LITERATURE: Study

In my all encompassing efforts of the study of literature, that of story, technique, the elements of arc, conflicts, climax and resolution, interest, meaning and metaphor, and as writer as  well as reader, I find my own personality traits serve to color my view.  I have perhaps been a bit flippant with DeLillo’s The Body Artist thus far, and impatient after my brief affair with Marquez.  It is my nature to be loyal and true, and so, as a spurned lover when a novel has been read through and the back cover closed, I find my senses stilted and wary of the next author who, as with a new love, will never measure up to the old while the heart remains faithful.  So as I fling myself into the pages of DeLillo, I must shed my tendency to compare, to seek shortcomings. 

This also brings into account my past resolve that the author is the owner of the words, and I take from them without giving.  Just as with past lovers that have left some part of themselves within me to change me forever, I do as well with writers of influence.  To this day the 19th century formality and dark mood of Edgar, my first true love, remain in my own writing style (Ah, he laughs at me from his perch above my computer, as he lolls against the brick from a home where he once resided briefly, but long enough to be disassembled and sold bit by bit to those who, like me, feel the materialistic need to match the spiritual one of closeness to the great Poe).  McCarthy, Atwood, Munroe, Marquez; there is a long list of lovers I’ve enjoyed and will carry with me even as I meet the new.

So while I may be a bit childishly shrewish in my stubborn resentment of new suitors as I cling to the memories of the old, I will try to be more open and gracious, more accepting and willing to learn and explore new relationships.  Indeed, I am almost as excited as a schoolgirl in developing a friendship with Faulkner eventually.  With DeLillo, I also am encountering him at a decided change in his style from what I understand of his prior great works.  But then, I too am no longer the seventeen year old who fell helplessly under a master’s spell.