At Cascadia Con, I won a copy of L. Timmel Duchamp's book of short stories Love's Body, Dancing in Time, and have been enjoying it enough to look her up on the web. Today I read an essay on her website that helped me put my finger on what irks me so much about the fad for goods guys losing in horrible, pointless ways and everyone's best nature being proved misguided in the face of well motived greed, fanaticism or rapaciousness. If you object to work of that kind, cynics like to sneer and say it is more "realistic" as if the promotion of ugly truths was sufficient to make something good art. To object at all labels one as a silly Pollyanna or emotional weakling. Bullshit. To value what deserves to be valued in the face of defeat deserves, at the very least, to be beautiful and hopeful in the sense that Duchamp describes it, below. Not pitied for being wrong-headed or simply a 'yuk yuk' for the crowd who want to identify with the winners, quick, no matter what they stand for. This is about the heart and soul of art. No one should have to apologize for caring about that.
The beauty and power of life and hope don't come easy. I never find them in the slick, easy endings that slide down like the cola that leaves my mouth cloyed and thirsty afterward. Hope cannot be found by shutting one's eyes to what hurts, by pretending that history simply doesn't matter. For without the courage of acknowledging what we can't (and shouldn't have to) bear, "hope" is but a mirage of an oasis without substance. ©1998 L.Timmel Duchamp in What Makes Fiction Hopeful |
posted by Lynda at 08:17
comment? e-mail lynda@okalrel.org
0 comments