Modernist literature and enjoyment

Modernism. Just put that word into a search engine and you are likely to be awash with a plethora of academic journals and essays. If you were to enroll in a literature course, it would be very strange indeed if you did not encounter a reading list bereft of The Waste Land, Ulysses or Mrs. Dalloway.

Amble into your local book retailer and, sure, you will certainly find those titles! But they aren't likely to be in display. Stacks of Dan Brown's Inferno will be neatly allotted next to the tills to entice you. A few paces ahead, those mighty tomes, with impressive spines, boasting to be a Centenary Edition will be organised under Classics or Modern Classics. If you are not a Lit undergrad, you are not likely to buy them. If you do, it is merely to display at home, ostentatiously laying bare your intellectualism! The tomes are likely to gather dust. The pages will soon become yellow. Once you die, they are likely to be shifted over to the local charity shop. Another person will buy it with the same motives and the whole process will recommence.

Modernism does not seem to be synonymous with enjoyment. It is more synonymous with analysis and studiousness. Many people seem to think that that is its sole function. Most people who do dig their teeth into it for other reasons are snobs or pretentious charlatans. Indeed, you are someone who scoffs at others who read for 'enjoyment.' When you read modernist lit, you do not do it for enjoyment...

Seriously, this attitude is most discouraging. Personally, modernism is the literary form that does the most for me. I'm even beginning to tire of post-modernism now. (Self-referentiality and self-conscious cleverness wears a little thin after a while.) Why do I like it? The dense prose lifts me to a transcendent sphere. The ambiguity makes me tingly. The psychological richness of the characterisation makes you empathise with these unusual people. The stream of consciousness is highly compatible with my own thought processes. Not much happens? I do not need yarns all the bloody time for christ sake! I can tolerate books where nothing much happens!

In many periods in my life, I have passed inordinate portions of my time reading these kinds of books. No, I did not talk to girls. And no, contrary to what you may think, I never played video games. I did not watch Star Trek, either... This kind of stuff heightened my consciousness. It also made me want to write! As Stephen Dedalus said in Portrait of the Artist: 'Welcome, O life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.'  Yes! This was in me, too! Contrary to what you may think, and contary to what all those academic journals suggest, many people read these tomes for enjoyment!