Literary Rant

Have you noticed that bitterness is in vogue, a la mode, of the hour of late, devouring our literature like rampant termites given to fell whole tabernacles to the spirit of sweetness from even the most stalwart of foundations. When we could celebrate life, we create whole festivals of painlosspain more pain. (No, not bread in French) Every novel I pick up is laced with this cyanide offering to the awaiting psyche that says, Yes, yes the bitterness is all there is and all hail the bitter end. The loss, the injustice, the tyrants who run free to die the perfect deaths like the Godfather in the garden with his one ripe tomato watching his grand-son play. I am of the opinion that art is to give us what life does not. But where can I find it in these modern anals of literature? The Booker Prize this year went to a novel that sums it all up with a title: The Inheritance of Loss. Of Loss, loss and hatred, hatred and suffering, suffering and poverty in a world where love cannot prevail and an even bitter-sweet ending is discarded in favor of the bitterest ending that can be dredged up. I have a Renaissance heart. I either come from a time so long ago that it is lost, or a time not yet upon us. How could I know? In the meantime, I have nothing to read. Shall I go back to the children's section? For clearly adults favor this monument to pain while we tell our children the fairytales that Disney has re-created to be virtually pain-free, better than Tylenol, Prozac, and Valium combined. Brautigan pulled light out of the sky and it flowed through his pen as he died. Rothko bound the feathers he could scrap together from the wings of fallen angels and created luminous loveletters of color to the gods, and died. But Da Vinci, ah, how did he die? And Michaelangelo? With a life so full of light the death hardly matters. The tide will change. The bitterness must end. Doesn't light always triumph? May we not forget, and hoist our candles until the day comes.