The [Very Ordinary] Concerns of Literature

In this day and age the thing that is most likely to send a book to the top of a bestseller list is sex, intrigue, and evil. What once might have drawn most readers in no longer seems enough. The classic adventures of old are a bland bowl of oatmeal in the current breakfast buffet of salacious writing. Modern literature is concerned with what will sell, what will shock readers the most. We want the cheap thrills of lust and betrayal, each tale more disturbing and debauchery-ridden than the last.

But stepping out of what has become the standard for bestselling literature in these contemporary days, it is still possible to see a pattern in what is written about, the subjects that writers constantly find themselves drifting back towards, unable to help themselves.

It seems to me that what strikes readership in a way that is truly profound, what creates lasting footprints in the mind, what can permanently alter the course of a human life, is literature that connects. Literature that, simply, draws on what is common unto all mankind, the problem of the human condition. We all yearn for relation, to feel that we are not entirely alone.

In short, literature, good literature, literature that settles in the stomach, that latches onto the soul and becomes a part of the reader, is literature that touches upon our human condition. The pure frailty of it, as well as the unreliability of it all, a state that seems often to be so fraught with confusion, a pervading sense of loneliness, a search for purpose, and a desire for connection. The common yarn that has wound its way in and out of human existence from the beginning of time is a need for relation to others. Alone, we crumple, we shrivel into a faded version of ourselves. Though we maintain the most basic forms of human contact, humans still often find themselves isolated in a prison of their own flesh, lost in their brain, in a state of depression that seems impossible to escape.

Literature serves as a rescue rope flung down into the blackest pits of despair. It tells stories: stories often of extraordinary human experiences. We crave tales of heroes, of those who rose above limitations and their condition. This gives readers hope, gives us escape, gives us a sense of future and possibility which is necessary in order to continue the journey of life.

But even more profound is when literature focuses on the ordinary. The best literature is concerned with simply daily human experience; the highs and lows of living; the pain and joy that punctuate our lives. We need to know that someone else feels the same way that we do. That someone else has experienced devastating loss, that they know the joy of companionship, that they have felt the heady whirlwind of romance, that they have been crushed by hurt. When we feel most alone, the literature that is concerned with these simple, ordinary things, is what binds us together and saves us.

The human condition can often feel like a sickness. The best literature reaches inside that sickness and draws out the emotion, the struggle, the triumph and all of the in between, explores it, sometimes painfully, opens wounds, retraces scars, and by doing so massages the soul.