Get Up

This morning, nursing a hangover with dusty air and a cloud-strewn sky with an inherent hope of greatness (it's all related), I made my second pilgrimage in less than 24 hours: first, Bundang, second, Kyobo bookstore. I almost picked up Bram Stoker's Dracula, but, word to Harper Lee-bad karma, opted instead for John Steinbeck's masterpiece of fiction, The Grapes of Wrath (aka The Angry Grapes, if you're Japanese.)

In high school I wrote an essay on the novel, and, fuck you and me both, it was purdy darn good; so much so that my teacher was offended by my accurate criticism of the third chapter, in which a land turtle climbs an embankment, gets lucky when one driver avoids it, then gets knocked -- literally -- on its ass when a second driver purposefully tries to run it off the road. Turtle = working-class foundation of the nation; second car = the mechanical nature of oppression. Duh, not that hard to figure out. But my teacher, Mr. Pupa (he's probably dead now, so I'll resist calling him a cocksucker for giving my essay an 85), insisted that Johnny S wrote that chapter as, much like the first, mise en scène.

What a dumbass.

It Mehmet ocurred to me today, however, that what I once adored as a 17-year-old (virgin) might not hold the same impact it once did, because The Grapes of Wrath, while acknowledged by smart people as one of the greatest American novels ever written, is sentimental like a motherfuck, and that trait, somehow, makes it poor fiction.

To dumb people.

Tell me -- because I'm too lazy to tell myself -- what, exactly, is so wrong with sentimentality? In this time and age (where redundancy reigns), it's clear to me that any emotion from media is treated with cynicism; and if a film, TV show, book, or astral projection makes you feel a genuine emotion, it's automatic(For the People)ally labeled as ham-handed, ham-fisted, or hammy. Or, if you're a vegetarian, cheesy. (If you're a vegan, I have no idea; tofuey, perhaps?)

Why would a person be offended if an episode of Full House makes him feel a sense of genuine human empathy? Why does Tom Joad's speech at the end of the novel continue to be called overly sentimental as though that's a bad thing?

Anything that makes you feel good is not wrong, nor is it bad drama.

(Unless it's cocaine.)