After writing about Zane Grey, a writer no elitist reader would admit reading, what should I come across but a review of the kind of book that is on the top literary lists. Of course, since the reviewer took my view of this particular book, I had to grab the link.
With the film coming out, I was reminded again how it's a book and set of films that I have always avoided for the reason to which the reviewer above spoke. Why spend time with depressing and unpleasant people and plots? Seriously I'd like to know as I do not get it. The only time I read something like it was in high school and college literature classes and then for my own good-- supposedly.
Leaving aside Gatsby, my own books, and heading instead toward what makes people choose to read books that are about icky people doing icky things? Why do they read what the critics of their time tell them is good and ignore what they might enjoy more?
Enrichment of the soul? How could Gatsby do that. It's a stupid plot if you just take the plot alone. It pushes sanctimonious thinking which must have worked since they keep making movies out of this ridiculous, manipulated story. Should it?
And as a writer, the plot device to make Gatsby pay for his excesses just seemed wrong. The author needed a tragedy but couldn't he have come up with a more believable method? What did it gain? Well it gave Fitzgerald an enduring classic in the eyes of most critics, a book most Americans have read (often forced in a class) and some have on a list to prove they are well-read.
Some of the books on lists of the greatest literary works deserve to be there on all levels but do we really need to read books that make us feel worse about humanity? When I want that, I want it to be non-fiction.
We just sold one of our young bulls to a local rancher which made my day considerably brighter. He had dropped by yesterday to ask if we had any as he has twelve cows and needed a bull. Fortunately he wanted one like we have of the smaller Hereford breed with smooth shoulders to cut down on having to pull calves. For big ranchers, they don't mind a season of pulling calves but someone like us, we are looking for easy calving, something that doesn't take the cow down from a hard birthing.
The photo above is our old bull with one of his sweeties who he bred earlier this week :) The attention he gives a cow he has bred is worthy of a lesson to any would-be Lothario. He's there for her until she doesn't want him there anymore. Isn't she lovely and feminine, even make-up around her eyes; while he's the typical broad shouldered romantic hero ;)
