It's the type of prose that tells you that it is meaningful; that this observation is very important indeed and that it is telling you something about the profundity of the human experience - so listen up, buster, because this author is highly important. My real problem with this is that the creators of such work are so pleased with themselves for such astuteness that they are incapable of believing that you, little reader/observer/listener could possibly understand such greatness. So, just in case a) you didn't get profundity of the observation and b) therefore, you have failed to accredit the author of the observation with sufficient praise/awe, the author will point. it. out. to. you. In bold letters.
The first work that provoked my observation (portentous and extremely profound, obviously) of this style was the unbelievably over-rated American Beauty. Apart from the pretty hackneyed and cliched treatment of suburbia and sexuality--did you know that teenage girls can appear sexually provocative and yet be inexperienced and/or virgins? And that men who hate gays are, of course, gay themselves and repressing their feelings? I'm pretty sure you didn't before this movie--we have that utterly annoying montage with the black plastic bag, that floats and floats. With the voice from beyond the grave. Who tells you repeatedly how beautiful this is, because there is beauty in small things and this is the true beauty - but you couldn't have worked that out for yourself.
I was reminded of this after just finishing The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers. This is a book published in 1940 that screams its profundity at you. This passage particularly irked me. It's about the owner of a cafe in the small southern town, who has strongly lustful and tender feelings for a girl of about 13:
Always he wanted to set her up to something, to give to her. And not only a sundae or some sweet to eat--but something real. That was all he wanted for himself--to give to her. Biff's mouth hardened. He had done nothing wrong but in him he felt a strange guilt.Now, you see, why not leave it at that? Why not leave it there, hanging, so that you wonder about the guilt, about how much he realises that his feelings are wrong, cannot be acted on, and how common this is? No, McCullers doesn't finish the paragraph there, but with this:
Why? The dark guilt in all men, unreckoned and without a name.We get it, Carson. We get it. Then the next passage is about a small meaningful thing where he picks up a penny. Wow.
This book is frustrating because there's a lot of beautiful prose and it gives you a sense of the despair of the post-Depression South, of how it never financially recovered from the Civil War, and the anger inside people, black and white. Yet it can't let you observe for yourself: it constantly points out the seething anger inside the protagonists, because you can't realise that without her pointing it out to you. You're just not as smart as she is.
