It is very difficult to explain the difference between the kind of reading one does to escape reality and the kind of reading one does to learn more about reality, to improve one’s self.
I cannot possibly, in one short, three minute talk, define the differences, but I will focus on a couple of books I am shuttling between. One is a great novel, a novel to improve one’s self, The Brothers Ashkenazi by Israel Joshua Singer, and the other is pure escape fiction: Michael Connelly’s Trunk Music.
I am an older man, in my middle sixties, and I’ve read so much about the suffering of mankind that I am put off by such paragraphs as: “ Colonel Von Heidel-Heidellau resolved to teach the inhabitants of Polish towns the meaning of German authority. As an object lesson he had several villages set on fire, then had the town of Kalisz razed to the ground. It happened that a deaf mute water carrier failed to stop at a German soldier’s command and was promptly shot to death.”
Such grim passages of man’s inhumanity to man leave me cold. I’ve read so much about human cruelty. This is not new. I do not want to read it yet one more time.
Michael Connelly, on the other hand, deals with surface reality, with dead bodies as clues to solve a murder case. When a detective finds a dead body in the trunk of a car “He leaned in under the lid to get a close look, careful not to touch the bumper with his pants. The body of a man was in the trunk. His skin was grayish white and he was expensively dressed in linen pants sharply pressed and cuffed at the bottom, a pale blue shirt with a flowery pattern a leather sports coat. His feet were bare.”
We really don’t care who this man was. We don’t feel sorry for him. We aren’t thinking about man’s inhumanity to man. We are looking for clues.
Back in the Israel Singer book we are dealing with great issues. “He had spent his whole life awaiting the revolution and its redemption….The war had only strengthened this conviction. Despite all the tragedy and the resurgence of patriotism and nationalism it had brought, it had also signified the beginning of the end of the bourgeoisie, the demise of the old world.”
The bourgeoisie, the old world, patriotism, nationalism, revolution, redemption. Deep issues, important issues. I grow old, I grow old. I’ve heard these words, these thoughts, too often. I’m seeking to escape life, not confront great issues, and John Connelly lets me do that. Again, he deals with surface reality -- the look of things, not their meaning. “He pointed to the chair and remained standing until she finally sat. He then moved around the coffee table and sat on the couch. Its springs were shot. He sank so low in it that he had to lean forward and even then it felt like his knees were halfway up to his chest. He got out his notebook.”
Surface reality -- couches, chairs, notebooks. No profound meaning. No revolutions, no bourgeoisie. We are looking for clues, noting the landscape, passing time.
At this point in my life I seek escape fiction, not profound fiction. I think I’ve found a few of the differences between the two.
Copyright © 2004 Henry Morgenstein