Friday, June 20, 2008

The Decline of Modern Literature

I will start off this piece with a question. What happened in the world to lower the standards of the literary community? You may ask yourself "What the hell is this guy talking about? I just read an absolutely phenomenal book, it was a best seller for weeks...". What I'm trying to say is that the fact that a book is on a best sellers list should be more of a reason not to read a book than to read one. Please allow me to explain myself. Back in the day of literary grandeur books known as 'classics' or 'best sellers' were deemed so because of the important lessons learned within their pages and not because of their 'wicked cool story lines'. Today, just about every 'best seller' can be summed up in a single paragraph.

Mr. ___ has found a mysterious ___. Unfortunately for Mr. ___, the extremely wealthy yet extremely evil Sir ___ has found the same mysterious ___. Mr. ____ will race against Sir ___ to get hold of the mysterious ___ and save mankind from eternal damnation at the hands of an evil twisted man. In the process of Mr. ___'s totally unexpected adventure, he runs in to the beautiful, sexy Ms. ___. It just so happens to be that Ms. ___ is an expert on the history of the mysterious ___(... amazing, I know). Mr. ___ and Ms. ___ narrowly escape death in a one week period more than a hundred people will do so in a lifetime. Somehow in the process of this action packed race to find the mysterious ___, Mr. ___ and Ms. ___ will find themselves in a five star hotel and have extremely romantic sex around a hundred times. This is all happening while the two of them are being hunted by Sir ___'s master assassins. The race will lead them all around the world, and just when all hope seems lost for our two noble heroes, they stumble upon one final clue which will lead them directly to the ancient hidden palace in which the mysterious ___ lies. Once Mr. ___ and the soon to be Mrs. ___ see the mysterious ___ they realize the full magnitude of their discovery and oh so nobly decide that the world would be a better place if their discovery remained hidden, or better yet was destroyed completely. In the end, the couple of heroes live happily ever after in their newly acquired multi-million dollar/euro/pound mansion that they just bought in honor of their recent marriage. The End... Oh yeah, in case your wondering what happened to the evil Sir ___, just as he was about to stumble upon the mysterious ___ he was caught by a customs official who happened to have spotted him at a local airport while on vacation.

Now can someone please explain to me what the fuck the deal with that is? I mean come on, what happened to real 'classics' like those written by Twain or Hemingway? Now those were good freaking books. None of this cliche predictable bullshit. If you want to read a good book, you're probably better off looking at some loser's online blog about books and see what his favorites are than you are at taking one off one of the oh so great 'best seller' lists. All I am asking is for the people of planet earth to go back to its past days of sophisticated literature rather than remain at its current stage which is no more amazing than a group of monkeys playing with some typewriters.