Dust baths in the sunshine. |
Tom Kitten (named for the Beatrix Potter character) |
1. I read fiction for escape. If I want to read about something terrible that ended terribly or had no resolution, I will pick up a newspaper. For me, fiction is a happy place where one can travel to all sorts of places and never leave home, where improbable things sometimes happen, and the antagonists get their just deserts.
2. The fiction I read doesn't have to be all happiness all the time. In fact, that would be monotonous very quickly. Dickens is a perfect example of my favorite kind of reading. There are some pretty bad situations, but our hero/heroine always ends up with some kind of happy resolution. So, you say, why doesn't Wuthering Heights make the cut?
3. I don't like unhappiness simply for the sake of unhappiness. Wuthering Heights does, in fact, have some small resolution at the end of it, but the rest of the book is about being miserable (loosely speaking). That's my beef with Tolstoy. Anna Karenina is just 1000 (or whatever it is) pages of desperate unhappiness with a desperately unhappy ending. If unhappiness contributes in some way to another plot, then I am happy to read about. But a plot about unhappiness? Sigh.
I can't get over the lovely crocuses in the front garden. |
I have had thoughts going around my head all week about this topic, but couldn't quite figure out how to get them onto paper. I hope everything I wrote here was clear. I'd love to hear what any of my readers think about this and what kind of reading they like! I'll close with another quote about happy endings.
Hordes of Canadian geese flocked to our pond. I caught a glimpse of them on camera Sunday afternoon. |
No comments:
Post a Comment