Direct Answers from Wayne and Tamara - WayneAndTamara.com - where relationship advice questions are answered.
Direct Answers from Wayne and Tamara - WayneAndTamara.com - where relationship advice questions are answered. |
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If you spend day after day looking at car wrecks or pouring over autopsy photos, it's bound to affect your life. In time, it can make you emotionally sick. The same is true of reading. Some things have a certain cachet for us. We admire Tiger Woods' spirit, so we buy Nike shoes. We admire Oprah Winfrey's concern for people, so we read fiction she recommends. We think The New York Times is sophisticated, so we pay attention to their book reviews. Forget, for the moment, story values like plot and characterization. Forget whatever literary value a book may have. Think about what is actually there. Realize it will go around and around in your consciousness. You will have a hard time being free of it. Oprah's fiction mirrors what she feels about herself. She chooses from what is within, and look at her choices: the unforgiveable and the ugly. Oprah hasn't experienced her happy ending, and that is what her books lack. Dysfunctional parents, sibling incest, a man's violent thoughts about females, alcoholism, rape, neglect... Like Oprah's picks, books praised by critics in The New York Times often feature characters who don’t grow. At story's end, they haven't learned anything. They go through horror after horror without improving or understanding. The books simply don't feel good. It's as if the authors or critics are unaware of the deeper resources of human beings, those resources which lie at the center of our consciousness. They haven't peeled the onion down very far. They haven't found their way out. Be careful about looking at roadside accidents. Looking will make you sick and give you nightmares. There is no learning, no understanding, no healing. Just broken people.
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