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Contemporary Fiction Views: Goodness amid the absurd and the horror [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2025-01-21

Since we lost David Lynch last week, most of the reading I have done is centered on the thousands of online tributes. People loved that man's art, his creativity, his sincerity. They loved his love of Bob's Big Boy, of the painter Francis Bacon and of coffee. They loved his hair.

Earlier this winter, I started watching Twin Peaks again. My home state, Washington, permeates that program. Twin Peaks lives and breathes because of the oddness with a big heart and acknowledgement that horrors exist out there that thrives in the Evergreen state.

With Lynch's passing, I went to the third season of Twin Peaks. The Return is not constrained by network executives or time limits or commercial breaks. The eighth episode, "Gotta Light", features a nuclear explosion and the creation of Laura Palmer, the character that is central to the entire ethos of the Twin Peaks universe.

Although it has been apparent before, this time around the celebration of good hearts and love for others shines out. Maybe it stands out even more because of the evil and absurd events that happen in each episode. And that are happening in real life.

For example, the character Bobby Briggs in the original two seasons was a troubled, troublemaking teenager. He hooked up with a young married woman who was being abused and was blatantly rude to his father and all other authority figures. He and that young woman, Shelley, tormented her husband when they got the chance.

In The Return, set 25 years later, Bobby and Shelley have married and divorced. They have a troubled young daughter who is set to repeat her mother's pattern of behavior. But Bobby and his ex-wife are direct with her, willing to help but not to accept her harming herself. Bobby has grown up to be a sheriff's deputy, the kind of deputy who knows the names of people and tries to solve problems, not create them.

There is a scene where his mother (played by the actress who originally had the role) tells Bobby his late father foresaw him becoming a good man. And a scene where Bobby delights in solving a mystery set up by his father. The homage to a good man, and the transformation of a very troubled kid into his own good man, is the type of storytelling in which Lynch shines. That these things happen in the midst of oddness and horror make them stand out more.

I realized that if seen through that lens, of goodness shining despite what's going on around it, a lot of fiction can be seen as Lynchian.

Take the Victorian novel Jane Eyre. Jane is an abused orphan who is mistreated by rich relatives, sent off to a boarding school where her best friend dies after they are forced to stand out in the rain, and she becomes a governess only to discover her boss, who wants to marry her, already has a wife who is not mentally well. She leaves, then hears his voice across the miles after his mansion is destroyed in a fire involving his wife and his sight lost. The blind-acting Rochester is literally blinded.

Sounds absurd and outrageous with a lot of bad actors.

But Jane perseveres and does not let the worst of fate control her. She carries on and receives the happiness she desires. She is good and gets stronger as she learns more of life and others. Now that's a Lynch heroine.

I am seeing bits of the same in two novels I'm currently reading (and about which I hope to write more soon). Reduced to a quick description, both sound ridiculous. But both have pure hearts amid the chicanery, good intentions amid the systemic evil, questing souls amid the odds stacked against them.

Look for the same in whatever you are reading and perhaps, you will see the goodness shining more brightly. We need all of that we can get.

New releases are not abundant, especially in the contemporary literature vein, so we will wait to see what is available next week.

READERS & BOOK LOVERS SERIES SCHEDULE

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