed is Cao, argued against the assumption that poverty prevented inspiration. In contrast to the West, where poverty is assumed to be fuel for inspiration, in China most writers were independently wealthy scholars who belonged to little clubs where they shared their work with each other. Word of mouth was the only advertising.

 

Sometimes in Chongqing I would be sitting in my 15^th floor apartment thinking, is this really my life? Coming home every evening to a lonely apartment I haven’t even bothered to fully furnish because I know I’m leaving the country anyway?  Then I would stand on the balcony and look down at the people who make their living selling food on the street, either as groceries or cooked, and I would wonder how they managed to eek out a living.  I was a regular at one stand where the woman basted chicken and grilled it right in front of us. She was an expressive woman; I didn’t need to know Chinese to know when she and her husband were arguing. Most days they were happy, some days they would be working side by side without looking at each other. The Chinese are much more willing to reveal their family difficulties to the neighborhood.

 

But I don’t generally need to hit bottom to kick myself in gear again. I can use the shame of making a mistake to guilt myself into writing. I can give myself deadlines. Right now I have a post it note on my computer, “What have you written today?”

 

But it’s not just about how much one writes, but what one writes. If I hit bottom, what would I write about? Would I be too ashamed of how I got there to be honest about what it was like? Would I fall so hard I’d crack the mirror and find a distorted reflection?

One Part Romance, One Part Adventure, Seasoned with Satire

Fifty Ways to Love Your Lover: The Novel http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KROBHRE

 

Candice is a brilliant and beautiful young woman from a wealthy and abusive family. She meets a young man who is strong and intellectual, but doesn’t understand woman. She undertakes his education, helping use his IQ to raise his EQ, but when she turns him into the perfect boyfriend, can she give up her plans to marry a rich man?

 

Kissing the Anti-Christ http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KNSUX6K

 

Christina Graves, intrepid liberal reporter, is searching for a story, while Senator Derek Hardy is searching for power. After he announces his campaign for the presidency, she starts to hunt after his secrets.  While she squirms her way through an increasingly conservative management and he through the twisty maze of his father’s power structure, they are drawn towards each others’ determination, intelligence, and, yes, good looks.

Will ambition triumph over love?

 

Ancient Lesbian Sex Secrets http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KMA0D1Y

 

When WRIP free radio starts running out of money, the Dark Lord, satanic talk show host, aka Kenneth, decides to tell his audience that their prayers will be answered or their money back.  When Jessica Hoh needs more money to pay for college, she joins an escort service.  When Feather’s poetry brings in the pennies, she writes paranormal romance novels to pay the bills. When Sam’s video game profits slump, he needs a way to advertise them.

 

When they meet each other, they naturally decide to a make a movie, one that will settle all their woes: The Ancient Lesbian Sex Secrets.

My Non-fiction

Dressed for Yesterday http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KRPX2W6

 

This is my humorous take on my life, that of traveler and teacher, reader and writer.

 

Sun-Tzu, Bruce Lee, and the Tao of Martial Arts http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KNNFU1S

 

The first regular exercise I ever found was in Tae Kwon Do when I was about thirteen, but after getting my black belt I moved on to study many others like aikido, Tai Chi, judo, and boxing. Since I generally prefer an intellectual understanding of what I’m doing, I read the Taoteching and books by martial artists and ancient Chinese generals who used Taoism as the basis for their strategies. This book is the result.

Frye and the Organization of Literature

“As literature is not itself an organized structure of knowledge, the critic has to turn to the conceptual framework of the historian for events, and to that of the philosopher for ideas…it is clear that the absence of systematic criticism has created a power vacuum, and all the neighboring disciplines have moved in.”  - Northrop Frye

 

I can think of all sorts of examples of philosophical schools colonizing literary studies: feminism, Marxism, post-modernism, just off the top of my head. To push these theories off to the side (perhaps not all the way out, since philosophy and history are the context of literature), people would have to study literature from the inside outwards.

 

But I wonder how much one can understand music by studying acoustics, how much one can understand painting by studying the chemistry of paint, so how much can we understand literature by understanding words?  Is the proper study of literature really just linguistics? Or would linguistics be to literary studies what neuro-science is to psychology?

 

If you subscribe to the idea of narrative psychology, the idea that your identity is a narrative we have formed out of our memories, that we turn our memories into stories with a theme (the meaning of life) and a main character (you), the perhaps literature is what happens when your brain becomes so good at creating narratives that it goes hog wild, and yet compartmentalizes them to keep you from going crazy (conspiracy theorists might actually be using a similar skill set as novelists). Nor would it surprise me if mythologies have more in common with literature than with history.

 

So if we wanted to make literary studies more scientific, then studying narrative psychology would be a good start.

My Funny Fantasy

Might and Right http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KTJ10D8

 

For Emperor Vor, conquering an empire is the easy part, ruling it is hard. His brother wants his throne, his wife disagrees about which son should secede him, a wizard conspiracy wishes to stop him, and a mixed bag of heroes is coming to kill him. His allies are his tea sipping, spy master sister, a chaos wizard, and a death priest.

 

The delicate political balance of his empire is upset when his daughter returns from her adventures in the mysterious West and Winderon, an elf born under the most dangerous of moons, finds the deadliest magic of all to use again him.

 

Love the Sin http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KNTIA00

 

Everyone searches for love, except for Cindy Wainrock, but everyone has to struggle through the difficulties to find it. Maria struggles against poverty, Deputy Tony Sanchez has to solve a murder, and Xia has to slay the vampires who kidnapped her would be boyfriend for his virgin blood. Yet Cindy may face the greatest danger of all, a murderer given a magical defense perfect against any but the purest of heart, which she definitely is not.

 

Ninja B Goes to College http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KN0J2EM

 

Ari’s grandfather is the head of the ninja clan, and sends her to college in America to study computers, but the university is hunting grounds for vampires. Unfortunately her bounty collecting is interrupted by biggest problems, for the vampires are only one part of the Anti-Christ’s cult, and her ally Cindy Wainrock’s father is a rich jock who likes wearing body armor while driving an armored car to hunt down liberal activists. 

 

What will happen when the satanic plot to rule the world conflicts with the alien conspiracy that already does? Can she ally with the Chinese kung fu master Xia who had come here to study engineering?  And what will happen when Xia and her junior mad scientist boyfriend finally create his dream: a quantum mechanical AI?