My interest in colloquial writings with unconventional prose, plot structures and idiosyncratic characters has led me to be interested in the works of, strangely, eclectic writers. Whether it’s the pastiche, aesthetically violent Tarantino colloquy ensemble, or Joyce’s wonderful multilingual, elaborate, and sometimes mind boggling prose, mashed in with modernist references, Greek mythology parallels and aphoristic narrative technique, to the more complex (not in prose), conspiratorial, political, pseudo-religious meanderings of Orwell and the brilliant beauty of William Golding, Anthony Burgess and J.D. Salinger, whose masterful satire wrought even the most despicable and disgusting characters (yet, a most fitting attribution to the subject of human nature) into lovable anti-heros that serve the human conscience. 

These are some of my favorite writers, not to say they are least, far from that, for their influence on me is unquestionable, and I find that when I read their works, I’m more captivated by the way they write rather than what they write. Of course, what they write is obviously important for the contents of a book. To put into perspective the correlation between content, context and presentation, it would be like looking at the relation between trinomials. Dissecting one aspect of what makes a literary work superior to another is foolish, especially when comparing works of different genres, for it is the different combinations that make the presentation fluid, and with fluid presentation, whatever context can flourish as the writer can have it as it may; so the content is concluded as masterful.

Even then, one could see the biggest weakness in writers is the lack of innovation. This can be related to any field, though that discussion is too broad for a tumblr post that I’m writing to pass the time. So, why do writers lack innovation? Quite simply, it’s hard coming up with something new. Plot, characters and dialogue are now set into previously planned structures, character archetypes and ceaseless slaughtering of idioms and ‘clever’ chatter conceived out of some other work of literature that was actually inventive. Though that itself isn’t a problem; there are people who can defy the countless amounts of resources set before them and push the limit further. No one wants to see that, is the sad thing, as most people seem to be content with predictable plot, badass characters (or sympathetic ones, depending on the genre it can be many cliches) and most horrendously virtually plagiarized dialogue. Though on the subject of dialogue, many writers seem to butcher the idioms and slang of, lets say, modern day language to accurately convey and paint a picture of the modern day world in their works. After all, Joyce himself had written his avant-garde Ulysses, a book of 800 pages, to simply detail the events of one day in Dublin, Ireland. To go to such lengths to detail a world, Joyce had even said that if Dublin was destroyed, it could be built back brick by brick using his book as reference. The biggest mistake in this is that, whilst postmodern writers seem to deny the facets of modernist literary techniques, they actually lavish and respect them. This is contrary to the point of postmodernism, and ends up making the postmodern works look like boisterous ripoffs of works written fifty years past. And who could blame them? To perceive the world of literature is ridiculously difficult. It is even more so misunderstood when studied by scholars (though one would argue otherwise, it’s almost always autodidacts that innovate in literature) and this leads to publishers publishing books from the wrong people. Analysts should remain analysts and writers should become writers. Though this trend had not ceased, it has surely been demoralized.

On another note, I am fascinated at how a combination of different letters from a single, or several, languages can form an astounding array of contemporary brilliance. Regardless of my tastes, one has to admit that certain books, not counting metafiction, paint pictures better than any artist could ever imagine.

I suppose that’s all I had to type. I read too much.