Things suck... (cont'd)

Things suck but it's OK.

Not sure why I chose to express this important theme in this inelegant way. It would sound better to talk about the indifference of the universe and the basic human need for transcendence... but this is a blog, after all. Anyway, the more I thought about it, the more familiar this postulate felt. I realized, eventually, that it's one I've used in my own fiction. Not the short stories so much, where the concerns are mostly with trust and connection, but in the longer stuff, where cosmically bad things happen and people are left to deal with it.

Of course there are other approaches to the problem. Some of my favorite books--The Plague by Camus is an example--are those where things do dramatically suck, but there is a sense of hope and transcendence. But it does seem that most serious fiction, at least most serious fiction on my bookshelf, embraces a darker view: Things Suck and It's Not OK. Just as a small sample, check out A Farewell to Arms or Tender is the Night or The Good Soldier. On the other hand, lighter fiction tends to pose problems and then casually solve them: Things Are OK. Or perhaps, Things Suck But Only Temporarily. And finally--I can't think of an example for this but surely it must exist?--there is the contrarian approach: Things Are OK But It Sucks.

Why, in the end, keep on wrestling with this problem? Why use up so much paper (or server space) on something that can never truly be resolved? I don't know. Because it's who we are, because the question will never go away, and because it's always fresh--there are a million ways for things to suck, and (perhaps) a million ways for it to be OK.