Authorial Gloom

Ever read a book and your brain just feels, low? It is as if someone put a dark filter on your day. The prose is heavy, long, and it just weighs down on you. Some of my favourite books make me feel this way. On TikTok, its referred to as a “book hangover”. It’s just this feeling that the world is bigger, yet smaller, and you can’t realign with it once you put the book down. It makes you think, Ah a good book at last. But it’s not only that.

It felt, to me, as if some authors just had a “sad voice”. It’s not necessarily that I’m left reeling only after a good back. It’s a specific kind of book.

For example, here is an extract from Sally Rooney’s latest novel:

“To love, and for his love to be accepted, yes. It was in fact painful, the relief of all that compression suddenly, to say the words aloud, and hear her saying them, to be loved by her, it was so needed that it actually hurt. Not even a feeling so unmixed happiness, but of happiness that was strongly and confusingly mixed with many other feelings”

This extract is so fascinating because it is, in fact talking about love and falling in love. An overwhelmingly positive thing. Most people, would rejoice, celebrate, and take comfort in the fact. While a semblance of this exists, somewhere, the prose also bleeds other emotions such as confusion, panic, fear, and most importantly sadness. The author is trying to say that the protagonist is feeling complicated emotions, yes, but also that they are so overwhelming that they take over any happiness he feels. The reader therefore sees the protagonist as a highly pessimistic, yet complicated individual, who perhaps does not know how to be happy. While all of this is true, it is also true that the thread of thoughts is a rabbit hole many have fallen down. And, that it doesn’t make the protagonist any less interesting.

But, this effect can be garnered differently. Recently, I started reading ‘Skippy Dies’ by Paul Murrey. This novel deals with difficult circumstances such as teenage addiction, the end of relationships, and other life crises. When I think about it now, it actually has similar themes to Intermezzo. However, the tone would never give it away. The novel most importantly is funny, and light-hearted. Even in a dark scene, and complicated inner monologue it maintains this aloofness. For example,

“It's not that Howard doesn’t love her. He does, he would do anything for her, lay down his life if it came down to it — if for example she were a princess menaced by a fire-breathing dragon, and he a knight on horseback, he would charge in with his lance without a second thought… But the fact is — the fact is that they in a world of facts, one of which there are no dragons; there are only pale torpid days, stringing by one like another, a clouded neckline of imitation pearls, and love binding him to a life he never actually chose. Is this all there was ever going to be?”

The mentions of dragons, and princesses, make this passage a much funnier read. The narrator is obviously talking about a struggling relationship, but it sounds still more positive than Rooney’s passage we read earlier. He is also in between two emotions, and unable to process them comprehensively. He is confused and unable to appreciate what is in front of him or take any concrete decisions. He’s falling down another familiar rabbit hole. But in an entirely different way.

I am not pitting the two against each other. I don’t think one is better than the other. Craft-wise they are equally clever and engaging. But the effect it produces on the reader is so stark and unique that I wonder — was it done on purpose? Did these two authors decide the voice they wanted and write a book based on that? On Social Media, the difference would probably be defined as ‘Dark Academic vs Light Academia’. This is probably a good enough mould, but I think the effect is more important.

Intermezzo because of its sad voice makes the light shine slower. With more patience. Everything falls apart, hopelessly, only to be joined once again in a rhythmic manner. Skippy Dies maintains the air that everything will be okay someday. All stories must be resolved. At least for the protagonist. Skippy does after all die, but even in death, there is hope. What ‘Skippy Dies’ does so masterfully is pull the reader away from the feelings of the character, while maintaining the slightly covert humour of our inner monologues. We don’t think in straight lines, we don’t feel in one direction. Often, difficult emotions are better laughed at. It takes a serious turn when required, of course, but the hangover never comes.

There is a preference I think towards inherent Authorial Gloom. These books are taken more seriously, and studied in more depth. As if sadness somehow has more meaning. The river of sadness-writing is quite deep. It is somehow more motivating to produce when I’m sad, even for me. But, I think the presumption that it’s better is wrong. To find a truly funny writer is rare, and one who can make the mundane and depressed funny? Rarer still. Then why sideline such writing for texts that fall deeper into the spiral? Falling is cathartic, and liberating in some senses.

But I want to learn to climb back up too.