Whither “THE Culture”?

This is the question I’ve probably asked for as long as I’ve been a story-telling entity, though I could not have framed it so until quite recently.

Andrew Unger at The Daily Bonnet gave me yet another nudge in this direction, when he posted The Mennonite Literature Quiz!

It all looks so ... good ....

My results were about 70%, which is too good to be true — there were questions I took a lucky guess at, since “I honestly do not know” was never an option.

I mulled over the results, then shared it on FB, with the following comment:

• FOR THE MOST PART THE WRITERS IN MY TRIBE PRODUCE WORK I WOULD RATHER AVOID.

This immediately netted me the expected “What about Miriam?” grenade. I dodged it, or tried to, by saying she was the exception to most of the others mentioned in Andrew’s piece insofar as I’ve never had trouble finishing a book by her. She writes well, in other words. But if you seek further explication, go here.

Then Christian Humanist Michial Farmer weighed in with an anecdote of having an appreciation for Julia Kasdorf rejected by an academic rag on grounds that he CLEARLY did not have a firm enough grasp of Mennonite literature “as a whole.”

To which I replied, “I can sum up Mennonite Literature in four words: ‘We’re Not That Good.’”

I posted, but meditated on it afterword. My response seemed a bit half-baked to me, so I created a new post and laid down the challenge for others:

SUMMARIZE MENNONITE LITERATURE IN FOUR (OR FEWER) WORDS:

I threw down four examples to prime the pump:

• We’re not that good.
• We’re actually really mean.
• There is no God.
• God’s actually really mean.

Summaries from others include:

• Trauma, dysfunction, pain, buns (for memoirs)
• Trauma, persecution, pain, buns (for history)

• Life consists of suffering.

• Difference, shunning, leaving, life.

• Village, university, arrogance, publish. (It should be quietly noted the submitter of this one has a family member who features in Andrew’s parade of literatischje).

And finally my favourite. My conked buddy in the north (NOT a Mennonite) weighed in with an Office meme:

Seems about right.

So many different ways to shun, of course, and we all have to figure out who or what we’re about to build the wall against in order to retain those properties and qualities we deem essential.

I said goodbye to an academic career nearly three decades ago, and a literary “career” some two decades later. There are reasons for both, but the main one — for both — is: I don’t want to read shit I don’t want to read.

Next: Disney!