When Popular Fiction Isn't Popular
December 3, 2015 9:02 PM Subscribe
Genre, Literary, and the Myths of Popularity: The massively popular books are very rarely among the best, whether shelved as “genre” or as “literary.” Want to know what the best-selling book of the year has been? Go Set a Watchmen, a cash-grab novel that many have argued was unethical to even publish. The second? Grey, another cash-grab where E. L. James rewrote 50 Shades from a male point of view. (And, yes, Hollywood “reboot” culture is absolutely coming to the literary world in the near future. I mean, hey, it’s popular.) (Lincoln Michel for Electric Lit)
previously, previously
previously, previously
Parts of that Picoult/Weiner interview linked in the main article made my teeth hurt. Especially this claim:
posted by Sonny Jim at 12:37 AM on December 4, 2015 [16 favorites]
Picoult: Because historically the books that have persevered in our culture and in our memories and our hearts were not the literary fiction of the day, but the popular fiction of the day. Think about Jane Austen. Think about Charles Dickens. Think about Shakespeare. They were popular authors. They were writing for the masses.I don't know what level of ignorance about the composition of 17th, 18th, and 19th-century reading audiences you'd need to have to make a claim like that. Total, maybe? Profound? And in the context of Shakespeare, at least, it's just silly. This is something I think is pervasive with poptimists and populists: despite their general claims towards celebrating economic democracy, they tend to be in practice (willfully?) ignorant about the economics of consumption and marketing and how those two things work together to shape or constitute "popularity."
posted by Sonny Jim at 12:37 AM on December 4, 2015 [16 favorites]
I haven't RTFA, I'll 'fess up, but this line: Hollywood “reboot” culture is absolutely coming to the literary world in the near future made me eyeroll so hard I damn near dislocated something.
There is nothing new about Hollywood remaking stories* - hell, D.W. Griffith did it all the time - and it sure as Shinola isn't a new concept in the ~*literary world*~. There's a cottage industry devoted to Austen-centric novels (Jane as amateur detective! Pride and Predjudice with BDSM!), there's that 1991 sequel to Gone With the Wind, there's the noble tradition of pastiche Sherlocks, and so on. We could even get into the whole 'Well Shakespeare ripped off half his plots from someone else' hoo-ha.
*My favourite example is Dragnet: radio show based on a movie that leads to a TV show that's "rebooted" as three feature films and two more TV series.
posted by Gin and Broadband at 3:18 AM on December 4, 2015 [6 favorites]
There is nothing new about Hollywood remaking stories* - hell, D.W. Griffith did it all the time - and it sure as Shinola isn't a new concept in the ~*literary world*~. There's a cottage industry devoted to Austen-centric novels (Jane as amateur detective! Pride and Predjudice with BDSM!), there's that 1991 sequel to Gone With the Wind, there's the noble tradition of pastiche Sherlocks, and so on. We could even get into the whole 'Well Shakespeare ripped off half his plots from someone else' hoo-ha.
*My favourite example is Dragnet: radio show based on a movie that leads to a TV show that's "rebooted" as three feature films and two more TV series.
posted by Gin and Broadband at 3:18 AM on December 4, 2015 [6 favorites]
Look at The Da Vinci code ... plagiarised, badly written, poorly edited, responsible for credulous idiots tramping around historic sites and yet ...
The Da Vinci Code is a book I deeply regret being stupid enough to have read. But I even more regret not being smart enough to have written it, because that damn author made a fortune off of that trainwreck of a book and gets to laugh his way to the bank for the rest of his life.
posted by Dip Flash at 4:38 AM on December 4, 2015 [9 favorites]
The Da Vinci Code is a book I deeply regret being stupid enough to have read. But I even more regret not being smart enough to have written it, because that damn author made a fortune off of that trainwreck of a book and gets to laugh his way to the bank for the rest of his life.
posted by Dip Flash at 4:38 AM on December 4, 2015 [9 favorites]
That's exactly how I feel about Dan Brown. The guy is an appallingly-bad writer whose one talent (and it is a substantial talent, I will certainly give him that) is the ability to write an endless procession of cliffhanger chapters. Every novel is a bag of potato chips, except they're that funky, not-quite-right BBQ flavor that you don't really like but can't stop eating until they're gone and you feel regretful and bloated.
posted by uncleozzy at 4:46 AM on December 4, 2015 [16 favorites]
posted by uncleozzy at 4:46 AM on December 4, 2015 [16 favorites]
Never read the latest hits until they're no longer the latest hits. Always wait until other people try them and have time to warn you off with stuff like "The Da Vinci Code is a book I deeply regret being stupid enough to have read" and "The guy is an appallingly-bad writer" -- I'll never read even a line of that book and I won't regret it.
posted by pracowity at 5:00 AM on December 4, 2015 [3 favorites]
posted by pracowity at 5:00 AM on December 4, 2015 [3 favorites]
I don't know what level of ignorance about the composition of 17th, 18th, and 19th-century reading audiences you'd need to have to make a claim like that. Total, maybe? Profound? And in the context of Shakespeare, at least, it's just silly.
Yeah, I tend to climb walls when I see generalizations like that too. The idea that Austen was "popular" in any recognizable twenty-first century sense of the term is simply bizarre (and she was wildly outsold by the nineteenth century's most influential novelist, Walter Scott--who is now pretty much [unfairly] unread by anyone except academics). Dickens' popularity did not make him the mid-Victorian equivalent of Dan Brown or Tom Clancy, and to the extent that we can determine bestseller status for Victorian fiction--there are serious difficulties in the way of getting reliable sales figures--the authors who were such equivalents have, shall we say, not survived.
The guy is an appallingly-bad writer whose one talent (and it is a substantial talent, I will certainly give him that) is the ability to write an endless procession of cliffhanger chapters.
A few years back, I was standing in line at a now-defunct Borders and I heard a couple of adolescents talking about the Twilight series. One of them confided to the other, "The writing is terrible! But I can't put down the story."
posted by thomas j wise at 5:02 AM on December 4, 2015 [6 favorites]
Yeah, I tend to climb walls when I see generalizations like that too. The idea that Austen was "popular" in any recognizable twenty-first century sense of the term is simply bizarre (and she was wildly outsold by the nineteenth century's most influential novelist, Walter Scott--who is now pretty much [unfairly] unread by anyone except academics). Dickens' popularity did not make him the mid-Victorian equivalent of Dan Brown or Tom Clancy, and to the extent that we can determine bestseller status for Victorian fiction--there are serious difficulties in the way of getting reliable sales figures--the authors who were such equivalents have, shall we say, not survived.
The guy is an appallingly-bad writer whose one talent (and it is a substantial talent, I will certainly give him that) is the ability to write an endless procession of cliffhanger chapters.
A few years back, I was standing in line at a now-defunct Borders and I heard a couple of adolescents talking about the Twilight series. One of them confided to the other, "The writing is terrible! But I can't put down the story."
posted by thomas j wise at 5:02 AM on December 4, 2015 [6 favorites]
On the other hand, many of the best selling science fiction titles of last year (Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach trilogy, Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven, etc.) were exactly the kind of literary titles the Puppies claimed were making SF unpopular
Ha, I just read Station Eleven, and quite liked it, and recommended it to my wife (who does not read sci-fi, full stop). If you want to call that book sci-fi (and I'm on the fence about that, to be honest), it's a great way to draw readers into the genre. But oh noez the feeeemales.
posted by uncleozzy at 5:06 AM on December 4, 2015 [2 favorites]
Ha, I just read Station Eleven, and quite liked it, and recommended it to my wife (who does not read sci-fi, full stop). If you want to call that book sci-fi (and I'm on the fence about that, to be honest), it's a great way to draw readers into the genre. But oh noez the feeeemales.
posted by uncleozzy at 5:06 AM on December 4, 2015 [2 favorites]
The Picoult quote about Austen is silly, but there are a lot of good points in that interview about how women's fiction is treated by the big-name critics. I wish Michel hadn't focused on it so much, because, as he even observes, Weiner is usually talking about sexism specifically, not the entire literary/genre divide.
posted by thetortoise at 5:09 AM on December 4, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by thetortoise at 5:09 AM on December 4, 2015 [2 favorites]
Metafilter: I don't know what level of ignorance ... you'd need to have to make a claim like that. Total, maybe? Profound?
posted by Hypatia at 5:12 AM on December 4, 2015 [9 favorites]
posted by Hypatia at 5:12 AM on December 4, 2015 [9 favorites]
In praise of junk fiction: it defines our culture which is neither high-brow nor low-brow, just brow.
The Da Vinci Code merely looks like a bad book because of its greasy-spoon flinging of hash-brown English. However, it did have a sense of what amazes us: the Cryptex contraption, codes and riddles, a transgressive (ersatz feminist) view of history and religion, secrets within paintings, Da Vinci himself, etc. All that set within a structure of a Hardy Boy grade mystery.
It had the balls-out silliness of James Rollins Subterranean but with albinos and popish plots (or maybe it was the novelization of Foul Play).
Writing is more than stringing together words. It is also plotting and infecting the mind.
I wrote a series of analyses of The New York Times Bestseller Fiction list on my blog a time back.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 5:34 AM on December 4, 2015 [4 favorites]
The Da Vinci Code merely looks like a bad book because of its greasy-spoon flinging of hash-brown English. However, it did have a sense of what amazes us: the Cryptex contraption, codes and riddles, a transgressive (ersatz feminist) view of history and religion, secrets within paintings, Da Vinci himself, etc. All that set within a structure of a Hardy Boy grade mystery.
It had the balls-out silliness of James Rollins Subterranean but with albinos and popish plots (or maybe it was the novelization of Foul Play).
Writing is more than stringing together words. It is also plotting and infecting the mind.
I wrote a series of analyses of The New York Times Bestseller Fiction list on my blog a time back.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 5:34 AM on December 4, 2015 [4 favorites]
Which gets to another pet-peeve of mine: the term "women's fiction" tossed out like it meant a limited audience. If the description is accurate, the author is speaking to half of the planet. That's pretty good communication skills.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 5:39 AM on December 4, 2015 [8 favorites]
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 5:39 AM on December 4, 2015 [8 favorites]
More than half of the available audience, since women buy more fiction than men.
posted by tofu_crouton at 6:04 AM on December 4, 2015 [3 favorites]
posted by tofu_crouton at 6:04 AM on December 4, 2015 [3 favorites]
> "... the authors who were such equivalents have, shall we say, not survived."
Marie Corelli's books outsold Arthur Conan Doyle, H. G. Wells, and Rudyard Kipling COMBINED.
posted by kyrademon at 6:13 AM on December 4, 2015 [9 favorites]
Marie Corelli's books outsold Arthur Conan Doyle, H. G. Wells, and Rudyard Kipling COMBINED.
posted by kyrademon at 6:13 AM on December 4, 2015 [9 favorites]
This article is really fantastic. It sums up multiple long-festering arguments really well. It's almost neutral enough to show to Puppies and not get them totally defensive except for when he calls them "conservative white men". That gives them leeway to call the entire article a lie becuase "I'm one part Eskimo!", " Paulk and Hoyt!", etc. Sigh.
posted by tofu_crouton at 6:16 AM on December 4, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by tofu_crouton at 6:16 AM on December 4, 2015 [1 favorite]
i thought it had always been the case that what constitutes popular just means that it appeals to the lowest common denominator in a large enough population or anything marketed heavily enough.
It's only every so often that anything of any lasting value becomes popular for any number of other reasons.
posted by destro at 6:42 AM on December 4, 2015
It's only every so often that anything of any lasting value becomes popular for any number of other reasons.
posted by destro at 6:42 AM on December 4, 2015
I think a lot of Jennifer Weiner's writing about sexism in literary criticism is kind of muddled, but her article in the Guardian is basically accurate: there is a whole amorphous blob of books that are literary-ish but also popular, and basically too sentimental or too middlebrow to gain much traction with people who are Very Serious About Literature (and popular precisely BECAUSE they are too sentimental or too middlebrow).
But yeah, there's a very weird thing that's going on where some people seem intent on viewing 'literary fiction' as books written by creative writing teachers that only sell a handful of copies, and then defining Donna Tartt or Jonathan Franzen as not REALLY literary -- and I guess it's because the genre markers of literary fiction just aren't as clear as for science fiction or romance or mystery; you can tell the difference between a Jonathan Franzen novel and a Jodi Picoult novel, but it doesn't feel as objective as the difference between a Jonathan Franzen novel and a Robert A. Heinlein novel, it's more 'this is more sensational, this is more melodramatic, the prose is not as interesting..." (I was actually surprised by how boring I found the prose in Freedom, but YMMV).
And I guess there's the feeling that it makes sense to talk about bad, unsophisticated science fiction and good, sophisticated science fiction, or romance, or mystery, but... if it's bad an unsophisticated it shouldn't get called "literary" at all; it shouldn't get in the club; but there's a whole lot of bad, unsophisticated literary fiction, and we make fun of "Guy In Your MFA" tropes, but I think there's at least a recognition that Guy In Your MFA is writing an attempt at literary fiction, whereas often when women write it people say "well, that's not literary fiction at all; it's women's fiction."
posted by Jeanne at 6:53 AM on December 4, 2015 [6 favorites]
But yeah, there's a very weird thing that's going on where some people seem intent on viewing 'literary fiction' as books written by creative writing teachers that only sell a handful of copies, and then defining Donna Tartt or Jonathan Franzen as not REALLY literary -- and I guess it's because the genre markers of literary fiction just aren't as clear as for science fiction or romance or mystery; you can tell the difference between a Jonathan Franzen novel and a Jodi Picoult novel, but it doesn't feel as objective as the difference between a Jonathan Franzen novel and a Robert A. Heinlein novel, it's more 'this is more sensational, this is more melodramatic, the prose is not as interesting..." (I was actually surprised by how boring I found the prose in Freedom, but YMMV).
And I guess there's the feeling that it makes sense to talk about bad, unsophisticated science fiction and good, sophisticated science fiction, or romance, or mystery, but... if it's bad an unsophisticated it shouldn't get called "literary" at all; it shouldn't get in the club; but there's a whole lot of bad, unsophisticated literary fiction, and we make fun of "Guy In Your MFA" tropes, but I think there's at least a recognition that Guy In Your MFA is writing an attempt at literary fiction, whereas often when women write it people say "well, that's not literary fiction at all; it's women's fiction."
posted by Jeanne at 6:53 AM on December 4, 2015 [6 favorites]
Go Set a Watchmen, a cash-grab novel that many have argued was unethical to even publish.
In a bookshop the other day I saw a bindup edition, which seemed to be called Go Set A to Kill a Watchman Mockingbird. I'd be tempted to read it if it was about the character A (like Kafka's K or Fleming's M but more Ayn Randy) outraging the Audubon Society with ornithological slaughter. But it probably isn't.
posted by Grangousier at 9:37 AM on December 4, 2015 [3 favorites]
In a bookshop the other day I saw a bindup edition, which seemed to be called Go Set A to Kill a Watchman Mockingbird. I'd be tempted to read it if it was about the character A (like Kafka's K or Fleming's M but more Ayn Randy) outraging the Audubon Society with ornithological slaughter. But it probably isn't.
posted by Grangousier at 9:37 AM on December 4, 2015 [3 favorites]
There's something maybe not uniquely but at least markedly American about the need to separate art into highbrow and lowbrow, with the implication that there's something wrong or degenerate about highbrow art and both kinds should be clearly labelled, because if not you might buy the wrong brow-level by accident.
This truth-in-labelling can be bewildering: in Spanish, 'Literatura' means written stuff, like novels, not any particular genre or lack of genre or good or bad ones, just written stuff, so it took me a while to understand what 'literary' means in English.
It extends to other spheres as well: I once got into an argument here on the blue which basically boiled down to my usage of the word 'Architecture' as that thing that architects do, whereas my (American-) arguee used it to mean 'Super special artsy building stuff which most architects don't actually do because they're not awesome enough'.
posted by signal at 10:54 AM on December 4, 2015 [1 favorite]
This truth-in-labelling can be bewildering: in Spanish, 'Literatura' means written stuff, like novels, not any particular genre or lack of genre or good or bad ones, just written stuff, so it took me a while to understand what 'literary' means in English.
It extends to other spheres as well: I once got into an argument here on the blue which basically boiled down to my usage of the word 'Architecture' as that thing that architects do, whereas my (American-) arguee used it to mean 'Super special artsy building stuff which most architects don't actually do because they're not awesome enough'.
posted by signal at 10:54 AM on December 4, 2015 [1 favorite]
To expand, I think part of it comes for the Latinate/Germanic synonym pairs English has, and the assumption that the Latinate form of a word refers to a higher, more pretentious and highly regarded one, wheres the Germanic form is earthier, more sincere and just-folksy.
posted by signal at 10:56 AM on December 4, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by signal at 10:56 AM on December 4, 2015 [1 favorite]
signal: that goes back to the roots of the language, in the context of the tongue spoken by the people resulting from the Norman conquest of England. The nobility spoke Norman French while the peasants spoke old/middle English. So we got multiple words for the same thing. Typically the word for a foodstuff the nobs ate as food was the French-derived version and the word for the animal the peasants raised was the germanic/saxon form: hence Beef/Cow, Mutton/Sheep, and so on.
posted by cstross at 11:49 AM on December 4, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by cstross at 11:49 AM on December 4, 2015 [1 favorite]
cstross: that's what I was getting at. It took me a while to get that in American usage, generally speaking, 'Art' implied a value judgement, as opposed to "mere" skill or craft, and was slightly pejorative.
posted by signal at 11:56 AM on December 4, 2015
posted by signal at 11:56 AM on December 4, 2015
Isn't that what pen names are for? So you don't have to sully your good artistic name with the money made from pandering to the masses?
posted by LizBoBiz at 4:48 PM on December 6, 2015
posted by LizBoBiz at 4:48 PM on December 6, 2015
« Older Because, sometimes, we need a little harmony.. | The mystery of this year's tech toy and product... Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
posted by GallonOfAlan at 12:31 AM on December 4, 2015 [3 favorites]