I want to be a writer, krellin--I want nothing more than to write something that lasts and have something to say that still resonates and still matters years from now, the same way all the writers I like and cite resonate with me.
Great writers are great teachers, and they're the teachers that never go away--
Shakespeare can teach the difference between good rulers and bad ones, on what it's like to think about death approaching or a life you're not proud of, on gender relations, and on more things than I could ever name, and that's why he lasts--no matter who you are, where you live or WHEN you live, Shakespeare has something to teach you...and sometimes, the same play will teach you different things at different ages (when you're young, Romeo and Juliet's a love story...when you get older, it's a story about rash decisions...when you get even older, it's a political story, it's less about Romeo and Juliet as it is about the social and political forces that lead two young teenagers to die as the result of their own mistake and the mistake of an-eye-for-an-eye style hatred between the families, the kind of thing you see everywhere from the gang warfare in Los Angeles to the conflict in the Gaza Strip.)
Shaw, Huxley and Orwell all have things to say about religion and politics in the 20th century and the odd intersections between the two, such as the point in "Animal Farm" where Orwell has the pigs revise the Seven Commandments over and over...it's a comment on Stalinism and how political movements become corrupted over time, but it's also a metaphor for how religions adapt or engage in apologetics as they try to square the circle and try to both change with the time while still staying true to their origins, and if that's such a good idea.
Jane Austen and Charles Dickens teach you about everything from money matters to class to what can constitute drama in life and how to face everyday drama--Austen's novels are very gossipy and Dickens' novels are often either set in or spend a decent amount of time in his London, and it's a far cry from the battlefields of Homer or the castles of Shakespeare, but there's still drama in these everyday lives, and that teaches you something on its own and changes the way you view your life and the lives of others.
And you could go on and on--Lawrence teaches about love, sex, societal labels, and how that all works or doesn't work in the modern world...Hemingway both creates and critiques the idea of modern masculinity...Dostoyevsky teaches you about a Russia that's composed of a series of contradictions when it comes to politics and religion and, as brilliant as his characters are, the Russia they inhabit's often a cold and sad place a lot of the time...the Lake Poets bring nature to life and poets like Auden, Ginsberg and Eliot all bring the city to life which criticizing and critiquing what the city means to them in their day...
And you go on and on, but it boils down to two basic things--
Good writers have something to say and therefore something to teach you, and the best writers of all can put you in the perspective of other people or take you to other places in time and space and make you see from another point of view.
And that's why I want to be an author, and one that matters.
Because whatever else happens in 200 years, this will happen for sure--
Someone somewhere will be strolling through a library, or they'll be assigned a book for school, or they may just want to pick up a book and read something new because life and the way they see things right now seems stale or wrong or unsatisfying somehow.
And I want that hypothetical someone to at least sometimes pick up my book and read what I have to say, and then come away from that thinking about things differently, agreeing or disagreeing, so long as they're thinking and thinking anew--
That's what Shakespeare and all his fellow great authors do for me, and that's what I want to do for others, because that's how the world changes--
One good author and one great sentence at a time. :)
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Predict the next 200 years.
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