simplicity

Always, I feel this pull between the desire to be simple and the desire to be complex. I find it insulting when Lee calls me simple, yet I don't think it was meant as insult. And it is true, that in writing and in life, I appreciate the simple over the complicated. But still, the charm of complication cannot be denied. I look at someone else's poem and I think-- God, I'll never be able to write that way-- they have such deep complicated thoughts and associations. I trap myself into feeling plain stupid and very inadequate. But, I think that is the state of our world; it's that simplicity is seen as less than the complicated. We all yearn for complicated lives. We want drama, we want devastation. But perhaps, that is simply because nothing has ever happened to us, our generation. We have been through no wars, no poverty. Of course there will always be our own individual internal struggles, but as a generation, our psyche is not impacted by suffering. Perhaps, that is why we long for some kind of complication. If not in life, we create them, quite happily. And in literature, we expect the same. The vogue has been that of pyro-tecniques in literature. We want to be entertained. Because, unlike previous generations, we have no great enemies other than boredom.

I don't believe that we don't have good writers. I just feel that there is nothing very much worth saying most of the time, but we force ourselves to express. I don't agree with the trend of American literature today--the equation of the cultural and political as good, thought-provoking literature. Amy Tan has been done to the death. And the issues always seem to surround race, identity and culture. It goes on and on about this same issue to the death, even as they begin to lose significance for a very new generation. People who have grown up watching Hollywood movies during Chinese New Year and who see no conflict between the two. Cultural tension is a dying topic, and it is getting harder to take the topic seriously without making it into some kind of a parody of genuine cultural experiences. Cultural literature like that is fast becoming a kind of fantasy read for people who believe that they are genuine getting a taste of someone else's cultural experience. But then, what else can we ask for. We have nothing to talk about but ourselves. We can only look back at our ancestors--at least they suffered. And the fact that they did, gives us the right to use it as our own as source material. But I think, more and more this irks me. It all seems very ingenuine. Yes, our lives are boring dead pools and we are selfish, self indulgent brats, but that is essential the truth of our generation. I don't know that pretending to have something important to say about where we come from is a solution.

Perhaps, then embracing this ennui of the 21st century? Can meaningful writing be made out of such deadish, un-deep material? And is it possible to still pretend that good literature does not entertain but makes people think. Can it do both? These are all questions that I have. And i don't pretend to have any answers. All I know is that, for me at least, I am a simple person and my writing is, as a result, simple. But I've got to stop falling into the mental trap that tells me that simple is bad. Because if simplicity is my truth, it is much better for me to embrace it than to scorn it. And the last thing I want is for me to go running after some complicated form or structure that doesn't even come from me.