It’s the End of the Literary World As We Know It (But Don’t Be Afraid—It’s a Good Thing)

At the risk of sounding pretentious (I know, like that's ever been an actual concern of mine), I'm about to wax literary about something I believe to be very important for writers in a changing world.

There, you've been warned. If you want to leave, do it now. Still here? Wow. You're such a glutton for punishment, and it's time to feast. 

The Bricks

Symbols.

Subtext. 

Allusions.

Together, they're the subtle backbone of the writer's (and reader's) world. There are the often invisible at first parts of a story that grant a sort of universal understanding to both the enjoyers and the creators of the work itself. They are the foundations that allow metaphorical shorthand to help us as writers convey our themes and tones and meanings even when we don't realize that's what we're doing. 

Don't believe me?

Our classical canon of novels, poetry, and stories (and even non-fiction) all pull from just a few sources upon which they are understood. You've no doubt heard that there are no original stories, and just as truly, there are no more original symbols (at least in our classical, Western point of view). 

The Foundations

All literature, whether high-brow or low-brow, can be analyzed and understood through a handful of older references. They are: 

• Fairy tales
• Greco-Roman (and occasionally Norse) mythology
• The Bible
• Shakespeare

Now, to be fair, I'm currently reading through the amazing little volume How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas Foster, and that is triggering a lot of these thoughts. But I'm also (as any casual reader of this blog, or my Facebook, Twitter, etc. will know) something my family and friends might refer to as a "woke liberal" (I prefer the admittedly longer term "progressive prioritizer of people over profits"). As the Literature major, I cherish most of the classic works of the Western canon, even those that haven't held up so well in the wake of our increasing progressive world of ideas. As a "woke" (yes, I'm beginning to accept the derogatorily coined term as a badge of pride) I fully admit that the world is changing and that a new canon of far more multicultural literature is being added to and in some case taking the place of what we have long thought of as the classics.

But what do I mean by “understood through a handful of older references”? 

Let's look, shall we?

Can one truly understand the point of Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes without picking up the reference to Shakespeare’s MacBeth? Is there any older story than that of two warring brothers, lifted from Cain and Abel? And what of the Christ figure that appears in all (for both good and ill) of Spielberg’s films? Can we understand stories of lost children without seeing their parallels to so many classic fairy tales like "Little Red Riding Hood" or "Hansel and Gretel"? Could we enjoy O' Brother, Where Art Thou as deeply if we didn't see it's basis in Homer's Odyssey?

It's not just keen readers and writers who pick up on these kinds of references. Even surface readers often do. And, as I mentioned earlier, writers often weave these allusions into their works without being aware of them at first. They are just that much a part of the general data stored in the hard drive of their brains. They can't help but think of them. 

Shifting Sands (The Foundations Rumble)

But... as the world changes, even the symbols change. 

That doesn't just mean we are (finally) getting new voices in the classroom and on the bookstore shelves. That's a definite "good thing" as works by writers from all over the world and different cultures, genders, ethnicities, and identities join the works of the white male elite. It's a joy to find Toni Morrison and Zora Neale Hurston on school syllabi with contemporary giants like Marjane Satrapi and Khaled Hosseini. It's a long-delayed step into the light for what has often been seen as merely a bunch of books by a stodgy group of grumpy old white guys.

But it's not just the works being bought and taught that are changing. It's the symbols and subtexts and allusions themselves.

Here’s a prediction—in the next 100 years our classrooms (both K12 and college) will analyze and understand the books and stories and poems they read in light of several new foundations. 

I expect the mythologies of many non-Western cultures to be part of our literary vocabulary—Japanese, Indian, Indigenous Americans, and so forth. With the influx of anime that draws on Japanese, Chinese, and Korean legends and the increased Western viewing of world cinema (particularly horror based in these myths—oni and strigoi and manananggal, oh my!), it’s all but unavoidable. I hope to see the trickster gods (already a staple in the works of Neal Gaiman) and the Snow Ghost (a different take on the “mother scorned”) become as popular symbols as Red Riding Hood and the Knights of the Roundtable.

I expect great works, currently forgotten or ignored, from other countries, particularly non-Western, will become so much more well-read that they too take their place alongside the works of Shakespeare or great adventure stories of the Greeks and Romans. Just as Romeo and Juliet inspired West Side Story and Jane Smiley’s A Thousand Acres is just King Lear in a rural farm community, stories like The Rubaiyat and the epic poetry of Su Tung P’o will have their symbols and characters mined for new literary alloys. 

I expect the fundaments of world religions outside that of Christianity to be more studied and in turn have their stories and parables become the foundation for new works of literature just as much as the Christian Bible has for the past thousand years. Allusions like the peace child of Papua, New Guinea, and feeding dead relatives during Ghost Month, and the puberty rituals of Nigeria will (and should) become as common as those of the sounding trumpet, baptism, communion, Christ figures, and the Flood. 

Whatever Will We Do?

What are our options as writers whose world is beginning to radically shift beneath our feet? For some of us there may be very little may change because we have already been reading books and stories based in other cultures not or own for years. 

For some who have trapped themselves in the world of “white old men” books, it may be a bit more difficult. 

For those, I fear the “fight or flight” moment will come when they either begin to fight their past and wade a few steps into the waters of new stories and symbols or they will dig in their heels, stiffen their backs and say, “This far and no further” or (in the words of another old white guy) “Thou shall not pass.” And they will then flee to their comfortable world of the same old symbols and stories and becoming increasingly irrelevant in in the world as it changes. 

For new writers and readers, though, the change should be almost a seamless one. They most likely won’t even see it as it happens around them. They’ve already grown up on books by writers and reviews and critics of a variety of ethnicities, genders, identities, and world cultures. They’ve already been immersed in movies and television (whatever form that make take in the future) originating from cultures and peoples others than their own. They will most likely not even realize they are changing the world as they embrace new symbols and new story allusions and new subtexts that give meaning to the stories they write and read. For them it will just be their one day at a time life, their business as usual. 

And it is they, ultimately, who will be the real architects of this new literary world. You and I, no matter how readily we embrace or welcome the new world, can merely be harbingers who are experimenting with the new tools. They will become the true masters of them.