literature


Nothing upsets me more than to get onto an aeroplane and the person sitting next to me is reading Terry Pratchett. Quality literature focuses on issues such as sexism, racism, religion (the questioning thereof), subversion, freedom, isolation, loneliness, etc. Quality literature is not Terry Pratchett, it is George Orwell, Sylvia Plath, Charles Bukowski, Jean Rhys, Anais Nin, Oscar Wilde, etc. To question, to challenge… that is literature. Even as Wilde promoted art for art’s sake and beauty above all, his literature challenged, deeply, conventional thought and behaviour. The beauty of literature is identifying with a human story… the story of someone lost and hopeless and desperate… someone operating outside of society and unable to fit in. The beauty of literature is not Terry Pratchett talking about imaginary planets and using adjectives that absolutely do not fit their nouns and objects. To describe back pain as exquisite, for example, is simply bad English. The only pain that could possibly be exquisite is that of a sexual or, perhaps, an emotional nature. If you do not derive pleasure from Orwell or Plath, then you are sadly missing out on what literature truly has to offer us as human beings.

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