Big Boy Novelists Don't Cry

"A sentimentalist,” Oscar Wilde wrote, “is simply one who wants to have the luxury of an emotion without paying for it.” We know what he’s talking about every time a dog video goes viral: the easy mark, the least complicated of sentiments, hits us hard. An elephant funeral makes me weep every time, and so does an ad with a kid leaving home for college. What’s wrong with them? Nothing, really, as long as we smile at our indulgence; these sentiments ask nothing of us, question nothing about our lives, and the emotions they bring up are stored close by, in the coin jar of our feelings. “And remember,” Wilde scolds us, “that the sentimentalist is always a cynic at heart. Indeed, sentimentality is merely the bank holiday of cynicism." Distrustful of engaging fully, the cynic engages superficially, gets the drug he needs, and moves along. I reach for these hits daily—online, on television, in movies (how many times will Netflix let me watch Beaches before it blocks my account?)—but in fiction I reach for something more.