Literature Sucks

As an English major, I am often called upon to read pieces of literature, works of poetry, drama, and prose that have been highly esteemed throughout the centuries for their educational and artistic value. One particular work of literature I have recently read is Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene, a long work of poetry that combines the techniques of the classical epics such as the Odyssey and the medieval romances such as the legends of King Arthur. Various knights, the most important of whom is a cross-dressing woman called Britomart, enter and depart from the narrative at seemingly random intervals, sometimes doing something while they're gone, other times simply remaining in a stasis field until the other characters happen to stumble across them again. A lot of times they get into fights, sometimes with each other and sometimes with dragons or other such monsters. The plot is difficult to follow, but that is not because it is especially intricate like a plot in Shakespeare, where various events are woven into a whole by chains of cause and effect. The difficulty in Spenser's technique comes from his casual and almost cheerful disregard for cause and effect, or logic of any kind. He is concerned more with moral instruction than with plot, and thus he uses all kinds of characters like Despair or Mammon and locations like the Bower of Bliss or the House of Pride.

Obviously, this is complete bullcrap. And this is not to say that Shakespeare is any better, just because he focusses on plot. I defy anyone to tell me why it is especially necessary for every single stinking play to have five thousand distinct plotlines and to have all the characters be related to all the others in every possible way. All these complaints are of course completely seperate from the question of language, which as we all know is completely incomprehensible to all those who have not been reading poetry on a daily basis since the age of six. And as for his brilliant pictures of the human condition, I find something lacking. King Lear hands over his kingdom to his daughters, and we're supposed to feel sorry for the moron when it turns out that he didn't raise them right? Hamlet's mother marries her brother-in-law after he kills her husband, and this somehow obliges Hamlet to murder the guy and to treat his girlfriend like crap? And let's not even talk about the complete ridiculosity of A Midsummer Night's Dream: fairies? a guy with a donkey's head? Seriously, guys. While I'm talking about the greatest English poets, I might as well mention Milton, too. The main point I would make here is that Paradise Lost seems pretty pointless: oh, man, are they going to eat the stupid apple? We've all heard that one before, and it didn't take thousands of lines of blank verse to tell it. And also, Mr. Milton: Satan's supposed to be the bad guy. Get it right, moron.

And aside from the Big Three English Poets, I have to point out that the novelists haven't been all that great either. Just to change things up a little bit, I'll start with one of the few female Dead White Males, Jane Austen. I'll just outline one of her books for you: 1. A young girl enters the market for a husband. 2. She meets a man. 3. The relationship enters into some complications, and she might meet another man. 4. She ends up married to someone. Yeah, big deal. That sounds kind of like everyone's life. As for James Joyce, Ulysses is a huge letdown. First of all, Odysseus doesn't even make a cameo appearance; second, the most interesting characters are an over-educated, whining little jerk who won't even kneel at his mother's bedside when she was dying and a fat Jew who keeps eating non-kosher food. The critics just love it, though, which shouldn't be surprising since they seem to be on a constant quest to make sure that nothing even marginally entertaining or informative is considered literature. They set up the system so that you have to suffer through endless hours of tedious reading to be considered educated, and then they act upset if no one goes through the trouble to join their little club. All the time, though, they're glad that they can call themselves smart and can intimidate everyone into thinking that all the things that a smart person can read are of course much too difficult for the common simpleton.

But I've seen through their game. I'm on the verge in getting an undergraduate degree that will qualify me to be a junior member of their little club. I've read their stupid books and poems and plays, and I know their dirty little secret. So listen to me all of you: Literature sucks. Do not read it. Do not waste your time. Just go back over to your TV sets and watch "The Weakest Link" and leave our little club alone.