Stevie Smith, come back to us!

I think I claimed somewhere recently that I had not been exposed to Stevie Smith's poetry before this class.  Not true!  I've read "Not Waving, But Drowning" before, I'm sure.  Okay, I think.  But I have really developed a new appreciation for her since I've been reading more of her poetry.  I think she and I would have gotten along famously.  Sad she died when I was only two.  My work for today was to pick a Modern British poem we hadn't yet read for class.  I decided to let the textbook fall open and see what I came up with.  The result was Stevie Smith's "Souvenir de Monsieur Poop."  Somehow that title caught my eye!  Hard to believe, I know.  This poem puts into words what I feel about those who feel a might superior about their knowledge of English literature.  There's more in my head about it than Stevie (Yes, we're on a first-name basis now.) puts in this poem.  She talks about the belief that the classics are the only valid literature, citing Shakespeare, Milton, and (tee-hee) Housman.  Another aspect of this is the idea that only some topics of contemporary authors are good enough to be called "serious" literature.  Poop on mysteries and horror!  Turn away from sci-fi and fantasy!  No, not every contemporary writer is a master of his craft.  But there is more than one goal of writing.  Not everything we read has to elevate us or educate us.  Writing can entertain us.  It's okay to escape sometimes, as long as you make it back to the real world.  I love Stevie Smith.  And I love Stephen King.  Maybe I can even teach him some day.  You might be surprised.  He even has subtext.

Why haven't I read this guy before?

You know, I don't consider myself a conservative stick-in-the-mud, but I just read my first Thomas Pynchon novel, and that's sure how I felt. See what happens when I get shoved outside my comfort zone? I've always loved to read, but this was certainly something new. I'm used to your standard novel - standard conflict, standard exposition, standard climax - you get the picture. A nice normal story arc, easy to follow, easy to analyze. Pynchon knocked me on my ass! What the hell is going on here? I asked myself. No standard stuff here. The novel was all over the place, with observations from Oedipa, the main character, about life, love, the postal service, sex, drugs, men, business - the list goes on and on. And is she having a paranoid fantasy, is her dead ex-lover playing a posthumous practical joke on her, or is she really involved in some underground scheme to foil the U.S. Postal Service, traditional love, and the gods know what else.

And even though Pynchon - through his mouthpiece Diblette - tried to discourage me from analyzing the novel, by the gods I did my best. Well, I had to write my essay on something. But it was a puzzle to be sorted out anyway. I had to try to extract some kind of meaning from it. Ha! I really don't want to give it - or what I think it is - away. My own convoluted little brain added its own ideas to the mix and came away with the meaning best suited to me. That might be just what Pynchon had in mind.