I guess I am confused about what counts as "literature" and what doesn't. What makes A Little Life and The Goldfinch more literary than Gone Girl? The fact that Gone Girl makes implausibly unrealistic leaps? So do events in the other two novels. I wouldn't consider any of them as depicting most people's hum drum human reality (and this is coming from someone who *loved* the level of detail included in Life BUT it's about the super rich so you could accuse the author of childishly glamorizing them I guess ) but that's not their purpose anyway. They're all very enjoyable and well done in their own way. Gone Girl was a lot of run to read. I think one issue is that critics don't like to like things that are already popular. They're like hipsters in that way but about books. If Gone Girl hadn't turned out to be a massive block buster I bet you'd see more people recommending it as a little known gem with a "cult" following or something.
Fwiw, I read a lot and get the vast majority of my recommendations from Amazon's books of the month page. That's where I first learned about all three of the above. I don't know what that says about my taste in books but I don't really care what other people think anyway. I read for my own pleasure.
"Goldfinching isn’t about elevating good books at the necessary expense of bad ones. It’s about once more reminding the wrong kind of reader of just where she stands, and how little her enjoyment or endorsement matters."
I think this is true. I know a lot of critics (probably male ones) admire Jonathan Franzen's writing. I read Freedom and Purity recently so they're both still pretty fresh in my mind. I liked them a lot. I do think he is good at what he does. But I don't think they are any better than A Little Life or The Goldfinch. They're all kind of in the same category for me.
Because classics usually doesn't refer to things outside of wester civ. And the fact that only western civ and the US constituion has been mentioned in this thread thus far as indicators of intellect and education.
Perhaps I misread the intent, but for the most part Literature canon does not include non-western POVs, and even then usually only male and white ones. Minority and women authors often imo get pushed into their own 'special' canon or classes. So you don't learn about great black authors unless you look into the Harlem Renaissance, because it's not part of the normal literature canon.
I could easily be mistaken and I'm feeling argumentative today.
Eta: See I am dumb. But wrt those authors that is kind of my point. In many high school and.college classes where Literature and specifically canon works are meant to be read, those authors wouldn't get read and maybe they would get mentioned.
The same thing happens in art. There are Great Artists not from Europe or North America, but the only way to learn about them is to step outside of the canon of western art. They are not included in Modern art or art since 1980, or anything remotely similar.
It is one thing to argue for the inclusion of more women and more ethnic diversity in the canon. It is another thing to say you don't need to read literature to be educated. You started with the latter argument and now you're trying to defend that position by suggesting the former. I'm not sure which thing you actually believe. But if you are of the "It's totes okay to read nothing by Ton Clancy and not know anything about how your government works" camp, I think you are really, really, super, amazingly, phenomenally ultra WRONG.
Yeah, I was a little (a lot) rambly.
My problem is who decides what is and is not Literature/Canon. The answer to that question is often along the lines of the same people that don't teach non-Western literature to high school and college students and the same people that have spent decades putting down women authors to create chick-lit. It also tends to be extremely opinionated.
Would I love for people to read more than Tom Clancy and Twilight? Sure, definitely. But to scoff and say that lowbrow books don't represent human culture, or at least not "good" culture, or "smart" culture, or really the "right" culture feels elitist. It is a representation of our culture, our society, our collective experience. You just don't like it, because it is not up to your standards (with the hidden undertone that those people aren't up to your (general) standards).
I would rather people read than not read because they are only allowed to read books to some historical, patriarchal, or western standard that changes from person to person, critic to critic.
I think there is a canon of works that is still necessary to have read to be classically educated. I am old and getting crotchety enough that I still consider the "classics of western literature" necessary (ancient greek philosophers, shakespeare, the bible as a literary text, writings upon which our current system of economics and government are based).
However, I roll my eyes at the assertion that modern day iterations of Hemingway and Faulkner are the only "new, but real" literary authors. Hemingway sucks. I'll say it forever.
To stir the pot a little, I'm going to ask: why is reading inherently good, no matter what's being read? Why is it better for someone to read Danielle Steele or Tom Clancy than nothing at all (assuming that Steele/Clancy is all that person will ever read and reading it will not awaken a curiosity for reading Tolstoy or Marquez)?
Can I roll my eyes about the "fact" that not regularly reading fine literature apparently means I know nothing about how my government works or whether climate change is real, because, uh, what?
Signed,
Got a masters degree but I'm still an uneducated fool, apparently.
This was not said.
But this IS my favorite CEP argument-defense strategy. If you can't argue with the assertion, simply rephrase it and argue with that. Ta-da! #CEPing.
It is one thing to argue for the inclusion of more women and more ethnic diversity in the canon. It is another thing to say you don't need to read literature to be educated. You started with the latter argument and now you're trying to defend that position by suggesting the former. I'm not sure which thing you actually believe. But if you are of the "It's totes okay to read nothing by Ton Clancy and not know anything about how your government works" camp, I think you are really, really, super, amazingly, phenomenally ultra WRONG.
Yeah, I was a little (a lot) rambly.
My problem is who decides what is and is not Literature/Canon. The answer to that question is often along the lines of the same people that don't teach non-Western literature to high school and college students and the same people that have spent decades putting down women authors to create chick-lit. It also tends to be extremely opinionated.
Would I love for people to read more than Tom Clancy and Twilight? Sure, definitely. But to scoff and say that lowbrow books don't represent human culture, or at least not "good" culture, or "smart" culture, or really the "right" culture feels elitist. It is a representation of our culture, our society, our collective experience. You just don't like it, because it is not up to your standards (with the hidden undertone that those people aren't up to your (general) standards).
I would rather people read than not read because they are only allowed to read books to some historical, patriarchal, or western standard that changes from person to person, critic to critic.
I don't have a problem with elitism when it comes to education. The purpose of education is to become intellectually elite. So, you know, the quality of the material you are exposed to during that time, should probably be "high brow" stuff.
Did you read the OP, though. Because I feel like we're off topic at this point largely because I was responding to something very specific in the OP and now people are like, "But Hemmingway sucks." (Which is true. The Old Man and The Sea can suck my dick).
My original point was pretty straight forward: People should read whatever they want because to read is better than not to read so as long as people who are reading the Twilight series aren't wandering around saying they're well-read, which generally they aren't, who cares. The problem comes in that people these days are so poorly read that they take a moderately decent book like the Outlander series and think it is Literature. Women are worse about this than men (in my anecdotal experience), which makes women and the books they read vulnerable to the kind of sexist criticism sampled in the OP. That was my entire point.
There are side-arguments here, like ( incognito ) whether having an education in Literature is as much a part of understanding human culture as understanding how your government works - these are the components of a solid well-educated person: Literature, Philosophy, History, Government/Civics, the Arts... You simply have to have a working knowledge of these subjects or you have not been fully educated. The fact that people are parading around books like Outlander (and whatever else) and calling it "Literature" is pretty solid evidence that they don't know what Literature is. We can have any number of discussions about whether there should be more ethnic and gender diversity to the canon (there should be). But I'm assuming we aren't arguing that the quality should be more "diverse." That being the case, the only conclusion I can draw is that people don't have a working knowledge of what literature is. And the consequence of that, is that critics make fun of us and our books and assume that even the good ones probably aren't that good.
Finally, and somewhat redundantly, there's no question that old white men have almost exclusively been the ones deciding what is and is not canon. And there is absolutely a movement within the Humanities to change that - to change the view point of History, to include more women and minorities in Philosophy, to broaden the canon in Literature. However, I don't think we'll see, and I HOPE we don't see, a movement in the canon to include what are essentially beach books. As if we have to reach down into the world of popular fiction to capture minorities and women. There are plenty of minorities and women writing Literature. They're just being categorically dismissed (as the OP points out) as "chick lit" even when they are not.
To stir the pot a little, I'm going to ask: why is reading inherently good, no matter what's being read? Why is it better for someone to read Danielle Steele or Tom Clancy than nothing at all (assuming that Steele/Clancy is all that person will ever read and reading it will not awaken a curiosity for reading Tolstoy or Marquez)?
Well, I don't think reading Steele and Clancy is "inherently good" the way I think reading Tolstoy or Marquez is "inherently good." I think if we take the category of guilty pleasures - things that make us feel good and are a fun way to spend time and entertain yourself, there are some of these things that are probably bad - like gambling yourself into poverty, or drinking yourself into a stupor. Reading popular fiction is a good way to entertain yourself. It's like going to a movie. It's fun. There's a deeper experience available out there for people who are interested, but yeah, read your Tom Clancy. In the words of my grandfather (when talking about my grandmother's obsessive quilting), "It could be gin."
Do people really consider the Outlander series literature though? I'm not asking that rhetorically, I'm really curious. I've never heard people say that. When it comes up that they've read it, it's generally in a sheepish way, like revealing a guilty pleasure. The article asks: are The Goldfinch, A Little Life, Gone Girl literature? Idk that either. I've read them all, I think they're all very well written and I enjoyed them but I can't see them being taught in school or anything. How can you tell if a modern book is "literary" or "high brow"?
Post by RoxMonster on Nov 29, 2015 19:02:46 GMT -5
Well, I think people can get a deeper experience out of popular TV shows, movies, and books, too, depending. Those things can all challenge you, make you think, make you question, etc. Sure, yes, there is a separate canon of literature of which those are not a part. But it doesn't mean that all popular TV shows/movies/books are just random fluff that serve no purpose more than entertaining us. And look, I'm an English teacher with an MA in English, someone who loves literature and loves reading and loves some of the classics. But that doesn't mean that there aren't popular, current-day books that can make us think the way some of the canonical literature can.
I think a big part of the literature in the canon that makes it a "classic" is its longevity. And we have no way of knowing which current-day books may have the same longevity until we are many years from now. Many may not, a few might. Are there things to be learned from reading classic lit? Yes, I think so. But can we learn things from reading other types of books that are not classic lit? Yes, I think so. I think painting all popular movies or books with the same brush and writing them off as "just" entertainment is inaccurate.
Post by oscarnerdjulief on Nov 29, 2015 19:16:56 GMT -5
Speaking of Hemingway, did you listen to Inside Europe (NPR program via Deutsche Welle, sp.?) this week where they talked about how people are reading "A Moveable Feast" now, viewing it as a love letter to Paris? Is that book good? I have never read it, but it sounded interesting based on the brief description.
To stir the pot a little, I'm going to ask: why is reading inherently good, no matter what's being read? Why is it better for someone to read Danielle Steele or Tom Clancy than nothing at all (assuming that Steele/Clancy is all that person will ever read and reading it will not awaken a curiosity for reading Tolstoy or Marquez)?
Here's a non scientific article on the benefits of reading.
To stir the pot a little, I'm going to ask: why is reading inherently good, no matter what's being read? Why is it better for someone to read Danielle Steele or Tom Clancy than nothing at all (assuming that Steele/Clancy is all that person will ever read and reading it will not awaken a curiosity for reading Tolstoy or Marquez)?
This actually has to do a lot with the way the brain processes information. I don't have anything specific on hand, but the way the brain processes written words without pictures or spoken words without images (like radio) is different than watching moving images in television or film.
Speaking of Hemingway, did you listen to Inside Europe (NPR program via Deutsche Welle, sp.?) this week where they talked about how people are reading "A Moveable Feast" now, viewing it as a love letter to Paris? Is that book good? I have never read it, but it sounded interesting based on the brief description.
IMO, its his best.
I mean, it's still Hemingway. But at the top of the Hemingway scale.
Post by oscarnerdjulief on Nov 29, 2015 19:46:06 GMT -5
Ok, thanks. I might put it on hold in a few weeks. That's yet another weird thing about me; I can only have a couple books from the library at one time or I start to feel pressured, like I have to rush through them.
I'm surprised I haven't read it, but I have always been more interested in Hemingway's life than his work. I was captivated by the Nicole Kidman "Hemingway and Gellhorn."
Do people really consider the Outlander series literature though? I'm not asking that rhetorically, I'm really curious. I've never heard people say that. When it comes up that they've read it, it's generally in a sheepish way, like revealing a guilty pleasure. The article asks: are The Goldfinch, A Little Life, Gone Girl literature? Idk that either. I've read them all, I think they're all very well written and I enjoyed them but I can't see them being taught in school or anything. How can you tell if a modern book is "literary" or "high brow"?
Just direct answer: yes. I pulled this example on pg. 1 from actual conversations I've had with people since reading the books. They were recommended to me by a friend because my job involves both literature and medicine and so one of my very best friends did the old, "You've got to read these; they're right up your alley." So, I'm on the third one. They're really fun. They're my bedtime reading book right now. I read a lot of pretty heavy stuff during the day and these books are just fantastic. I love them.
However, since I started reading them, I have had three people tell me they are "Literature." Two of the three were saying it as part of an actual argument that the books are more than just popular fiction; they are capital L literature and the third person said that the couple in the book are her favorite couple in all of "Literature" so maybe she just mean "all books" but I kinda don't think so. Also, ask around and see how many people think The Da Vinci Code belongs in the canon and should be taught in school.
So, what is Literature? I think whoever upthread said it has to do with longevity is onto something. The book has to have "staying power." But even in that, some books rise and fall and then rise again. Other things that suggest to me that a book is more than just popular fiction are: quality of writing; depth of characters and growth of the characters throughout the story; a plot that is largely character driven (I generally think of this as being the opposite of "and then" books, where one thing happens and then another thing happens and then a third thing happens and then... the actual characters are kind of fungible); and then bonus points if the book does something new, if it breaks the rules in some way or takes the reader in a direction readers don't usually go, so like Poe would be a canon example, but Palahniuk would be a non-canon example. I think he will end up in the canon. I also tend to respond to effective use of metaphor and symbolism because I think metaphor and symbolism are a kind of universal language that is a pathway to the "human whole" (meaning it brings you into communion with the larger story of humankind). When you feel that - that a story has connected you to people who have lived before you and will live after you, that's a pretty good indication that the book will satisfy the longevity criteria.
Well, I think people can get a deeper experience out of popular TV shows, movies, and books, too, depending. Those things can all challenge you, make you think, make you question, etc. Sure, yes, there is a separate canon of literature of which those are not a part. But it doesn't mean that all popular TV shows/movies/books are just random fluff that serve no purpose more than entertaining us. And look, I'm an English teacher with an MA in English, someone who loves literature and loves reading and loves some of the classics. But that doesn't mean that there aren't popular, current-day books that can make us think the way some of the canonical literature can.
I think a big part of the literature in the canon that makes it a "classic" is its longevity. And we have no way of knowing which current-day books may have the same longevity until we are many years from now. Many may not, a few might. Are there things to be learned from reading classic lit? Yes, I think so. But can we learn things from reading other types of books that are not classic lit? Yes, I think so. I think painting all popular movies or books with the same brush and writing them off as "just" entertainment is inaccurate.
As if I haven't gotten this conversation enough off-topic, ha. But this is a huge problem in art - specifically people are gambling on what will be the next big thing, driving up the prices of contemporary art pieces, when really only time will tell what works will be more valuable than others. I'm not surprised that a similar (though probably much less expensive) occurrence is happening in literature with trying to find modern-day classics.
asdfjkl, Valid points. I'm just overly argumentative this weekend.
To stir the pot a little, I'm going to ask: why is reading inherently good, no matter what's being read? Why is it better for someone to read Danielle Steele or Tom Clancy than nothing at all (assuming that Steele/Clancy is all that person will ever read and reading it will not awaken a curiosity for reading Tolstoy or Marquez)?
To me it depends on what the reader is looking for from reading. Reading Steele vs watching most current TLC shows? Yeah, reading is inherently better. Reading any Clancy books other than The Hunt for Red October because you believe Clancy is an amazingly talented writer, the science and facts presented are 100% accurate, and you are learning about the real Intel world? Watching TLC might be better. Reading Later Clancy because he weaves an entertaining yarn, as long as you ignore that fact that he can't write a concise, accurate sentence to save his life? Again, better than many hobbies out there.
Hell, half the books I read are silly cozy mysteries. But since they help me walk longer on the treadmill, I'd say reading those is inherently better for me than not reading them.
And not responding to the quoted thread--would Bel Canto be considered Literature by the "critics"?
Put me in the "yes, reading is inherently good" camp. Reading is like exercise for your brain. It forces you to experience events through another person's lens, to empathize with others, to look at things differently. Even worthless crap books, if they capture someone's imagination, are pushing that person to put aside their own mental world temporarily in order to inhabit someone else's, and I believe that has value. It teaches us to weigh the experiences of others, to walk a mile in someone else's shoes. It opens our brains up, even if it's just a little bit.
I am also coming at this from the perspective of an early educator. As teachers my colleagues and I often had to choose between turning up our noses at some of the less-than-stellar children's books out there (Captain Underpants, or Junie B Jones - ZOMG she uses incorrect grammar!) and potentially alienating young readers who enjoyed these books, or encouraging children to read whatever captured their attention and imagination, even if we sometimes had to grit our teeth in order to do so. I watched as, time and time again, a reluctant reader got absorbed in a book that *I* thought was a waste of time, and through that book, became enamored of reading in general. If a child loves to read *something* then I can get them to read other things. If a child does not enjoy reading, then dragging them through a thousand works of classic literature won't do much for them. Similarly, if an adult is reading books for enjoyment, I think they are more likely to do things like read a newspaper, or a blog post, or an essay, whereas non-readers aren't likely to do any of those things.
It's like exercise. Is walking for five minutes a day (reading 50 Shades of Gray) going to make you as fit as training for a marathon (War and Peace?) No, of course not, but it's still better for you than nothing and most popular books fall somewhere in the middle.
Obviously I think in school we should be pushing young people to go outside their comfort zone and read and discuss quality literature and books that may not meet that threshold but require them to examine their ways of thinking. But as an adult, I don't think I should feel guilty about choosing to spend my limited reading time indulging in books that are fun and entertaining, with characters I relate to, and exciting new settings, because they are not "good enough."
And yes, this is an off-shoot of the OP which points out the sexism in how books are valued, which is bullshit and an issue worth discussing, even if I really didn't, LOL.
(What do you think- Would Mr. Barnes still knock off a half point for excessive comma usage? I think yes! Comma love 4evah!)
Can I like this a million times?
I'm a high school English teacher and I purposely alternate classics with more modern work to keep my students engaged. I have to balance preparing them to be well-educated citizens of the world with wanting them to actually read. How many of you actually read those classics? Did you earnestly read them cover to cover? Or did you talk to people about the book, watch the movie or look it up on spark notes? At some point people just need to read for all the reasons listed above.
My two cents. There's a difference between great literature and great storytelling. Some books are both -- I'd ditto @asdfjk that Dickens and Irving are great examples of writers whose books are often both. But not all great works of literature are great stories. My favorite book of this century, A Visit from the Goon Squad is an amazing piece of literature, but it's not a great "story," it's greatness comes from its use of language and perspective, and the way it presents the impact of the passage of time on our lives. On the other hand, I loved Gone Girl, but I probably wouldn't call it a great work of literature. It was a really great story though.
It's insane to me that critics don't seems to get that. So what happens is that mens books that aren't necessarily literature can still get acclaim for being great reads. Think Stephen King. That guy might be one of the greatest storytellers America has ever known. Nobody derides him for "just" writing stories. While Franzen annoys me, he gets a lot of praise for his storytelling too.
But women writers seem to either write "literature" or chick lit. For women, being a great storyteller isn't real praise, it's an insult, a suggestion that you write nice stories for moms to talk about at their kids play dates.
Have you ever felt that reading a good book makes you better able to connect with your fellow human beings? If so, the results of a new scientific study back you up, but only if your reading material is literary fiction – pulp fiction or non-fiction will not do.
Psychologists David Comer Kidd and Emanuele Castano, at the New School for Social Research in New York, have proved that reading literary fiction enhances the ability to detect and understand other people's emotions, a crucial skill in navigating complex social relationships.
In a series of five experiments, 1,000 participants were randomly assigned texts to read, either extracts of popular fiction such as bestseller Danielle Steel's The Sins of the Mother and Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn, or more literary texts, such as Orange-winner The Tiger's Wife by Téa Obreht, Don DeLillo's "The Runner", from his collection The Angel Esmeralda, or work by Anton Chekhov.
The pair then used a variety of Theory of Mind techniques to measure how accurately the participants could identify emotions in others. Scores were consistently higher for those who had read literary fiction than for those with popular fiction or non-fiction texts.
"What great writers do is to turn you into the writer. In literary fiction, the incompleteness of the characters turns your mind to trying to understand the minds of others," said Kidd.
Kidd and Castano, who have published their paper in Science, make a similar distinction between "writerly" writing and "readerly" writing to that made by Roland Barthes in his book on literary theory, The Pleasure of the Text. Mindful of the difficulties of determining what is literary fiction and what is not, certain of the literary extracts were chosen from the PEN/O Henry prize 2012 winners' anthology and the US National book awards finalists.
"Some writing is what you call 'writerly', you fill in the gaps and participate, and some is 'readerly', and you're entertained. We tend to see 'readerly' more in genre fiction like adventure, romance and thrillers, where the author dictates your experience as a reader. Literary [writerly] fiction lets you go into a new environment and you have to find your own way," Kidd said.
ETA it is germane to the discussion at hand that the both "readerly" writing examples cited for the study were written by women, and two of the three "writerly" (more highly regarded) by men.
Post by oscarnerdjulief on Nov 30, 2015 0:04:27 GMT -5
I read a lot of classics, but most of them (I'd say 65&) are boring. For every work I taught and loved, there was one I was "meh" about but was required to teach.
Sometimes you want to read for pleasure to be drawn into a story that is just fun and a page-turner. You don't want it to be work.
When reading one of those boring but critically acclaimed books, I feel like I do when I watch some movies that the L.A. critics just love.
To stir the pot a little, I'm going to ask: why is reading inherently good, no matter what's being read? Why is it better for someone to read Danielle Steele or Tom Clancy than nothing at all (assuming that Steele/Clancy is all that person will ever read and reading it will not awaken a curiosity for reading Tolstoy or Marquez)?
To me it depends on what the reader is looking for from reading. Reading Steele vs watching most current TLC shows? Yeah, reading is inherently better. Reading any Clancy books other than The Hunt for Red October because you believe Clancy is an amazingly talented writer, the science and facts presented are 100% accurate, and you are learning about the real Intel world? Watching TLC might be better. Reading Later Clancy because he weaves an entertaining yarn, as long as you ignore that fact that he can't write a concise, accurate sentence to save his life? Again, better than many hobbies out there.
Hell, half the books I read are silly cozy mysteries. But since they help me walk longer on the treadmill, I'd say reading those is inherently better for me than not reading them.
And not responding to the quoted thread--would Bel Canto be considered Literature by the "critics"?
I would say yes but then I am someone who loved that book and loves all of Ann Patchett's work. But I have a feeling it could be easily "Goldfinched" by male critics. The quotes pulled for the article in the OP could easily apply to Bel Canto as well:
"Speaking of girls, a good Goldfinching must include considerable smirking about the immaturity and childishness of the book, its author and, most tellingly, its readers.
In The New Yorker, James Wood called The Goldfinch “a virtual baby”, “a fairy tale” whose “tone, language, and story belong to children’s literature”. In The New York Review of Books, Mendelsohn accused A Little Life’s Yanagihara of “falling prey” to “a deep and unadult sentimentality”. Worse, “the guilty pleasures (the book) holds for some readers are those of a teenaged rap session, that adolescent social ritual par excellence”.
Not only are the readers who like these books childish, they’re stupid. Paris Review editor Lorin Stein told Vanity Fair in the ur-Goldfinching: “What worries me is that people who read only one or two books a year will plunk down their money for The Goldfinch, and read it, and tell themselves they like it, but deep down will be profoundly bored, because they aren’t children, and will quietly give up on the whole enterprise.” Just sit with that for a minute: you, dear reader, might have thought you enjoyed that book you just read, but you’re wrong. You didn’t. Lorin Stein knows better than you.
. . . Goldfinching isn’t about elevating good books at the necessary expense of bad ones. It’s about once more reminding the wrong kind of reader of just where she stands, and how little her enjoyment or endorsement matters.
My two cents. There's a difference between great literature and great storytelling. Some books are both -- I'd ditto @asdfjk that Dickens and Irving are great examples of writers whose books are often both. But not all great works of literature are great stories. My favorite book of this century, A Visit from the Goon Squad is an amazing piece of literature, but it's not a great "story," it's greatness comes from its use of language and perspective, and the way it presents the impact of the passage of time on our lives. On the other hand, I loved Gone Girl, but I probably wouldn't call it a great work of literature. It was a really great story though.
It's insane to me that critics don't seems to get that. So what happens is that mens books that aren't necessarily literature can still get acclaim for being great reads. Think Stephen King. That guy might be one of the greatest storytellers America has ever known. Nobody derides him for "just" writing stories. While Franzen annoys me, he gets a lot of praise for his storytelling too.
But women writers seem to either write "literature" or chick lit. For women, being a great storyteller isn't real praise, it's an insult, a suggestion that you write nice stories for moms to talk about at their kids play dates.
I agree. This issue is an intersection of genre snobbery and white male privilege. Literary fiction is often distinguished by being character-driven, rather than plot-driven like genre fiction. Genre fiction is considered lesser. But I think this distinction is harmful to writing as an art form. One of the frustrations I often have when I pick up literary fiction is that while the writing is beautiful, the plot just isn't there and I get bored. When I read commercial/genre fiction, the plot is interesting but I get annoyed that the quality of writing is not as good. And the genres or subjects that are written more by women (romance, domestic life, etc.) are dismissed as fluff, not literary. White men's stories are universal; everyone else's are niche, subgenre. Even at the level of literary journals, there is a strong bias toward publishing white men. It's hard to reach the upper echelons of the literary elite when you can't even get your foot in the door.
WRT Stephen King, I admire his ability to write both plot and character-driven pieces. Some of his short fiction I've read is downright literary. He gets short stories published in the absolute best literary magazines. But I wonder if he were a woman writing commercial "women's" fiction, if those same elite magazines would be publishing his (her) literary fiction.
Post by mrsdewinter on Nov 30, 2015 8:10:47 GMT -5
By the way, if you all haven't read Claire Vaye Watkins' essay in Tin House about sexism and white privilege in the literary world, "On Pandering," you should:
It's funny to me that people today cite Dickens as such a great example of a literary author because at the time he was a hugely popular writer who was often dismissed by critics as overly schmaltzy and sentimental: a superficial hack. The lack of critical praised he earned really burned him up. The same goes for a lot of writers we revere today. Fitzgerald died thinking his work was overlooked and undervalued. The Great Gatsby barely sold any copies in his lifetime and look at it today.
Post by jeaniebueller on Nov 30, 2015 8:24:49 GMT -5
Another problem, though, is that too many people read stuff that is clearly NOT "literature" but insist that it is and women do that more than men. You never see some guy reading Jurassic Park and suggesting that it is actually literary fiction (meaning, it belongs in the canon). But I'm reading the Outlander books right now and every time I meet someone (a woman) who has read them, I have to listen to how they are soooo well written, suuuuuch goood books, they are LITERATURE.
Why does it matter if someone wants to insist that Outlander is literature? I suffered through so many boring pieces of literature when I was an English major. Many of the works of literature I did read, I didn't particularly enjoy and I don't know that they really expanded my horizons.