The Novel Lover’s Compleynt

If you’re keen on abstractions such as

The Perfection of Humankind and

Total Justice and Equality,

Wrote Margaret Atwood recently,

You won’t like novels much, since all (all!?)

Novels concern individual

People and their circumstances. Ah,

Well, that’s abstraction put paid, I guess,

And by a fierce novelist, no less.

We, being only words and their ghosts,

Try not to trash any of our own.

Great or small, we’ve got limitations.

Perfection, justice, and humankind,

Are strange bedfellows, lousy in bed,

To be sure, without or without their caps,

And whatever happened to winsome

Equality? But are they no more

Or less physical than other words,

Such as de Beauvoir, Sartre, Atwood?

And may we chafe a bit at this claim

That novels, all novels, are about

Individual people? Are they

Not fictions, these individuals,

Not ever inventions on the page?

Granted, fictional narratives make

Ideas more palatable than math

Or the more pompous philosophies.

Even fake gossip is wonderful

As meat and drink to the human brain.

Stories are the cooking of the world.

But must storytellers always win

Against even ghostlier genres?

Don’t most word markets belong to them?