Popularist or Literati?

[Mithalwen]

That is a very good point , Lalwende, for example I recognize that having been obliged to read Middlemarch for my degree, it is hard to fault George Eliot's technical ability but she carries her learning soooooo heavily that I have never felt inclined to read the rest. Yet a friend since A Levels and now a English Teacher, loves her above all and treats my disaffection with amusement.

If you look at my shelves you might think Literati - I have read a lot of the "canon" but I have ot say I only keep the "pop" stuff I feel I will want to read again - my comfort reading - the rest I treat as magazines and if they don't hold my attention they are almost as cheap and just as disposable. And I do like Bridget Jones.. at least the first one, I prefer Isabell Wolff but it did make me laugh at a very grim time in my life.....

I have to admit, I kept my fondness for Tolkien and Glasworthy, "in the closet" during my time at University and never was quite brave enough to say I much preferred Trollope (Anthony not Joanna) to Dickens so maybe there is an element of the "Emperor's new Clothes" going on here?

[Aiwendil]

Eomer of the Rohirrim wrote:

Are these people insinuating that Republic, for example, cannot be enjoyed?

I think they would claim that it can be enjoyed, but that it must be enjoyed in a different way from popular books. The enjoyment provided by serious literature, they would say, lies exclusively in the enjoyment of study - just as a mathemetician may enjoy working with some interesting function. Popular books, on the other hand, are to be read "merely" for enjoyment, not for study. On the one hand there is serious/permanent literature and on the other hand recreational/consumable literature.

So I suspect that the academic would in fact claim to enjoy serious literature. But I think that there is something that runs contrary to that claim in the very nature of the serious/popular distinction - the notion is, I suppose, that popular literature exists solely for enjoyment while serious literature is only incidentally enjoyed. This I think is just as unfair to serious literature as it is to popular. Indeed, I get the feeling that few academics really enjoy some of the classics. Beowulf is a prime example, and one that brings us back to Tolkien. To many or most modern literary scholars, the value of Beowulf is essentially historical. Prior to Tolkien's famous essay, most of the study done on the poem amounted to an attempt to disentangle original material from later accumulations, to dissect the poem and analyze it. Tolkien argued, quite persuasively, that Beowulf as it has come down to us has literary value in itself, and should be valued (and studied) as literature, not as a mere historical document.

Lalwende wrote:

Where does this divide originate? I have thought about whether it is a case of marketing, but if so, then why do more writers of 'literary fiction' not push to be marketed as bestseller writers? Surely they want to make more money?

I'm not sure they do. I think that what some of them want is simply to create good works of art, and I admire that kind of writer - Tolkien was like that, I think. An unfortunate subset of those have, I think, somewhat misguided notions of what "good art" means. Others probably chiefly desire the esteem of the literary establishment.

One interesting aspect of this whole subject is the matter of popular writers who are, to some degree, forced upon the "literati" by their staying power. Dickens is a prime example - though there still is a certain tendency to look down on him, he has sort of made his way into the canon. Tolkien has not - and yet, more academics take him seriously now than did so in the 1950s or 1960s.

[tar-ancalime]

Where does this divide originate? I have thought about whether it is a case of marketing, but if so, then why do more writers of 'literary fiction' not push to be marketed as bestseller writers? Surely they want to make more money?

I think that at least in some cases, writers of "serious" fiction shy away from the marketing because of this divide we're discussing. They'd rather have the prestige of writing "literature" than the fat pocketbook that can go along with "popular fiction." I'm thinking in particular of Jonathan Franzen--several years ago, Oprah Winfrey selected his book for her TV reading club, and he resisted it fiercely. He said he didn't want his book to be lumped in with the type of fiction she tended to choose. Now, his particular case is scarlet with his distaste for "women's fiction," whatever that is (and it's probably best I don't get started on that rant )--along with some admittedly very forgettable novels, Ms. Winfrey had previously chosen works by Toni Morrison, who can hardly be considered lowbrow.) But I think that in a larger sense, what Franzen was really protesting was the very idea that his novel could possibly appeal to the great unlettered populace. He was pledging his fidelity to the divide between readers of Proust and of People magazine, and totally ignoring not only the lucrative potential for his own novel, but the possibility that a novel could be both substantial ("serious") and popular. It's sad, really--he was selling his own novel short.

As for my own tastes, Umberto Eco and Margaret Atwood sit side-by-side on my shelf with the most formulaic of mystery novels. I'll read anything that's printed, but I have a great weakness for formula, as I think most readers do--it's just that some people prefer to refer to their preferred formula as "archetype."

And I'd just like to share that The Catcher in the Rye, along with the rest of Salinger, was extremely important to me in my adolescence, which was itself rife with "angst-filled, overly symbolic drivel."

[vanwalossien]

Sadly, the real dividing line isn't between different kinds of readers, but between readers and non-readers.

Exactly. I'm in high school, and fortunately, most of my class mates read, but I'm on a course that generally attracts "literatis", and in Junior High, most of my classmates had never in their lives read a whole book, and when forced to do so in school they were hopelessly bored. I must admit that I read more or less anything, but usually not the things considered to be pulp fiction - that kind which mostly resembles book versions of soap operas, but it's not because they're considered to be pulp, it's just that I don't like them. And I know that I read a lot of things that English professors and the like would probably consider to be way too "illiterate". But the brilliance of these "pulp" books is that they can make loads of people read, who would normally not open a book in their lives.

Example: Anyone who critisize Harry Potter for being populist (and why is it so bad to be popular?) should think about how many children J.K. Rowling has encouraged to read. My younger brother was convinced that reading was boring, not matter what, until I more or less forced him to listen to me reading Harry Potter to him. He was so excited that when I tired of reading aloud after the first book, he continued, and he realised that reading was not so boring after all. I remember very clearly my mother's shock when my borther ploughed through all the Harry Potter novels, then Lord of the Rings (is this poor little boy a tiny bit influenced by his sister..?), and then Harry Potter again - in English...

It's my opinion that any book is definetly better than no book.

[Lush]

There is something weird about the very dichotomy of "popularist" and "literati," because dichotomies usually suck. They muddle the debate.

I have a professor this semester, now there is a die-hard, dry-as-the-Arabian-desert, boring-as-my-grandma's-underpants literati fan. He can't stand a single joke or casual phrase in a student paper. He laughs at anyone that dares to disagree with his all-mighty godliness in class. He keeps blabbering about his work, and how bloody "important" it is. I HATE HIM. HE'S RUINING MY GPA. NOT TO MENTION MY LIFE.

Haha, right, well I actually think that this whole highbrow vs. lowbrow stuff was invented by people that sit and read Danielle Steele under their blankets at night with a flashlight, jumping at every sound, and then they get up for work, put on a pretentious tie, and talk about how the Pantopticon relates to A Journal of a Plague Year with a smug look on their face.

Now, there is definitely good taste and bad taste, and I will glad chuck Steele in the latter category (or trash bin), but the point is, certain books have their time and place. When I'm bored on a freaking 8-hour trans-Atlantic flight, Steele just might become my best friend for the duration of the trip. And I am not going to apologize for it.

And then there are books that tend to defy such categorizing. I would name The Lord of the Rings as one. Nowhere is it written in that a book that is admired by a great number of people is automatically a conveyor-belt produced piece of trash.

I had a thread about this here.

[davem]

Originally Posted by Mithalwen

Yet Tolkien's is spot on and according to Home he even had names for the planets that are not visible to the naked (and presumably even elvish eye).

Slightly off-topic, but in this context there's an interesting essay :
http://www.physics.ccsu.edu/Larsen/a..._of_middle.htm

[Lalwendë]

Thinking some more about this today, I remembered that there is a 'genre' much beloved by the 'literati' that is pretty close to fantasy, and that is magic realism. Now, it does, by its very name, deal with realistic issues or events, but does this with a huge helping of fantasy. Isabel Allende's The House of the Spirits (one of my favourites incidentally, a really heart-wrenching novel) deals with the history of a family in South America through wars, revolution and right-wing oppression, which sounds brutally realistic. But within this novel there are girls with naturally green hair, ghosts, not-entirely-coincidental horrific accidents and a whole cast of outlandish characters. Isabel Allende does not employ a tricksy style of writing as some 'literati' writers do, so perhaps the plaudits come from the material? But I would argue that the brutal regimes of South American dictators are no more 'realistic' to London based critics than are the machinations of Saruman. If realism and relevance should be a criteria for judging novels, then the critics should only be applauding novels about a closed set of middle-class intellectuals, surely?

Taking this a step further, at University I remember someone in a class deriding Walter Greenwood's Love on the Dole. One of the characters, whose Mancunian accent is used throughout the novel, talks of politics and my fellow student said that he couldn't possibly understand what he was talking about as he couldn't even pronounce the words correctly. Ever since, this has illustrated to me that there is some kind of sniffy class politics going on within the arena of literature.

Perhaps if a novel uses themes and language from areas of life which the critics are comfortable that they 'know something about' then a work stands a better chance of being accepted by them? I can only hope this changes as time goes by, and as we see more diversity in the 'cultural establishment', but sadly it seems some of the 'toe the line' attitudes are still around - Lush, don't let your prof get you down!