Sunday 6 January 2008

THE CHEERING NATURE OF TRAGEDY

Can I send my reader (Mimi? Are you still around?) to this post by Fictionbitch?

FICTIONBITCH HERE

I am often stumped for an answer when people ask why I don''t write 'happy' stories. "You are such a happy person, most of the time..." they say.

Am I?

Be that as it may, and putting aside those party masks we all put on when socialising, I never know what to say.

But the books and stories that have most affected me are not 'happy'. I am most affected by the ones I remember, think about, that make me feel something deeply when reading. Not the 'happy' twiddles I might read on holiday when I need a fizzy drink.
The music that moves me is not 'happy'. I am moved by music with depth, an ache. It's music that makes me think. Is beautiful music ever really 100% 'happy'?

So it is affirming to read Fictionbitch this morning.


And it goes back to my inability to get excited by creating 'more people like the ones next door' that do not do much other than live as they already do.

There has to be something else....

2 comments:

Ossian said...

I always remember one of the epigraphs at the front of Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman:

"Since the fate of man rests still uncertain, let's reason with the worst that may befall." (Shakespeare)

Chirpy is not something with much appeal, unless it is ironically humourous, cf. Hyacinth Bucket.

On the other hand, there is an easy kind of gloom that is not much kop either.

Transcendence and transmutation has something to do with it. Alchemy.

Vanessa Gebbie said...

".....On the other hand, there is an easy kind of gloom that is not much kop either.

Transcendence and transmutation has something to do with it. Alchemy...."


Indeed. I hope to leave a little glimmer of something. Just the merest chink.

v