Nonsense from the literary elite

James Fallows, National Correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly, writes on his blog:

Like most people who enjoy spy novels and crime fiction, I feel vaguely guilty about this interest...You feel a little cheesy when you see a stack of lurid mystery covers sitting next to the bed.

The piece overall is complimentary to crime fiction (sort of) and he posits a reasonable test to determine if genre fiction rises to the level of "real" fiction: if he can remember the book a month or six months or a year later.

So that's fine. But what I want to know is: Are there really people who feel guilty about reading genre fiction? And, if so, what the hell is wrong with them?

I can understand feeling embarrassed if you're reading porn on the subway. But feeling "cheesy" because you enjoy mystery novels is idiotic.

It's no wonder that people don't read much in this country when the so-called intelligentsia hold absurd ideas like this.

(hat tip)

Comments

I do so agree. Mind you, I sometimes think I should not read as much of it as I do in proportion to everything else, but I have a never ending stream of recommendations from blogs and websites (and of course, from newspaper reviews!) I know and like, so I rarely "look outside", these days.

[Alan Cranis]

If reading is to improve in this country, then any and all kinds of reading must be encouraged -- genre fiction, comic books, graphic novels -- just anything that involves following words and making sense out of them. But sadly, attidudes like the one reported here tend to discourage any kind of "reading for fun" when it something other than "serious literature."

[Debra Hamel]

"It's no wonder that people don't read much in this country when the so-called intelligentsia hold absurd ideas like this."

Perfect. It doesn't help, either, when people attack the likes of Harry Potter--you know, the series that got kids and adults the world over excited about book releases, of all things.

Apart from the porn on the subway scenario, I honestly can't think of a book that I would feel guilty about reading or that I'd be uncomfortable to be seen to be reading.

[Barry Eisler]

What's funny is, Fallows has lived in Japan, where they really do read porn on the subway! I would have thought seeing a few gray-suited salarymen contentedly perusing S&M comics on the way home from work would have put Fallows' inhibitions about spy and crime fiction into perspective...

:)
Barry

[I.J.Parker]

I've read a great deal of literature as a student and later as a professor of English Literature. I have also read mysteries during that time. The literature, while often extremely rewarding, was always a bit like work. The mysteries, on the other hand, were pure escape. People need both. I do admit to feeling ashamed of reading (and at one point writing) historical romance, but even there one may find some good books. The range of genre fiction is enormous. Yes, there is embarrassing stuff, but there are also novels that are extraorinarily rich, ambitious, and rewarding. And in the spirit of their authors, I write mysteries proudly and under my own name.

[Dana Kaye]

I think a lot of people feel this way. I remember my girlfriend and I taking stock of our books and I point to my shelf of mass market paperbacks and she scoffs, "Those aren't even real books!"

Also, there was a big uproar when I was at Columbia about genre fiction not being accepted by thesis advisors. How are you going to tell a grad student that they can't write genre fiction for their thesis? People are amazing.

[Cameron Hughes]

The only time you should feel embarassed about reading a novel of any kind is when you're an adult and you're reading tie-in novels to T.V. and movie franchises.

[David J. Montgomery]

Why should anyone feel embarrassed about reading tie-in novels? That's just the same mentality reflected in a smaller sphere.

[Barry Eisler]

Cameron, I'm hoping this means I'm off the hook for reading -- only over the shoulders of those salarymen in Tokyo, and entirely by accident, of course -- porn on the subway...

:D
Barry

[robert ferrigno]

Last time I was on book tour I tried for over an hour to get past page 40 of LIFE OF PI. Finally traded it to some poor sap for his copy of Jeff Parker's THE FALLEN. James Fallows treats genre like he's a slumming debutante.

[spyscribbler]

Guilty? Hah! Are you kidding? Besides, I think spy novels are the best of the lot (not that I'm biased). Talk about examining humanity. Isn't that what all fiction strives to do?

I want to move to Japan.

[Clea Simon]

As a culture, we've put such a moral weight on everything to do with education, reading, whatever that it's amazing that we get anything done. It's like we can never get over "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," no matter if we're descended from those original Puritan ministers or not.

I just got to interview grammarian Elizabeth Little ("Bite the Wax Tadpole") and she and I talked about how most language guides seem designed to make you feel bad about the way you talk and the way you write. No wonder everyone hates them, and the same with such literary criticism. It's that latent Puritan streak: if it feels good, it must be bad.

[Warren Adler]

As a writer of material straddling many genres, novels which deal with the range and subtleties of human experience and, therefore, difficult to slot, I find myself always on the razor's edge of controversy when I venture into defining the nature of literary fiction.

Publishers, like most media types, like to categorize books by genre e.g. science fiction, mystery, romance and their various sub-categories. They push writers to conform to the matrix for obvious business and marketing reasons. They then further classify novels as "literary" or "commercial." I have always been baffled by the imprecision of definitions about what constitutes literary fiction as opposed to commercial fiction. Does it mean that if literary fiction becomes commercial by virtue of high sales numbers it then loses its place in the close-knit snobby world of the self-appointed literati? There is a converse to that, but it borders on an oxymoron.

My own definition of what constitutes literary fiction is based on the old cliché of "standing the test of time." This means that only a literary creation that "lasts" and expands its universality to future generations is truly worthy of entering the canon of literary royalty. Such a definition is sure to inspire an avalanche of criticism and contempt, especially since I have dubbed irrelevant many of those who create contemporary standards of literary purity, most, if not all, of who will drop over the cliff of memory into the dark pit of oblivion.