12.05.06

It's amazing how snot can clog the ol' creative impulses. Makes 500 words seem like 5,000--yet I persevere.

Nosing about the other day, and admitted to myself that high-falutin', self-consciously, literary work leaves me cold. I get the sneaking suspicion that many of the producers need to take the cork out. Or relax. Or something. Most of the writing comes off as stilted and/or pretentious. Worse, it's humourless. Frankly, if I read one more over-workshopped, wingey, whiney piece about how some over-privileged, pampered, crypto-intellectual, weenie comes of age, I'm going to vomit forth a Buick.

It's as if literary fiction has calcified into its own genre; with its own conventions and expectations. Tired of it, y'hear? Tired.

Sure, I may be intellectually bankrupt. I may have the attention span of a gnat. Still, does that give anyone the right to look down on my reading choices? I hear people moaning about how they need to read a good book. When asked, it's a book that's been deemed "good" by someone else. No one trusts their own opinions--like some uber-teacher is standing over them with a ruler, judging their worth from their reading choices.

I say that it's a miracle that people still read at all. Why should we drive home the idea that reading is a chore, not a pleasure, by trumpeting the relative worth of each book?

I think it's ridiculous.

Now, it's time for work. >)

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