May 8, 2020: God Bless Book Groups, and The Bread is Over -
I am a huge fan of Fairy
Tales and Fables as Lit (thanks to one of those mind-blowing classes some of
us had), but if you don’t think archetypes are thought-provoking
and psychologically potent in and of themselves, this isn’t the piece for you.
I will say, though, that the author has a wise and funny
mother who reminds me of my own mom, and my own mom is on my mind as Mother’s
Day approaches. So there's that.
In this pandemic time, I’ve been fortunate to participate in
both an online book group, and a sister online short-story group. They have
been wonderful lifelines, socially and intellectually, and even temporally, events
on the calendar that remind me what day of the week it is, give me a community
of people who share my interests, and spirit me into the life of the mind for
an hour or two. I’m deeply grateful for them.
And each one has included at least one modern work (Dickens,
O. Henry) that is essentially a fable – stock characters an inch thick, obvious
lessons, outlandish premises, cliché, lack of internal logic.
Some people simply hate this stuff. That’s okay. They get to
hate it. It’s like hating 12-bar blues, or realistic still-life painting, or the
smell of lavender, or spaghetti Bolognese. I hate the smell of lavender. I get
it. Fairy tales and fables are what they are. I love them, and I value them, but
I don’t expect others to understand that.
I hate them when they're done poorly. There are people who are all in for sci-fi. I'm not. That is to say, I don't forgive illogic or poor plotting or cardboard characters, etc., merely because a work is sci-fi. I like it if it's well done. Sci-fi enthusiasts tend to like it because it's sci-fi and are more forgiving. A work's being of a certain genre is not, for me, licence to write poorly, or to have poor aspects of the work overlooked.
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