Anti-Gravity

I agree with Maud Newton that Tom Robbins’ new literary manifesto might be missing a few things. Namely, the long and thriving tradition of the satirical and otherwise whimsical writing styles in literature. Robbins’ manifesto, published in Harpers, decries the kind of “weighty” writing that is typically prized by publications like The New Yorker:

Among our egocentric sad sacks, despair is as addictive as heroin and more popular than sex, for the single reason that when one is unhappy one gets to pay a lot of attention to oneself. Misery becomes a kind of emotional masturbation. Taken out on others, depression becomes a weapon…

And that’s where Robbins has a point.

The fact that playfulness – a kind of divine playfulness intended to lighten man’s existential burden and promote what Joseph Campbell called “the rapture of being alive” – lies near the core of Zen, Taoist, Sufi, and Tantric teachings is lost on most Westerners: working stiffs and intellectuals alike…

I think that there is something to be said for the notion that the literary canon often confuses “worthwhile” literature with “serious” literature. I think that there is also soemthing to be said for the kind of whimsical curiosity that Robbins is advocating here. Daniel Green is discussing a very similar notion when he says:

I’m reasonably sure [curiosity enough to engage in literature] can’t be taught to indifferent younger students either, even if school curricula were actually to designed to encourage serious reading in the first place, which as far as I can tell they certainly are not. Encouraging them instead to indulge in “happy fantasy” will only result in their continuing to insist on happy fantasy, which means most will eventually turn to movies and tv anyway.

But wait, isn’t this “happy fantasy” akin to what Robbins is demanding more of? Robbins’ manifesto could easily be read as an aggreement with the need for that “happy fantasy” — even though it favors, instead, a kind of mystic whimsy — but it is difficult to distinguish between the two.

So, which will it be: a literature that is too heavy to carry, or one that is to light to hold? The answer, of course, is somewhere in the middle.