literature
literature! the idea that some writing is better than other writing, that some is so good that it's worth reading, even though the reader has to learn history to appreciate it, the idea that some writing is exquisite. what a great idea! of course we abuse it. first of all we use the word literature also to mean junk writing: leaflets, pamphlets, other printed matter to advertise products or give advice. sigh. we also use it to mean books and writings published on a particular subject. half-sigh. for this exercise, this appreciation, please forget those meanings. yuck! bleah! foo! horribabbliskovinypoo! please also forget how you first encountered literature: some old and well-meaning and probably white teacher trying to remember why this writing is special. or how you re-encountered it, some old white dude fingering his lower lip and peering into a book and reading you marked sentences. sigh. no. pretend someone gave you a list of 1500 or so books to mix in with all the magazine articles and pocket books and even hard-cover books you were gonna read anyway. pretend one day a sentence in one of those 1500 books made you sit up and exclaim! "what? how did he or she just do that to me? how did she or he give me a whole new perspective on my world that I had begun to think I could never learn anything new about ever? what about that sentence made it feel like a well-driven nail?" yeah! then you can notice that that author does that repeatedly and you had just missed it until that one sentence turned your somersault. as well as I know, we don't know why some writers just write excellent language and others only come close, that just happens. it apparently happens in all languages. it has apparently happened since we began writing. but thank goodness somebody noticed, and gave it a name. literature.
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