I have been accused of being too depressing in my writing. These accusations are well-founded. My family doesn’t read my work, not because they think I am a bad writer, but because my books are too depressing. “Why don’t you write something that’s not about suffering?” my mom asked me once. My grandma, who read "Dwellers of the Night: Book One", was amazed at how well-written it was, but she refuses to read the other two books of the trilogy. Why? It is too much for her to handle.
Cormac McCarthy, one of my favorite writers—the author of "No Country for Old Men" and "The Road"—said in an interview, regarding authors who do not deal with the issues of life, death, and suffering in their books, “To me, that’s not literature. A lot of writers who are considered good I consider strange.” I agree with McCarthy: if someone wants to write something that resembles reality, then suffering, pain, and death cannot be ignored. As Ernest Hemmingway, one of my inspirations, said when confronted by a woman who accused him of being too pessimistic and morose in his literature, “All stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and he is no true story-teller who would keep that from you.”
Everything I have ever written is saturated with the question and reality of suffering. My most recent work, "losing touching searching", deals with it from a Judeo-Christian (and, admittedly, eistentialist) perspective. My current work, "Dwellers of the Night", approaches it from a nihilistic perspective. My future work "the toothless kiss of skeletons" will explore suffering from a naturalistic worldview, and "In Memoriam: Infractus Fatum" will explore it from a deist’s point-of-view. "Sunset Royale" will approach suffering from a Christian theism perspective. My writing is drenched with suffering not because I am a sadist who is obsessed with it, but because suffering is an intrinsic reality in our world, something that bonds all humanity—man and woman, rich and poor, slave and free, tyrant and subject—together. If my writing were not to deal with this supreme issue, then… What in the world would it be worth?
Cormac McCarthy, one of my favorite writers—the author of "No Country for Old Men" and "The Road"—said in an interview, regarding authors who do not deal with the issues of life, death, and suffering in their books, “To me, that’s not literature. A lot of writers who are considered good I consider strange.” I agree with McCarthy: if someone wants to write something that resembles reality, then suffering, pain, and death cannot be ignored. As Ernest Hemmingway, one of my inspirations, said when confronted by a woman who accused him of being too pessimistic and morose in his literature, “All stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and he is no true story-teller who would keep that from you.”
Everything I have ever written is saturated with the question and reality of suffering. My most recent work, "losing touching searching", deals with it from a Judeo-Christian (and, admittedly, eistentialist) perspective. My current work, "Dwellers of the Night", approaches it from a nihilistic perspective. My future work "the toothless kiss of skeletons" will explore suffering from a naturalistic worldview, and "In Memoriam: Infractus Fatum" will explore it from a deist’s point-of-view. "Sunset Royale" will approach suffering from a Christian theism perspective. My writing is drenched with suffering not because I am a sadist who is obsessed with it, but because suffering is an intrinsic reality in our world, something that bonds all humanity—man and woman, rich and poor, slave and free, tyrant and subject—together. If my writing were not to deal with this supreme issue, then… What in the world would it be worth?
1 comment:
I think grandma isn't comfortable with some of the language rather than the general theme
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