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| Here's violence in our fiction books |
Oh, that's the culprit, eh? What about fiction books that can be full of depictions of violence? Browse the fiction shelves at our library and you'll see endless themes related to murder. It's to the point where it really surprises me.
Sometimes I feel disappointed at not doing enough fiction reading. I expressed this in communications a while back to our former library director, a fountain of library devotion. An article profiling her said she often has more than one book going at a time. Man, that's way in a league opposite me.
I ponder the void of fiction-reading in my life. It was not always that way. I seem to recall in my early teens being quite interested as I digested the likes of Jim Kjelgaard. I wrote a post reminiscing on Kjelgaard a couple years ago. He was a master of outdoor-themed stories. He just had the knack. He also had the knack of fitting right in with the literary genre called "juvenile." I wonder if a lot of adults would take to the guilty pleasure of just reading "juvenile" fiction! The type size is probably larger. The plot lines are more obvious. Fewer detours into raw violence and sex, eh?
The sheer volume of books coming out surprises me. How can each one find an audience? They most certainly do, or they wouldn't roll off the presses. Andy Rooney seemed perplexed by this once. His commentary began with how farmers can get paid for not growing crops. I guess we see that phenomenon in spades now with Trump's "trade war" and the subsidy checks to farmers. Of course, this is a system that can be gamed, as are all government programs!
Rooney wondered why authors aren't paid to not write books. He showed the scene of a bookstore and asked, "how many of these books have you read?" I think the same as I walk along the new fiction and non-fiction displays at our Morris MN library. But surely there must be sufficient demand.
Do books demand too much?
I do a lot of writing so you'd think I take to books like a bear to honey. I consume a fair amount of media but almost none of it from books. Who has the time and attention span to read a whole "book" anyway? I read a commentary once about how book publishing is something of a racket. This is because books must be "padded" in order to market them as stand-alone products.
Does anyone not see a big thick book as a turn-off? An early discussion on IP (intellectual property) protection was concerned about issues raised by this. A strong argument was raised that Wikipedia and other such sources had to be protected from overreaching claims of IP infringement.
Wikipedia material itself is not copyrighted. Apparently many entries are taken largely verbatim from old encyclopedias. Old encyclopedias! Total dinosaurs. Quaint to reflect upon.
Yes I think Wikipedia is a spectacular boon for society. You get information that is "to the point" and encapsulated, thank the Lord. We have always preferred information in this form. It's just that in the pre-digital days, the commercial platforms where somebody had to make "x" amount of money to justify publication, was a hindrance.
At some point in your life you have probably acquired a thick book, which in theory you'd enjoy, but just never got into it. Lack of time and patience. Maybe it's just that your instinct was telling you "there's a better way" and that way would be Wikipedia or like sources. The sources seem infinite. It's so embedded now we forget to realize what a blessing it is.
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| Here's more violence |
I'm also surprised at our Morris library to see how huge the genre of Western fiction is. You know, the cowboys and mountain men etc. Shall I assume this is men's fare? But I wouldn't expect men to be particularly avid readers. What is this market? Surely it's viable like for Louis L'Amour.
A related issue is the mythology of the Old West which we are realizing more and more. Self-reliant gunslingers were not the foundation of the movement West. Was it cowboys who got civilization established in the inhospitable desert Southwest? Movies would suggest yes. The real "cowboys" were not so glamorous. They were laborers who spent a lot of time pushing manure around. Lest you think it was Manifest Destiny pushed by the white Europeans, the fact is that a large percentage of cowboys were Mexican and African-American.
You know what got the desert Southwest developed and populated? Would you believe: the big bad U.S. government? The government got the Hoover Dam built.
You can argue that women including prostitutes were just as vital with development as the men with their 6-shooters. The reality doesn't lend itself to reading fare as much, does it.
Such prolific authors
Something else that bugs me about fiction books: Certain authors have their name on so many books, I can't believe it. It's a bit of a turn-off. Like that Patterson guy, one of many. I wonder how any of these authors can have his heart in writing any one book. I have to believe these authors become too formulaic in their writing.
But anyway, I need to stretch my mind to become more receptive to adult fiction. I need to look past the endless murder-themed books, books telling cowboy stories and books by authors who churn out one after another. I should find a way to do some meaningful consumption. I doubt I could ever read more than one at a time like our former librarian Melissa Yauk. She's now in Idaho.
If all else fails, maybe I could retrieve some old juvenile standards by the late Mr. Kjelgaard.
I told Melissa that when I sample fiction, I often feel that the prose gets too wordy and embroidered with superfluous descriptions. Add that to my list of issues, but I ought to put on a more receptive cap and give it all a chance.
Could I write fiction? A lot of you would no doubt consider that a scary thought. "Murder in the. . ."
So Trump's people thought video games are the problem. I can just see them putting their heads together on the morning after a mass shooting, and settling on a B.S. "talking point" like that. Why do we as a society even listen anymore?
An older platform
Violence? Man, when I was a kid I was a voracious consumer of comic books that had lots of conflict and gore. Let's also remember the "Civil War trading cards" that were gory by design. There is something in an adolescent boy's nature that finds this stuff appealing, but it's vicarious. Freedom of speech protects it. Where would you draw the line to determine where something is unacceptably violent? How would you make this judgment with books? Of course, what we need is a crackdown with gun control.
Why do you think police tend to be jittery? It's because guns flow everywhere. They never know if someone pulled over in a traffic stop might have a gun. Jittery police make me very jittery.
- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com
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