More than one English professor has waxed on about Hemingway. His prose was tight, his story tragic, and his habits all of the masculine nature that heterosexual literate men seem to aspire to. When presented with my blunt observation that Hemingway, outside of literary laudation, bores the living shit out of me, I’m met with defensiveness and even hostility. But c’mon, if a date is anything like reading Hemingway… it’s a boring date where you walk away analyzing his insecurities for years.

This love of Hemingway seems to translate to a love of language. Words forming curls of image around specific ideas and descriptions. Just as all commercial perfumes smell of synthesized grapefruit and musk to me, all these laudable literary loves seem to tell the same story over and over, in the same way. I feel like language lovers are a secondary type of narcissist: they are so accustomed to the sounds of these homogeneous voices that they mistake the homogeneity for quality. Literary writing repeats sounds and rhythms. Like four chords of a pop song, the literary has its own pattern: write a catchy scenic intro, introduce a controversial subject and in the process reference personal upbringing whether or not there’s any reason to give a damn. If it involves disease, tragedy or violence, you’ve got yourself an award winner.

It bores me. As this is the year of doing what I like, and not what I should like, or told I’m should like, I’m putting it flat out: I get little to no pleasure out of “literary” fiction. Reading the stacks of highbrow material is just as stupid as carrying on with a sexual partner who just doesn’t care if I have an orgasm.

Genre fiction, on the other hand, may share the same plot across thousands of novels. It may use simple words. Nobody’s writing to show off in genre fiction, and because of that, I can actually show up at their page and have a good time. Continue reading “Myth of Writing #1: Love of Language”