Beware Literary Snobbery: Why We Should Read Bestsellers

[Jude Hardin]

Nice article by James W. Hall in the Wall Street Journal.

http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2012/04/08/beware-literary-snobbery-...

[John McFetridge]

(non-hockey fans won't get this) Okay, first of all, I have to say it wasn't completely Wilson's fault. Today they took out full page ads in the paper to "apologize" for the season. Again. Sheesh.

 

Now, about this publishing stuff, it seems like when we talk about "the old days" we're only talking about literary, mainstream publishing and we leave out the whole word of pulps, Gold Medal, and all that. It's possible now that publishing is much more about just the money that divide between these things is less than it was. Wouldn't some of these bestsellers today have once been filed under "men's fiction" and be published as numbered books, Executioner #42, and the like?

Of course, ebooks throw it all into flux again. It seems like the divide between ebooks and big publishers is as wide as the divide was between big publishers and pulp.

 

[Jude Hardin]

Of course everything comes out as an ebook now, released simultaneously with the paper version. I understand the big publishers are making a killing on ebooks.

[Tim Scanlon]

Bestsellers, classics, who cares.

I gave up on classics because I didn't enjoy reading them. I now read books that entertain me, and they have 10 pages to grab me.

The main thing that concerns me is that we push "novels of literary value" on kids. I would much prefer people to enjoy reading than not read. And that is the key. People need to enjoy reading, otherwise people will read a few books rather than a lot.

[Jude Hardin]

I agree, Tim. A novel must first entertain, IMO. If not, what could possibly be the point?

[I. J. Parker]

Well, I can't speak to pulp, but surely the romances fall into the same category?  These are books that were dashed off at top speed, frequently with the same old plots, and sold to publishers for tiny advances.  Yes, I suppose they are now mixed in with standard genre novels and may confuse readers.

 

As for the classics:  I did not have the distractions kids have nowadays and I was an only child.  Almost all my time was spent reading my parents' books.  Most were literary.  It didn't hurt me.  It taught me vocabulary and some skills with complex sentence structure.  yes, I'd always encourage a kid to be glued to a book the way my 11-year-old granddaughter just was to THE HUNGER GAMES.  But easy entertainment reading has a price: it spoils kids for reading more complex books, and that carries over to non-fiction in their future fields and will affect their college careers.  You want young people to read widely and with understanding. 

[Jude Hardin]

THE HUNGER GAMES is actually very good. Have you read it?

[I. J. Parker]

No.  It's YA, isn't it?  Not the reason, though I don't believe in YA books. I did read several of the Harry Potter books.  They, too, were "good."  The "good" is always defined by the type of book, I think.

[Tim Scanlon]

Given the current market stats, especially on young people reading I'd be happy with them reading first and foremost.
 http://tysonadams.com/2012/03/03/reading-survey-are-you-avid/

As to challenging themselves to read widely, well sure, there are plenty of well written fun novels. I just finished Peter Temple's book, that was entertaining and very well written. I don't think that there is a price to pay for entertaining reading. In fact, for the majority of the population it would be a vast improvement over their currently level of reading (newspapers, tweets, FB).

I found a research paper on reading habits (no link sorry) that indicated that people who read are more likely to seek out literary fiction or the classics themselves. I forget the reasons for it, but it was something to do with interest being piqued. I could see sparkly vampire obsessed teens seeing Anne Rice books and giving them a try, then thinking they needed to read Bram Stoker, then other classic monster tales, then suddenly they have decided to see what the fuss was about the witches in MacBeth. 

[I. J. Parker]

Yes, we hope that reading a lot will send kids to more complex books.  It may work that way.  For me, it was the other way around.

 

As for the witches in MACBETH, Shakespeare works on several levels of sophistication in most of his plays.  The witches would have been bottom rung.  Crowd pleasers, in other words.

And that reminds me that the Dickens novels have hefty doses of bottom-rung crowd pleasers, including a case of spontaneous combustion of a character.  :)

[John McFetridge]

Either in the article that started this thread or one of the comments (sorry, I forget) someone mentioned that listening to pop music very rarely leads to listening to other kinds of music.

I tried to read The Hunger Games, but I guess, Jude, this is one of those times the 'critics' (you and me anyway ;) have to disagree about a book. Like Harry Potter I thought there was a lot of action but very little insight into the characters or their actions.

I may be repeating myself here, but I've started to think that the problem isn't literary writers ignoring genres it's genres ignoring literary writers. Hey, just get they get labelled a certain way is no reason not to read them ;).

 

[I. J. Parker]

I agree.  The demarcation between genre and literary novel appears wide, but it isn't.  Frequently, it's a critic (or publisher) who calls a book literary in an attempt to make it sound more significant than it is.  Many mysteries achieve considerable significance while also dealing with crime.  Like John, I believe that it's attention to character (and through character to theme) that makes a mystery novel significant.

[Jude Hardin]

I thought there was a lot of action but very little insight into the characters or their actions.

One of the first things Katniss does, the inciting incident if you will, is volunteer to take her little sister's place in the games--knowing that in doing so she is most likely going to die. To me, this goes a long way in establishing character and theme right off the bat.