Random
My New Research Interest is Popular Literature
Contrary to what the critics tell us, popular fiction is not a swamp of barely literate escapism; popular fiction is composed of ancient myths newly reborn, telling and retelling a simple truth: ordinary people can do extraordinary things. Jack can plant a beanstalk that will provide endless food; a Tom Clancy character can successfully unravel a conspiracy that threatens the lives of millions. A knight can slay a dragon; a Stephen King character can defeat the massed forces of evil. Cinderella can attract the prince through her own innate decency rather than through family connections; a Nora Roberts heroine can, through her own strength, rise above a savagely unhappy past and bring happiness to herself and others.
—“Popular Fiction: Why We Read It, Why We Write It” by Ann Maxwell/Elizabeth Lowell
Is one of the other characteristics of popular literature the propensity towards web design that makes it difficult to read the contents of websites?
Not liking the new design? Me neither. I even find it harder to just scroll down a page — instead of moving smoothly, the scrolling page has a tendency to stutter.
I was referring to the website he linked to. I actually quite like the new HTMLGiant design.
Ack — I see what you mean.
cliches are a gateway drug. get hooked.
Indeed: Lowell refers to, a distillation of her argument.
A hostile reader can misunderidentify four sentences; a beanstalk can be a conspiracy of family connections; Tom Clancy can unravel the knight of faith; a heroine can rise above and slay decency.
Christopher, I think it’s a terrible essay.
You refer to popular fiction’s “compos[ition] of ancient myths newly reborn, telling and re-telling a simple truth” – a re-phrase (I guess) of part of Lowell’s argument against attacks on various genres’ formulaism. But she systematically confuses the virtue of archetype with the excess of formula.
Sure, in love stories, when a romantic pair hook up after overcoming great obstacles, the journey towards life-generating and -sustaining love is an ‘odyssey’. But when Austen tells this archetypal story in, say, Persuasion, she makes the details of that frustrated romance, and the meaning of it to her characters, compellingly particular: this woman spurned that man’s proposal, and here they are, years later, and here’s how they’ve changed (and not) and why he can ask her again and she can shuck her reservations. Do romance novels make worlds where romantic love is a real, but realistically unlikely, fact, or do they rely on stock phrases and descriptions and lazily eager taking-up of unquestioned ‘values’ to achieve the succor of Austen’s improbably – and therefore convincingly – actual “happy ending”?
Lowell doesn’t respond directly to the charge of “badly written”, though she repeats it several times and particularizes it with “lurid”; both the nuance of the repetition and the finesse of that intensifier make the case that she’s combating.
The gist of her historical analysis of disdain for “popular fiction” is its masculinity and class consciousness. These flailing mis- and half-characterizations (respectively) go far to cast in lurid light why readers might think much “popular fiction” to be “foolish”.
Lowell concludes: And that’s why people read popular fiction. To be reminded that life is worth the pain.
No. People read tragedy “[t]o be reminded that life is worth the pain”, that knowing reality is the reward – maybe not enough – for suffering. People read “popular fiction” to be anaesthetized from the pain. For the audience, savoring tragedy requires ‘optimism of the will’ – a complexity in the relationship between “hope” and “despair” that Lowell’s simplistic thumbs up! / thumbs down! understanding of the vivifaction – or narcosis – that literature can generate is resolutely unconscious of.
Next project: How Justin Bieber is Motzart reborn!
I wish deadgod had a website so I could just read what he has to say all the time. Seriously.
the retelling of ancient myths and archetypal stories as justification for popular culture can be applied to any medium, television dramas, children’s cartoons, heavy metal songs, blockbuster movies, and has been trotted out as a defense for each. It is the telling—language, characterization, description, authenticity, humor— of the tale, not just the mere existence of A tale, that makes for literature.
Heavy metal songs.
Hi deadgod, just to clarify, I didn’t write this quote. It’s a quote. That’s why it has a purple line on the side of it. I copied and pasted it from Lowell’s essay.
Indeed: Lowell refers to, a distillation of her argument.
A hostile reader can misunderidentify four sentences; a beanstalk can be a conspiracy of family connections; Tom Clancy can unravel the knight of faith; a heroine can rise above and slay decency.
i sure do feel bad for all these popular fiction writers’ egos. i wish there was something that could help them feel better about themselves.
i like it too, i think, now. it took me a day to get used to it.
I appreciate your response to Lowell’s essay, deadgod.
My interest is in looking at how writers of popular literature write about popular literature. It’s one thing for someone who is not a writer of popular literature (like me, for instance) to write about it from an outside point of view; but it’s another thing for someone who is a writer of popular literature to write about it from an inside point of view. That’s one of the reasons I posted this quote from Lowell’s essay — not because I agree or disagree with it, nor because I think it’s wonderful or terrible, but because it represents the perspective of someone who is a writer of popular literature writing about popular literature.
A fair point, Christopher; the self-understanding of commercial writers is an interesting perspective on their, what, social role, if not (necessarily) on their fiction.
But it’s also fair to expect just the defensive rationalizations – populist anti-elitism, from her point of view (?) – that constitute Lowell’s essay.
What do you think of her arguments? What “popular fiction” would you see merit in exposing students to for their analysis and classroom discussion? How would you present those books?
I don’t know what I think about her arguments, yet. Likewise, I don’t yet know what value or what kinds of values popular literature might offer the classroom. It’s something I’ve just begun working on.
But, the fact that popular literature is not taught in most university English departments makes me want to do it, makes me want to offer a course with a reading list that includes: Harry Potter, Twilight, Tom Clancy, Dan Brown, Nora Roberts, etc. For me, provocation is the name of the game.
Right now I am formulating a theoretical position on the interconnectedness of experimental and popular literature, parts of which I intend to present at various conferences later this academic year. We will see what comes of it.
I don’t know what I think about her arguments, yet. Likewise, I don’t yet know what value or what kinds of values popular literature might offer the classroom. It’s something I’ve just begun working on.
But, the fact that popular literature is not taught in most university English departments makes me want to do it, makes me want to offer a course with a reading list that includes: Harry Potter, Twilight, Tom Clancy, Dan Brown, Nora Roberts, etc. For me, provocation is the name of the game.
Right now I am formulating a theoretical position on the interconnectedness of experimental and popular literature, parts of which I intend to present at various conferences later this academic year. We will see what comes of it.
Sales say little about quality too though. I think what is often forgotten in these kind of debates is the market forces at work. Mass culture products tend to be very interchangeable. There really isn’t anything special about Britney Spears or Christina Agulara. A million other attractive white young women could have filled their roles. So much of this is simply about having the connections or getting the lucky breaks and not about talent (those kind of pop stars don’t even write their own music.)
Similarly, the fact that this or that series of books sold heavily often has as much to do with corporate marketing as it does with what readers like. For every Twilight there are probably a dozen similar series of similar quality that didn’t ink the deal for whatever reason or did but weren’t given the marketing or corporate push.
Publishers like record labels have to decide which acts to push their marketing power behind.
Gotcha, was mainly just pointing out that popular fiction is indeed taught in universities. I guess you did specify English departments, but those seem to be becoming increasingly cultural studies departments themselves.
The demarcations of these genres are interesting and problematic, not least of all because the terms tend to have multiple meanings. Popular Fiction means both work that’s popular (and thus often includes literary fiction) and work that is of a formulaic commercial style whether actually popular or not. Literary fiction means both a style of like high-minded domestic realism but also simply any fiction considered to be of high quality (thus who seemingly genre writers like Vonnegut or Chandler can also be called literary). Etc.
Obviously I’m not saying anything you don’t already know though.
I’m interested in what you mean by form here. Couldnt’ a work rise to being literary purely on style even if the form was the same?
I don’t know what I think about her arguments, yet. Likewise, I don’t yet know what value or what kinds of values popular literature might offer the classroom. It’s something I’ve just begun working on.
But, the fact that popular literature is not taught in most university English departments makes me want to do it, makes me want to offer a course with a reading list that includes: Harry Potter, Twilight, Tom Clancy, Dan Brown, Nora Roberts, etc. For me, provocation is the name of the game.
Right now I am formulating a theoretical position on the interconnectedness of experimental and popular literature, parts of which I intend to present at various conferences later this academic year. We will see what comes of it.
Christopher, you might want to check out the growing wasteland that is Cultural Studies departments. I think you’ll find plenty of classes on pop culture and plenty of people writing dissertations on Harry Potter and Twilight.
Hey Lincoln,
Yeah, I’m not interested in culture studies. I agree with you that it’s a wasteland. That’s not what I’m talking about here. Cultural studies looks at representation, and I could care less about representation. I’m interested in the distinguishing formal properties of these categories. What formal aspects constitute popular literature? Where is the demarcation point between Literary Fiction and Popular Fiction? Furthermore, where is the demarcation between Experimental Fiction, Literary Fiction, and Popular Fiction? I claim (i) that these are separate categories, and (ii) that the boundaries of these categories are worth investigating. But my criteria for categorical distinction is not based on content, but rather form. So, what are the formal elements that make Popular Fiction popular, Experimental Fiction experimental, Literary Fiction literary. The fact that there are wizards or vampires is irrelevant — there are obvious examples of works considered Literary that have wizards or vampires, as well there are works considered Experimental with those content elements. What separates them is formal difference.
That’s a condescending attitude. George RR Martin is a better writer than DH Lawrence.
‘Popular literature’ is code for ‘beyond the levers of academic control,’ and says little about the quality. I personally hate ‘The Prophet’ but it’s an incredibly popular book. I see it wherever desperate people congregate. It’s expository, ham-fisted, didactic; you know, all the things poetry’s not supposed to be. Well guess what? People fucking love that shit! They don’t know Wallace Stevens, but they know Gibran. Stevens doesn’t give them the energy to sit next to their dying spouse’s hospital bed, but Gibran does.
Judging ‘popular literature’ just means you hate comrade Snowball too. ‘Popular literature’ proves that people wanna buy books, they just don’t want to buy the kinds of books most literary authors want to write!
And yeah, I know the dynamic is far more complicated than I just presented it to be, but it’s more fun to stir the pot.
Sales say little about quality too though. I think what is often forgotten in these kind of debates is the market forces at work. Mass culture products tend to be very interchangeable. There really isn’t anything special about Britney Spears or Christina Agulara. A million other attractive white young women could have filled their roles. So much of this is simply about having the connections or getting the lucky breaks and not about talent (those kind of pop stars don’t even write their own music.)
Similarly, the fact that this or that series of books sold heavily often has as much to do with corporate marketing as it does with what readers like. For every Twilight there are probably a dozen similar series of similar quality that didn’t ink the deal for whatever reason or did but weren’t given the marketing or corporate push.
Publishers like record labels have to decide which acts to push their marketing power behind.
Gotcha, was mainly just pointing out that popular fiction is indeed taught in universities. I guess you did specify English departments, but those seem to be becoming increasingly cultural studies departments themselves.
The demarcations of these genres are interesting and problematic, not least of all because the terms tend to have multiple meanings. Popular Fiction means both work that’s popular (and thus often includes literary fiction) and work that is of a formulaic commercial style whether actually popular or not. Literary fiction means both a style of like high-minded domestic realism but also simply any fiction considered to be of high quality (thus who seemingly genre writers like Vonnegut or Chandler can also be called literary). Etc.
Obviously I’m not saying anything you don’t already know though.
I’m interested in what you mean by form here. Couldnt’ a work rise to being literary purely on style even if the form was the same?
Sure, I mostly agree, but I think it’s dangerous to presume there’s no merit amongst mainstream authors. I’m just sayin’ that literary authors are out of touch with the readership. On one side, we get complex mythologies that serve as a backdrop to horrible writing; on the other, we get ‘oh so clever’ shit like Pride Prejudice and Zombies. Literary authors don’t even try. They just pull the absurdist lever whenever it gets too hard.
I really see Aldiss, Herbert, and Ballard as the antidote for this trend. They wrote spec fic back when Kerouac’s characterization that it was ‘the death of imagination’ was a common attitude. All three of them transcended the genre without alienating the readers and they managed to out-literary their literary contemporaries.
Someone might have argued, ‘if these jokers weren’t writing spec fic, someone else would be,’ at the time, but I think that’s false. We all have to learn to bend our own personal propensities to suit our readers, as writers. I mean, if Herbert wanted to, he could have just drowned himself in junk thoughts like Tolkein (I call junk thoughts those obsessive compulsive ‘research & note taking’ activities we do, that we do instead of actually writing), but he wanted to reach out to an audience. His prose is stiff, but at least he got it done. His readers forgave him for something an English prof wouldn’t. In fact, he was undaunted by his weaknesses as a writer and still managed to bend his junk thoughts far enough to entertain a reader.
So no, I think it’s dangerous to dismiss popular literature. That’s the hipster instinct. I may think Harry Potter is silly, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t do some things well. And for a certain reader, those things it does are catnip.
But like I said earlier, there’s some devil’s advocacy to my position.
I must say I’m quite surprised you’d lump Pride and Prejudice and Zombies in with literary fiction, that seems clearly to me like an example of popular fiction authors not really trying. I mean, the guy’s next book was Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. He isn’t trying some snobby academic writer trying to be Nabokov or whatever, he is trying to cash in on the mainstream monster trend. His books are also quite popular sales wise.
I think you also quite overstate the case that literary authors are out of touch with readers. This is a common idea, especially amongst sci-fi/fantasy fans, but it really isn’t reality. Authors like Lethem or Chabon or McCarthy or Franzen or dozens of others write really popular books that often make the best seller list.
Sure, most literary authors don’t sell many copies, but then again most genre
writers don’t either.
McCarthy is a good example of how luck and market forces play into this. mcCarthy has long been considered one of the greatest modern novelists, yet he wasn’t all that popular amongst the masses until Oprah choose his book for her book club. suddenly, he was one of the best selling authors in America. But did his books magically become more reader friendly or magically become higher quality? Of course not, his books stay what they were but readers attitudes totally changed.
“Someone might have argued, ‘if these jokers weren’t writing spec fic, someone else would be,’ at the time, but I think that’s false.”
Well, see I thought we were talking about low-quality commercial fiction like James Patterson or Stephanie Meyers, not high quality literary or genre fiction (Isn’t J.G. Ballard considered a literary writer? I’ve seen him anthologized alongside your standard modern literary writers….). I’m certainly not claiming that ANY popular artist is interchangeable. I’m talking the Britney Spears of the literary world, not the Radioheads.
“So no, I think it’s dangerous to dismiss popular literature. That’s the hipster instinct”
If anything the current hipster instinct is to embrace shit like True Blood and Lady Gaga and Twilight!
Anyway, I’m certainly not dismissing any literature that’s popular. There is plenty of awesome popular stuff (and as I pointed out earlier, plenty of literary authors writer best selling books). But when we are talking about mass culture products, I really don’t think you can deny the market influences.
One also shouldn’t inflate sales with popularity. I’ve been meaning to write an essay on this, but just because something sells doesn’t mean the people who bought it liked it necessarily. M. Night Shaymalan has to be one of the least popular filmmakers in america, but his films still make money. I know many people who read The Da Vinchi code, and not a single person who loved it. At best they thought it was okay and a quick read. They read the book because it was a big cultural hit, but they didn’t necessarily like it.
note: I realize that Ballard wrote sci-fi books, but his best known book is an autobiographical novel about his experiences in world war II and much of his genre work fits better alongside Donald Barthelme than Isaac Asimov. He is certainly an author, like Vonnegut, who straddles the line of genre and literary fiction.
You make good points, but I think Ballard is a great case study. At first, he was part of that ‘new wave’ in sci-fi and yeah, he helped make the genre respectable, but it wasn’t respectable before he tried his hand at it. Writers in that generation graduated to respectability. But maybe I’m stretching to make my point hold.
PP&Z is trying to appeal to literary readers who have ‘secret’ cravings for pop lit. You can’t seriously be arguing that it caters to zombie fans first and Austen fans second–I mean, I guess you can, but I don’t see how that makes sense.
I think authors that cater primarily to wannabe authors need to have their sales figures more carefully examined. I think readers look for certain tropes in writing; whether that’s masterful sentence construction, or a huge internal mythology, they’re ‘searching for the miraculous’ when they chase a genre. Just because Franzen, McCarthy and Chabon have the literary ‘okay’ doesn’t mean they’re good. I’ve tried all three and I can’t make it through their first pages. They stink of prose tropes as much as Twilight. I mean, I liked ‘The Road’ better when it was called Resident Evil and it was a video game. He gets a pass, because he’s ‘literary’ even though Philip Jose Farmer did it just as well (at his best, of course he wrote lots of crap too). And Chabon? Again, I don’t get it. No bite. For genre mixing in the opposite direction, how about Silverberg’s ‘Dying Inside?’ That’s got some real literary heft and it’s a tasty read. People get so impressed when literary fiction mines genre fiction, but nobody notices when genre fiction crosses the line into literary fiction. I mean, that’s not completely true, but we are both talking in generalities here, so hopefully you see my point. Oh man, and then you mention Asimov? People only honor him because he was a polymath, not because he was a good writer. AE van Vogt was better by far, but I guess because he didn’t write chemistry books, people dismiss him.
I think I touched on your last point earlier and I think you meant to say conflate, so that’s how I’ll treat it, but to directly address it: people seek out their own speech community when they look to genre fiction–even and especially literary fiction. They give a pass on low standards. You mock True Blood and it’s totally mockable, but it has a complex mythos that Chabon & McCarthy could never cook up. The audience for that wants mythos, not literary cleverness. Conversely, The Road satisfies those who seek out literary tropes and give a pass to the way he rips off other genres.
That’s why I don’t like the label of ‘popular literature’ because it’s not meaningfully descriptive. It’s filled with judgment and frames the subject with academic biases.
”
PP&Z is trying to appeal to literary readers who have ‘secret’ cravings for pop lit. You can’t seriously be arguing that it caters to zombie fans first and Austen fans second–I mean, I guess you can, but I don’t see how that makes sense. ”
Oh, that is exactly what I’d argue! Its appealing to people who like ironic pop lit but maybe have a secret craving of wanting to seem sophisticated. I mean, this is the kind of book you’d expect to see sold in Urban Outfitters. Indeed, it probably was.
I would definitely assume the readerships of that book and that guy’s second book, Abharam Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, has far more overlap with pop lit readers that with snooty academics or highbrow literary writers.
Look at the publishers catalog: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quirk_Books
The Encyclopedia Shatnerica (a book about william shatner), Christopher Walken: A to Z, How to Survive a Horror Movie, The Indiana Jones Handbook, etc.
This is pop literature of the most purest form. Its watered down chuck klosterman mixed with VH1 style I love the 80s stuff, and no one would consider chuck klosterman literary. I’m honestly completely surprised you’d think this guy’s work was literary fiction.
Please note that I’m not saying Urban Outfitters pop lit doesn’t have a place, I just wouldn’t ever confuse “The Indiana Jones Handbook” with literary writing.
Similarly, I’m not mocking True Blood. I haven’t actually seen an episode. I was only saying that hipster types seem very into mainstream stuff of a certain bent like Lady Gaga or True Blood.
I think we probably agree more than disagree, but it seems like you are conflating popular fiction with genre fiction of any kind. Not all genre fiction is popular and when I was using the term popular fiction I was referring to mass commercial fiction like Tom Clancy, Stephanie Meyers, John Grisham, Dan Brown, etc. Some of that stuff may be genre as well, just as some genre fiction is also literary. Its a Venn diagram kind of thing.
I think questions of genre boarders are very interesting, but I also think they are different than the question of commercial fiction.
But it’s not really a secret that literati were led here by genre fiction to start with. Some grad students put together a harlequin romance group, so they could bond over shitty books and white wine. I have a weakness for cornball melodrama, so long as there’s epic sweep. We try to call our secret selves the outsider. That’s what I meant w/ the Comrade Snowball reference. It’s easier to find a scapegoat than to admit that we aren’t the ever-cool discriminating readers.
PP&Z was written because literary people like zombies, not just Nathan Tyree. Anyhow, I’ve written about the monster cycle before: http://toylit.blogspot.com/2006/04/on-zombies.html and we’re in a vampires & werewolves stage. Werewolves will never be as popular as Vampires, because Goth kids aren’t going to dress up in fursuits in public. If it was just about the zombies, there would be a zombie story. But by alluding to a literary speech community, it’s a concession to the genre instincts that you seem to suggest the literary community is above. We have bad taste too, we just don’t want to admit it because we don’t want to damage our credibility (the ‘always right’ kind, which is stupid for reasons I won’t get into right now).
I already read P&P, so I didn’t want to read one w/ zombies. I can get that shit anywhere. But the oh so precious literary mo’fos eat that shit up.
You made good points. Can’t really disagree w/ the final distillation. You’re right, I think I am stretching my argument by calling genre lit ‘popular’ but by your very venn diagram, I also point out that most make-a-buck spec fic authors never break out of the 10ks in sales, but their genres are huge. So I guess you are pressing your argument by personality and I am pressing mien (going to leave that typo) by lit community.
I do think you’re making a basic error of distinction when you lump PP&J w/ Indiana Jones, because well, one’s a movie allusion and the other is a book made into a movie allusion (what was my point again? heh). Urban Outfitters is probably a demographic nexus point anyhow between the literati and the shiterati.
I’m afraid I just don’t believe you. The only people I know who read PP&Z were people who read YA genre books. It was a book for people who reading Mockingjay and Twilight, not a book for people who read Thomas Pynchon and Robert Coover. I’m truly surprised this is an argument. A clearly pop lit book written by a pop lit writer on a commercial gimmick publisher sold in like urban outfitters and read by YA genre fans doesn’t seem to have anything at all to do with literary fiction.
The reason Pride and Prejudice was used is because it is a famous book, was in the public domain and worked well with a gimmick title. (Also, for what its worth, Jodi Picoult was arguing early this month that Jane Austen isn’t literary, she is commercial fiction.) What “oh so precious literary mo’fos” ate it up? I can’t think of any literary mo’fos who even read it.
Really, its a gimmick pop lit book. It was not popular amongst people who consider themselves literary readers and writers.
I’m enjoying this discussion, but I’m finding your last post hard to parse. literari were lead where by genre fiction to start with? what is being scapegoated exactly and by whom? Where did I say literary community is above “genre instincts”? What are you defining as genre instincts anyway? I thought I said last post that I was making a strong distinction between “genre” writing and “commercial” writing.
Also, personally I do not agree with the idea that everyone has some secret love of awful stuff that they dont’ admit to in public. I like what I like and have no problems admitting to it. There has never been any secret schlock I spent hours consuming but never admitting to in public. I think most people are the same.
That’s an interesting point about overall genre sales versus individual book sales.
I’m not lumping those things in together so much as saying they are written by the same people, publish don the same gimmick press and likely have a similar readership. I don’t see Urban Outfitters as a nexus point for the literari. You honestly must be defining literati in some completely different way that I would. Do you really think a lot of ivory tower academics, snooty intellectuals or wanna be high-brow writers buy their books at urban outfitters?
It’s where they start. Maybe this is an SF thing, w/ the self-conscious irony and so forth, but yeah, I really do see people who I think should know better, who love that book. They sell that book at Green Apple, Aardvark, Dog Eared Books and probably a bunch of other places too.
I’m sorry, I’m responding to your earlier arguments here, I’ll thread my response appropriately.
Well, you don’t have to believe me, but it’s true. The same people who read The Road read PP&Z; not a few weirdos, but a whole scene. Seriously, go to the Uptown or Atlas Cafe and do a random survey of people who are reading literary books and ask if they’ve read PP&Z. I’d be surprised if less than 20% said yes. That’s a significant vector. I think we’re just going to have to agree to disagree on this point.
Yeah, maybe we differ w/ definitions of literati. I call anyone published, w/ literary pretensions and a somewhat decent bookshelf ‘literati.’ You may be going by what the Rumpus or TNB has to say (I don’t even know if they said anything on it), but I trust my taste which means I trust that my inductive sample is actually a meaningful one.
As for my unclear point (I reread my last post–yikes, I might have to change my rule about not editing web posts)(nah), I was simply saying that many literary-minded cats started off as genre readers. I know I did. You’re saying you didn’t read comic books, or the almanac (lists of info are a genre too), or whatever? I can believe that; but did you read literary fiction because that’s all you could tolerate, or did you start reading it because that’s what was around the house when you were growing up?
I think I said I admitted I was making a stretch w/ conflating genre and commercial writing, but I also made a point you seem to have conceded (below) that genres ARE commercial writing. Schlock with a market position, means it’s commercial, even if there are no best sellers in the schlock category.
I was making the point earlier that Chabon & McCarthy ARE genre writers; that they hit ‘literary tropes’ instead of spec fic ones; and that ‘literary’ fiction in general has certain rules which it must never violate & that it must always possess certain traits. Dune was my counterexample of genre fic which crossed over into best seller territory and still doesn’t get the respect Chabon does. What people find novel in Chabon, I find unforgivable: genre theft.
I guess my position comes from the presumption that there are insiders and outsiders in literature and that academia is the insider. I think if Chabon and McCarthy didn’t have the proper literary credentials, K&K & The Road would not be the hits they are. They are celebrated for their theft. The more I argue this point, the more intractable I feel, so maybe I’m not conveying it well. If not, I’ll see if I can’t clarify my point later. I have to write Today’s News Poem & go to an engagement first.
Thanks for the discussion.
I’m not sure what those places are, independent book stores somewhere I assume? Most indie book stores sell the latest Stephen King or Harry Potter book too. Indie book stores aren’t only visited by “litarati mo’fos.”
Well I’d just like to point out again that I’ve been talking about commercial mass fiction here, not genre fiction writ large. I like plenty of genre fiction authors (and most of my favorite authors are the ones that sit on some kind of borderzone between various genres or between the literary and genre)
“I think I said I admitted I was making a stretch w/ conflating genre and commercial writing, but I also made a point you seem to have conceded (below) that genres ARE commercial writing”
You said that there are authors who do make-a-buck genre work whose niches make a lot of money so are commercial fiction even if individual books don’t make a lot. I agree with you.
But make-a-buck formulaic romance novels are not the same things are artistic interesting writers who just happen to write with the tropes of an established genre. J.G. Ballard or Philip K. Dick aren’t the same thing. Just because Gene wolfe, or whoever, writes “sci-fi” and some sci-fi is cranked out in a mass commercial way doesn’t mean Gene Wolfe is a commercial writer, right?
” I think if Chabon and McCarthy didn’t have the proper literary credentials, K&K & The Road would not be the hits they are. They are celebrated for their theft.”
Theft seems overly emotional here. Because an author uses tropes that others have used it is theft? Isn’t all fiction theft then? Also, I would think most of the literati would say that The Road is not one of McCarthy’s best books. On a purely personal note, if you havne’t read Blood Meridian I’d highly recommend it. Vastly superior to The Road.
“Well, you don’t have to believe me, but it’s true. The same people who read The Road read PP&Z; not a few weirdos, but a whole scene. Seriously, go to the Uptown or Atlas Cafe and do a random survey of people who are reading literary books and ask if they’ve read PP&Z. I’d be surprised if less than 20% said yes. That’s a significant vector. I think we’re just going to have to agree to disagree on this point. ”
I’m enjoying this discussion too! But I hate to be pedantic here and really say I can’t buy this notion. The Road comparison is hard, because The Road was read by everyone not just the literati thanks to Oprah and No Country For Old Men (the film). As for samples, as I said earlier, of all the MFA writers I can only think of two who ever talked about reading that book and both of them heavily read YA genre fiction and are both attempting to write their own YA genre fiction, which is where I think the overlap comes.
Going to goodreads, only one of my friends (an htmlgiant commentator FWIW) has marked the book as having read it. However, looking at goodreads I find myself pretty justified. Here are the books most viewed by people who viewed PP&Z:
Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter (ebook)
Shiver (The Wolves of Mercy Falls, #1)
Pride and Prejudice (Paperback)
Hush, Hush (Kindle Edition)
Fallen (Fallen, #1)
So three apparent young adult genre series, one genre pop lit book and then Pride and Prejudice, the OG version.
Going to amazon, the customers who bought this also bought list includes all of the other gimmick public domain mash-ups (Jane Slayer, sense and sensibility and sea monsters) plus The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, World War Z, The Zombie Survival Guide, Mockingjay, The Hunger Games and so on.
So the actual sales data seems to agree with me. The main readers of this book are commercial literature, pop gimmick books or YA genre fiction readers….not lit snobs.
I’m glad to know from Maxwell and Powell that critics disdain Heroism and Transcendence and also why people really read popular fiction.
If you aren’t familiar w/ the SF scene, then I’m surprised you’d feel bold enough to universalize your claim. I mentioned prominent bookstores in SF. “Indie” is an irrelevant term when talking about bookstores in SF; they’re all indie. And since SF is the top per capita reading city in America, you can’t just say it’s an outlier.
Hey Christopher, you know them thar popular fiction books use P-L-O-T as their primary narrative device, or so I’ve heard.
My point is that genre fiction is mass commercial fiction. A product that’s churned out to satisfy the deeply irrational reasons behind why people read.
Gene Wolfe wouldn’t be published by ‘respectable’ literary institutions in the first place. That’s my point. It’s only by slipping in through the fringe that he was able to express his artistic vision. Guys like Chabon & McCarthy aren’t working w/ that as their headwind. For a reason that’s as arbitrary to me as Twilight’s acclaim, these two guys are considered ‘the shit’ even though I hate the way they slice perception, construct a sentence, pace and in general the way they construct their prose. They made it through the academic literary mill before they wrote their genre mining bestsellers. The ultimate genre is a genre that owns all the others.
Rereading this thread, I see I’ve made this point abundantly clear and feel no need to argue it more. Because no, I don’t think it’s an overly emotional point: take any random ‘hack’ writer who ascended to being a literary writer and you’ll see that they are not given permission to dick around on the first page the way literary authors are allowed. Write a shitty first page and your kids don’t eat. Chabon & McCarthy never had that problem. They are permitted to luxuriate in literary sinecures and publish in magazines of increasing import, until finally, they acquire a reputation which lets them do anything they want. Meanwhile, guys like PKD aren’t ever given the time or permission (insider/outsider power dynamics, etc) to ever polish a single book. He’s gotta slip in thoughts of determinism and free will inbetween the circuits of the androids. One side lives or dies by how innovative they are; the other merely ascends a safe ladder. If I sound emotional, it’s because I obviously turned down the choice to ride that same ladder. I thought, ‘this is total bullshit, having my poems presented to an editor of Paris Review, just because my mentor is buddies w/ him.’ And it may have been naive, and stupid in hindsight, but the principle is correct. Literary authors get a more charitable readership. So long as they don’t make mistakes, it doesn’t matter how mediocre the ambition or result is; better to be mistakeless and mediocre than error-prone and exciting.
Don’t tell me there’s no such thing as a literary fiction trope. That’s a fucking absurd claim. Everybody who didn’t know how to write when they entered an MFA program winds up writing in the same style when they leave it. Chabon & McCarthy are utterly steeped in that stink.
And really, I don’t have time for authors who don’t impress me right away. Leopardi is interesting; I don’t need to wait for him to warm up. I would rather be deeply read than widely read. I would rather know the works I consider ‘great’ inside & out, rather than chase the messiah from planet to planet, hoping I’ll arrive before he leaves. Nobody can read everything, so I’ll just read what I need.
ok, well data wins. I do think there’s a screwy trend I’m spotting w/ my inductive data, but yeah, data wins.
Maybe I just hang out with total tards.
And I know you didn’t make the claim that there’s no such thing as a literary fiction trope, I was anticipating that POV though I recognize that your positions are thoughtful and that I probably shoot myself in the foot by anticipating arguments you’ve not plan on making.
What separates them is formal difference.
An interesting assertion, Christopher.
I think it’ll be relatively easy for you to distinguish experimental writing on formal grounds from literary and popular fiction; ‘challenging formal assumptions/expectations’ goes some way to defining – albeit provisionally and, in any particular case, incompletely – experimentality in fiction.
But Lincoln raises, or returns to, the distinction I’d meant to indicate by mentioning Austen (and that Karl makes explicit by emphasizing “the telling”) when he brings up “style” as opposed to ‘form’. There’s a constantly mutating tradition of ‘quality’, of defining, opposing, and re-defining, what writers do and can do with and to readers.
The difference between “literary” and “popular” fiction, between Austen and Brenda Joyce, The Crying of Lot 49 and The Da Vinci Code, Running Dog and Clancy, the Smiley books and James Bond – I don’t think these are genre distinctions, are they? The difference is, in accordance with an ultimate but not absolute ineffability, that of quality: better or worse paragraphs and sentences.
Can you put in tentative terms what you mean by the “formal difference” between literary and popular fiction? – especially if you don’t mean “style” (or “the telling”) as it constitutes the accumulating density and resonance of a piece of fiction.
Edit: […] what writers do and can do with and to readers in paragraphs and sentences and narrative structures that aren’t difficult or stylistically novel (to most experienced readers).
Well it sounds like we just have a difference of terms going on here. I’d never say that all genre fiction is commercial fiction by any means. I can’t see how you’d define it that way without defining all fiction, including literary fiction, as commercial.
I have to say I think Cormac McCarthy is a really bad examples of someone who “had to make it through the academic literary mill” to be famous. Dude never even earned a college degree and surely didn’t get an MFA or anything. He was just a weird guy obsessed with Faulkner who wrote a bunch of brilliant southern gothic novels and got them published without any academic creds or connections.
I’m also still not sure I buy that literary authors are “thieves” for playing around in genre tropes, especially since so many of those genre tropes themselves originated in what is normally thought of as literary writing. And surely genre writers steal from literary books all the time as well. Art is theft, as they say.
“take any random ‘hack’ writer who ascended to being a literary writer and you’ll see that they are not given permission to dick around on the first page the way literary authors are allowed. Write a shitty first page and your kids don’t eat.”
I kind of see what you are going for here, but certainly you agree that there are actual hack writers writing really crappy books that sell and are composed of entirely shitty pages, right? The Dan Browns and Stephanie Meyers of the worlds (which is again, the people I’ve been referring to with most of my claims)?
“One side lives or dies by how innovative they are; the other merely ascends a safe ladder.”
You completely lose me here. Commercial writers live and die by how GENERIC they are and how formulaic they are. Hell, a lot of these popular commercial genre writers don’t even write their own books! James Patterson has random people write them for him and then just changes the language to sound more like his.
Literary fiction, OTOH, is hardly a “safe ladder”! MFAs are pumping out thousands of wanna be literary writers each year. It is a brutally hard enterprise to even publish in a literary magazine, much less get a book much less a book that sells or wins awards. The statistics are completely stacked against you as a literary writer. It is far far more safe to try to be a hack commercial writer.
Now, does that mean I think its easy to be an innovative genre writer like Philip K. Dick? No. But that’s a different question. Although I see no reason to assume he had it harder than some equivalent literary writer. The world of good genre fiction (as opposed to hack commercial stuff) has its own hierarchies, its own nepotism, its own trends, its own awards.
Why am I supposed to believe it takes more innovation and daring to win the Hugo than the National Book Award? Why am I supposed to believe it is easier to be published in The Paris Review than Asimov’s?
You are correct that I would not say literary fiction doesn’t have tropes.
I’m still baffled that you think McCarthy is steeped in the stink of MFA fiction when he has zero connection to that world and his style and subject matter would never be confused for what is normally called MFA fiction.
We must be talking past each other somewhat here though, because nothing I was saying about commercial fiction was ever meant to apply to innovative interesting writers (like Dick or Ballard) who write often or mostly in what is often called “genre fiction.”
Got it.
1) I think I pressed my argument too far, because you’re right. I see your point. I get like this with good conversations–I chase every pretty butterfly. I also think I was extracting a position from your argument that you didn’t hold. I’m glad you held firm on my whole conflating popularity w/ genre. I guess I was just focusing on the way that many genres seem to only exist as market positions, not actual literature–and that there’s still literature to be found in those fringes. But like I said, I see that this wasn’t your point. I guess I stuck to my position, because I was uncertain if you had truly understood mine–but you do it seems. If anything, I was slower to pick up on your point. So, it’s cool.
2) Re: McCarthy: but there are right ways and wrong ways to climb the literary ladder. I can see how my argument looks dangerously like, ‘if it looks like literary fiction, it’s no good’ and I’m trying not to make that mistake. But he didn’t come out of comics, spec fic, or any of the standard ‘outsider’ arenas: he was out to impress nybooks, not the traditional readers of pulp (where he draws his plots). Yeah, as I say this out loud, I see what a ridiculous case study this is; it doesn’t further my argument–works against it instead. I am using the same counterexamples again and again to make my point, instead of digesting your argument that my offered counterexamples are not normative–nor are the definitions I’m using. There’s been so much talking past each other in this thread, I felt the need to explain why I understand how I’m wrong.
3) I guess I wanted to stretch your argument past Dan Brown et al so that it would intersect w/ my posit. I still feel that you can’t have Herberts unless they’re swimming in a sea of Dan Brown, but that hardly rebuts your point re: the norm.
4) McCarthy doesn’t write sloppily. That’s what I mean. Sloppiness is the norm in genre lit; it gets a pass if the story is ‘interesting.’ Dostoevsky wouldn’t get published these days, because the dude is too sloppy to live (by modern standards). It’s what I meant earlier when I was talking about mistakelessness. It’s not a major point & hardly saves my position, but it’s what I meant.
If the difference is about quality of sentences and paragraphs, then does the debate between what’s “good” writing and what’s “bad” come down to the general aesthetic values of the intellectual elite? It seems more complex than that to me. Dickens and Austen were certainly writing “popular fiction” in their times, for example. Raymond Chandler’s sentences are well-crafted, but he’s a mystery writer, which may deter a particular intellectual audience from ever opening his books.
I think the following are also important parts of this debate: a reader’s response to an idea (as opposed to language), how memorable a story is to a reader/culture, unpredictable/sudden cultural shifts that makes certain types of stories more poignant than others, and how do respected cultural authorities respond to that story.
You know, I went over this recently with the whole Jodi Picoult thing, but Austen was actually not very pouplar in her time (indeed, novels in general weren’t nearly as popular as poetry) and, to quote wikipedia, “During Austen’s lifetime her works brought her little personal fame and only a few positive reviews. Through the mid-nineteenth century, her novels were admired mainly by members of the literary elite.”
I agree that its much more complicated than just aesthetic values of the elite though.
To first reiterate a point that has already been made — the demarcation between pop. lit. and great lit isn’t the subject matter. What is the difference between the Iliad and the film 300? Homer spends an inordinate amount of lines describing fantastic, comic-book-esque fight scenes and includes fantastic descriptions of the Gods. Virgil is no different. Dante has an entire, almost D&D level, detailed description of demons, angels, gruesome punishments, strange rewards, Milton is no better when he takes two books to describe a war between heaven and hell complete with weapons, armor, and a Jesus which comes to kick ass and chew bubble gum (“and i’m all out of bubblegum”) ex machina to finish it off.
Now as to a second point, to join in the chorus of “it is more than aesthetic values” which differentiates the ephemeral from the timeless, we could argue that superman #1 was a more influential work for young kid x than Don Quixote, but to measure value purely from anecdotal use is trivial. Some work, when studied, is more enriching, more thought provoking, more interesting and a better expressed condition of humanity than other work. This isn’t a question of you like Chocolate ice cream and I like Strawberries, it is water or coca cola. /drunken rant
Adam, the “important parts of this debate” that you list are among the “aesthetic values of the intellectual elite”, aren’t they?? I mean that what you’ve done is to elaborate a handful of ways that “cultural authorities” discern “good” from “bad” writing – which are fine, but which don’t really oppose “quality of sentences and paragraphs” as differences between ‘literary’ and ‘popular’ fiction.
I doubt if anybody who holds that there is a distinction between literary and popular fiction would deny that there’s a blur ‘between’ them, a region of overlap, which region would problematize any hard-and-fast litmus test of that distinction. But do you dispute, rather than qualify, such a discernment?