Hmm. . .an interesting and a provocative thread indeed.
I, like
Rimbaud, continually rail against the desire to categorise and pigeonhole books into different categories of "popular" versus "good" -- there are lots of very popular books that are very good, and lots of very good books that are not very popular. In my line of work I frequently run into the complaint that academics study books that nobody else likes -- that they are academically 'popular' but that 'regular people' don't like them, and that universities should include more 'popular' books on the reading lists.
This really makes no sense to me: this week for example I am preparing for classes on
Pride and Prejudice,
Twelfth Night and
Frankenstien. All three are and have been widely and wildly popular for a very long time, but I would argue that one of them is not only 'not good' but quite awful. The point being that there are all kinds of books: bad books that are popular (Danielle Steele), good books that aren't popular (
Finnegan's Wake), good books that are popular (
Midnight's Children), and even bad books that aren't popular (fortunately, however, there are few of these as there is little reason to publish any).
What the argument comes down to is a purely subjective assesment of what people like or don't like, want or don't want in their reading experience. The kinds of people who form the Booker committee want certain kinds of things -- that's their right, and it always makes me shake my head that people who want other things from books complain about it. You don't often hear people railing on about how the Nova Award (for Sci Fi) or Marian L'engle (for fantasy) didn't go to A.S. Byatt or Gabriel Garcia Marquez!
Quote:
|
And additionally, as you have astutely pointed out, and rather sadly, there are books written (I used to refute this notion, but it's too commonplace now), the only purpose of which is to impress the reader (or rather, fellow authors and judges) with the writer's technique and controlled talent.
|
True, and there are at least equally as many books written to impress the acquisitions manager at a major Hollywood studio. Different audiences want different things, and I say
vive le differance!