This last summer, at the very time when I might have had the most time in my life to commit to writing fiction, I experienced something of a crisis of belief in art as a worthwhile pursuit. Here I was for the first time in the real world with a little time on my hands, enjoying lovely weather in Southern Germany while my wife was finishing up her BA in German, surrounded by beautiful nature and architecture, in essentially the position to begin a my dream career (or at least hobby) in literature--and I found myself wondering whether literature was even worth reading, let alone creating. I couldn't even read the novels I'd bought in Russia with such enthusiasm. I did eke out a short story in the end, and that was good practice, but the wind was out of my sails and I was dubious of the worth of my project beyond self-amusement, no worse for passing the time as solitaire. (Which is not to say I didn't love my time in Germany, because it was possibly the most magically adventurous time my wife and I have ever had!)
In part, I blame my bad feelings about on my education. A lot of modern literary study leads nowhere--not to a dead end kind of nowhere, but the bewildering "dark and dreary wilderness" nowhere, where you hardly know north from south, and all you want is a sip to drink.
Simply resisting what I felt was a nihilistic worldview peddled by some of my literature professors as dogma drained my enthusiasm for the whole exercise of reading made-up stuff. Also, importantly, studying literature closely revealed something about art that I had been afraid to own up to all my education: even at its best, art is a flawed description of reality and always will be. If it's not flawed, then it's something else--scripture, perhaps. So what good is it to spend my time with people wandering in what was generally admitted by many of my contemporaries as a roadless, forbidding, utterly exposed desert?
In part, I blame my bad feelings about on my education. A lot of modern literary study leads nowhere--not to a dead end kind of nowhere, but the bewildering "dark and dreary wilderness" nowhere, where you hardly know north from south, and all you want is a sip to drink.
Simply resisting what I felt was a nihilistic worldview peddled by some of my literature professors as dogma drained my enthusiasm for the whole exercise of reading made-up stuff. Also, importantly, studying literature closely revealed something about art that I had been afraid to own up to all my education: even at its best, art is a flawed description of reality and always will be. If it's not flawed, then it's something else--scripture, perhaps. So what good is it to spend my time with people wandering in what was generally admitted by many of my contemporaries as a roadless, forbidding, utterly exposed desert?
