Pretty sure I'm not alone in saying sometimes I just don't get it. For example, a fair amount of modern poetry simply eludes me. When this happens, my internal conversation often ends up matching the kind of day I'm having. On a good day, I don't let my lack of understanding discourage me. My reaction on an in-between day is harder to predict. But when a bad day coincides with me not getting it, be it poetry, abstract art, avant garde theater or film, I can spiral into negative self-talk. How about you? What do your internal conversations sound like when you don't get it?
This dilemma most upsets my equilibrium when it's literature I'm not getting. And I'm not referring to books like James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake. I realize that kind of writing is aimed at scholars who will spend years analyzing it line-by-line vs. being read and understood as a through narrative by people like me. But how about the bestselling novels of Dom DeLillo, Thomas Pynchon, David Foster Wallace to name a few? I've tried unsuccessfully to crack V - Pynchon's acclaimed breakthrough - at least four times. As challenging as Wallace's non-fiction can be, I end up getting about 80% of that. But Infinite Jest, the novel that catapulted him into the literary stratosphere? Each attempt has left me feeling much the way I do listening to John Coltrane's final recordings, i.e., lost, confused, demoralized.
I'm reasonably sure my intelligence puts me somewhere on the bell curve, not as smart as the top 5% of the population, nor as limited as the bottom 5%. That leaves me wondering: When I don't get it, how many other people don't? How often will my brethren willingly admit that they don't get it? How does it feel not getting it?
I was trying to think of something I've read that I didn't get--there have been some short stories recently that I read as part of a teacher led short story group I am in that were, unlike most of the stories we read, postmodern--such as works by Donald Barthelme. I didn't "get" the story but I did get a little pissed off by it.
ReplyDeleteRegina; Thanks for all your recent comments. And in this case, thanks for your honesty re getting "...a little pissed off..." by the Donald Barthelme short story. He's another one I don't get, critical lauding aside. His work has sometimes struck me as a bit like Pynchon with the saving grace that it's 20 or so pages vs. several hundred or almost a thousand. If Barthelme annoys you, be sure to avoid Lydia Davis, another praised writer I don't get. My shortcoming, no doubt.
DeleteSometimes I get impatient with the stuff that seems to be written for a very small and elite group of intellectuals or if not that, showboating the author's elite liberal arts private school education, like the Marriage Plot, with its constant references to the old-school liberal arts canon. Reading this type of book is like trying to gain admission to an exclusive and snooty country club for smart people...it's not that we don't get it, it's that they don't really want us as members of the club.
ReplyDeleteKim; Thanks for the comment. Your "impatience" is clearly a less tormented way of dealing with this than my negative self-talk.
DeleteAt the turn of the century various lists came out re the 100 best novels of the 20th century, and of course ULYSSES was number one. I am willing to bet that this novel could also top the list of "most acclaimed novel the majority of readers never finished." I didn't make it past the first chapter, and I felt zero guilt about abandoning it. You've named some of the biggies in contemporary literature already. I would add Borges to the list along with George Saunders, whose short stories make me feel dumb. Like their written in a language I haven't quite learned yet. Which is definitely true of Coltrane's music as well. Having spent some time in academia, I found that there are scholars whose entire careers are built upon learning a bunch of esoteric jargon which can then share with others in the know. Think: Foucault or Claude Levi-Strauss. Just before I got my Ph.D. a clear-thinking professor wrote on one of my papers: "It's taken you years to learn how to write this badly." That's when I realized it probably wouldn't last long in that world.
ReplyDeleteJim; Thanks for the comprehensive and thoughtful comment. I've only read a little Borges and have also found him inscrutable. I've never even tried to read either Foucault or Levi-Strauss although I've come across both names several times. A little irony here: In my experience, those two post-modern literary theorists tend to pop up in novels with characters - intellectuals without exception - who like to show off how smart they are by dropping those names as if everyone MUST read that stuff or be at risk of being an intellectual pygmy. Irony, redux: DF Wallace, for one, dismembers the work of theorists like Foucault and Levi-Strauss in some of his staggering non-fiction. However, my guess would be that a dense post-modern novel like Wallace's "Infinite Jest" would be high on the "must read" list of Foucault and Levi-Strauss, precisely BECAUSE it is so dense and inaccessible.
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