The Struggle is Real(ism)

     Those of you who know me know that when it comes to fiction, the more the story can't exist outside the realm of fiction, the more I like it. What I mean by this is simply: I prefer unrealistic stories.

     When I go to the bookstore, my inner monologue while perusing the bookshelves is something like this: Coming of age story about a girl who searches for her adoptive parents? Nah. Too boring. Novel about some teenage drama, sisters' love/hate relationship, and a boy issues of some sort? Yawn. Real life is boring.
     Story of  a girl who moves to a new neighborhood, finds her neighbors creepy, and finds out that they could possibly all be vampires? Sounds cheesy, but I'd probably read it. Retelling of Snow White that takes place in some imagined kingdom with trolls, dwarves, magic, and princes? That has my name written all over it. Series about demon hunters in Victorian London? Um, HECK YES! Novel about a dystopian future with revolution looming on the horizon? A little dark, not quite filled with enough magic for my taste, but it will probably still be awesome. 

     Sometimes, this penchant for the fantastical makes me feel a little "less-than" as an English Literature/Creative Writing major, as if all proper students of literature must enjoy gritty realism or, at the very least, something that doesn't involve dragons.

     This can get awkward at the beginning of the semester during introductions when the professor makes you state not only your name and major, but your favorite book as well (this happens often in English and Creative Writing courses). I say it's awkward because what I really want to name as my favorite book is Ella Enchanted, or all 7 Harry Potters, or The Hunger Games, or any number of other things that are wildly unrealistic and are geared toward readers much younger than me. Usually I don't go first, so if others say things in a similar vein, I do too. But a lot of times they'll have answers like The Great Gatsby (which I, in an act of English major-hypocrisy, quite thoroughly disliked upon last reading) or The Grapes of Wrath, and I feel like my favorite books seem vapid in comparison. In these cases, I typically answer with Catch-22, because, though I haven't read it in a while, I thought it was both hilarious and incredibly thought-provoking, and was probably the novel which first got me thinking about what a terrible thing war really is. Regardless, it's not the novel I pick up to read over and over again. Though I'd like to read it again, I'm not likely to page through the book to reread favorite parts when I'm feeling whimsical, or daydream about the characters and the world they inhabit.

     The point is, I like "silly" fiction. And I am ashamed.

     Or, I was.

     Over winter break, I had a much-needed self pep-talk in which I realized that I always have and always will love folk tales, magic, and the supernatural in my stories, that I'm happy with that, and that I'm not going to change or hide who I am because I feel intimidated by my fellow English majors with more scholarly tastes. I decided that I will embrace my frivolity and write about what I love without being ashamed. Because really, if I plan to write such things in the future, why be ashamed to write about them in creative writing class? Am I really that intimidated to have it critiqued by peers?

     So, rallied by this new self-confidence in my literary interests, I decided that when fiction time came in my creative writing class, I was going to go all out fictional, by which I mean wildly imaginative and not at all realistic.

     But then my creative writing professor sank that ship when he said, "All works for this class will be literary realism. So no aliens or anything."

     Mentally, my reaction was But...but... I want there to be fairies!!!

     Eventually, however, I got over my initial disappointment and decided this will be a good challenge for me. Except, when coming up with story ideas, I kept running into one mental block. What do real people DO?

     Because honestly it all seems kind of lackluster compared to what people who find out they're actually fairy changelings do.

My kind of story usually involves castles. No shame.

     Nevertheless, I will rally all creative powers to try and write the best gosh-darned realistic story that ever was written. Or at least a fairly decent one that I won't be too embarrassed to share. Ask me at the end of the semester if you really want to know how it all goes.

The Perks of Being an English Major

     I'll admit it: sometimes, being an English major isn't all that great. It seems that every other week Yahoo or some such site posts an article about the least marketable majors, and sadly, English is usually quite up there on the list. When you tell people that you're swamped with work, sometimes they say, "You'll be fine. English is the easiest major!" And then you begin to wonder if it really is easy, if you're just skating by in college, if maybe you made the wrong decision, if maybe you should have gone with Business or Psychology or Bio so you could do something more challenging with your 4 years in college that has more real-world significance (or, for that matter, gives you more of a chance to actually earn back all that money you paid for your fancy liberal arts education).
 
 Also, you get really paranoid when conversing or writing, wondering if you made any mistake that reflects badly on you as an English major (because, of course, majoring in English means you should have a grasp on the language by now).

A sampling of what I have to read this semester. Forgive the bad lighting.

     But then there are moments, like when I feel the sublime joy of getting lost in a story, or get excited about complex and nuanced character development, or can't resist the urge to smell a book no matter how ridiculous I look in doing so, or feel legitimately, deeply saddened at the closing of a book store, that I realize I could never be anything else.

     Plus, there are some obvious perks to being an English major, one of the most notable being CHEAP TEXTBOOKS. I cannot emphasize this enough. My poor science major friends suffer the loss of arms and legs on a regular basis because they have to pay for exorbitantly priced books. I, on the other hand, am so glad that most of my required reading, with the exception of an anthology or two, consists almost exclusively of novels which--praise the Lord!-- can be purchased used on Amazon for dirt cheap ($0.01 plus $3 shipping? Don't mind if I do!). Even if I purchased the novels brand new, they still wouldn't set me back much more than $10, if that. So here's that whole silver lining thing: even though English majors don't tend to make much money after college, at least they save money on books while in college and are thus not quite as significantly in debt as they could be upon graduating.

     Not to mention, it's always great to hang out with people who know that when Juliet says, "Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?" she means "why are you Romeo," not "where are you Romeo?" I know this isn't important, and I'll still be your friend if you didn't know that, but the fact of the matter is I really like to geek out over writing (particularly poetry) with excessive amounts of thee, thou, hence, wherefore, anything-eth, etc., and am quite happy when I find at least one other with whom I can sufficiently share my excitement for such flowery language. So, if you enjoy John Donne and Shakespeare, talk to me.

      But really, the thing that I'm most excited about as an English major this semester is my class "The Victorian Novel." Now, sometimes Victorian novels are a struggle to get through-- they move at a very leisurely pace which is sometimes just not up to par with our impatient standards today. However, I've always been fascinated with that time period and think it's actually quite pertinent to study Victorian culture, since many of their values and fears align surprisingly well with our own. Technology and science advancing faster than we can keep up with it? Check. A new view of womanhood? Check (although our new view is much more progressive than their new view). Novels about monsters and the supernatural? Check.

     And here's where my interest lies: the cultural catalysts that have, for whatever reasons, spurned an obsession with the gothic both in the 19th century and in our own. They have Dracula; we have Edward Cullen. The question is: why? What do we have in common? Now, I might have to save that answer for my thesis or, at the very least, a nice scholarly paper, so I won't get into that now.

     Needless to say, though, when we had to sign up for a research presentation topic in class, and I spied "gothic/supernatural" as one of the available topics, I jumped at the opportunity to research something I'm actually interested in. Sometimes as an English major I feel that I'm supposed to like gritty, realistic fiction that offers a bleak view of society. However, my heart really lies with all things wildly unrealistic, so you can only imagine my excitement at the prospect of getting to look into supernatural fiction (albeit, supernatural fiction written only within the span of Queen Victoria's reign) as a legitimate assignment for school.

     As I searched for relevant source material in the library, my excitement grew as I found I had a perfectly legitimate excuse to check out books such as The Fantastic Vampire: Studies in the Children of the Night and Bram Stoker's Dracula: Sucking Through the Century, 1897-1997. I felt like maybe it would be more appropriate to check out these books with heavy eye makeup and a hearty helping of teen angst, but no matter--IT'S FOR RESEARCH! This, ladies and gentlemen, is why I like being an English major. Because doing research for school is actually quite fun, to the extent that I feel like I'm almost getting off easy.

     Not every class may offer me an opportunity to research literary topics not usually taken seriously, but I'm okay with that, because each class offers fun new reading opportunities of its own. And I am, after all, just an avid reader at the bottom of it all. Who else just has to read a novel for homework semester after semester?

     So what if Plans A, B, and C don't work out and I have to resort to struggling to find a job for which my English major is somehow relevant or, heaven forbid, resign to teaching? For now, I'm doing what I love and hoping that good things will come from that passion. Maybe it's just because I am-- in a very non-English major-y way--a sucker for happy endings that I'm not TOO worried about what the future holds.