Wednesday, June 16, 2004

"WWTD: What Would Twain Do?"

The BBC has done us all a great favor and provided a summary of Ulysses, an infamously obscure book by James Joyce. not as obscure as Finnegan's Wake, but still quite hard to read.. I read a paragraph or two of Ulysses in an anthology and promptly decided that watching paint dry was more rewarding.

In contrast, consider Mark Twain's thoughts on literature as described in Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses:

There are nineteen rules governing literary art in the domain of romantic fiction--some say twenty-two. In Deerslayer Cooper violated eighteen of them. These eighteen require:

1. That a tale shall accomplish something and arrive somewhere. But the Deerslayer tale accomplishes nothing and arrives in the air.

...

10. They require that the author shall make the reader feel a deep interest in the personages of his tale and in their fate; and that he shall make the reader love the good people in the tale and hate the bad ones. But the reader of the Deerslayer tale dislikes the good people in it, is indifferent to the others, and wishes they would all get drowned together.

...

18. Employ a simple and straightforward style.

James Joyce may rest in peace. I'll go re-read Huck Finn.

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