Stuff On Sundays: Style Versus Substance?

Style versus substance? Literary versus genre?

Are you a book snob? I’ve encountered more than a few as a reader,  those who dismiss Mills & Boon romances as trash, or Stephen King’s latest bestseller as the opiate of the masses.  Books are assigned literary merit by a faceless social group with a vaguely defined set of parameters.  The definition of literary fiction  is a loose collection of statements that include phrases like  ‘highly stylised’, ‘serious, nuanced fiction’, ‘character-driven’, ‘socially and philosophically relevant’, ‘stands the test of time’, and genre, by contrast, is defined as everything literary isn’t.  It is literary fiction that is lauded in award ceremonies, made required reading in schools and colleges and writers all seem to aspire to write a literary masterpiece but it’s genre fiction that is bought, read and enjoyed far more widely.

Within the category of literary fiction there is a quite a range of reading experiences from the classics such as Moby Dick and A Tale of Two Cities to modern literary novels like To Kill a Mockingbird and 1984 to recent novels that are categorised as literary by their publishers. Don’t get me wrong, I have read my fair share of literary novels and have even enjoyed many, others I have forced my way through because I, or somebody else, felt I should.  Then there are those I gave up on and will probably never again attempt. I have also read hundreds of Mills& Boon type romances and almost everything by Stephen King, some I have enjoyed more than others. Every book I have ever read, which numbers well into the thousands, has helped to shape who I am, if I had discriminated – reading only ‘literature’  – I believe I would be a poorer person for it.

Book snobs seems to think you can’t be entertained and learn something at the same time. I recognise that literary fiction (though certainly not all) has value but I would argue that commercial genre fiction does also. I  believe that every book has something to teach us, it can contribute to our emotional intelligence or our cognitive intelligence, though the best appeal to both. So many women read romance because it allows us to vicariously experience relationships and learn what we want and don’t want in a partnership, thrillers can encourage us to consider issues like environmental terrorism or political corruption adding to our knowledge of the world’s social structure.  Consider the debates genre fiction generates including much maligned popular fiction titles like Twilight. Whether you loved or hated it I am sure at sometime Twilight, or a similarly controversial genre novel like The Da Vinci Code, has been part of a discussion you have participated in and you were required to think about and articulate your opinion, just as you debated the symbolism of The Animal Farm in high school.

Recently the idea of a Slow Books Movement has been discussed in the media and I read the manifesto with growing horror. Maura Kelly from the Atlantic is encouraging reading for thirty minutes a day, which is a good thing, but she insists that only literature counts, specifically stating “Slow Books will have standards about what kinds of reading materials count towards your daily quota. Blog posts won’t, of course, but neither will newspaper pieces or even magazine articles. Also excluded: non-literary books.” Apparently I am “..doing [my]self—and [my]community—a great wrong” by not exclusively reading a narrow selection of literature. She goes on to state that reading literary fiction, more specifically classics, makes you smarter, makes you feel good about yourself amongst a number of other unfounded assertions. That to me seems guaranteed to ensure that some of her readers will never pick up a book again, why would they when Ms Kelly considers they are wasting their time unless they are reading whatever it is that she finds acceptable?   She ends the article with this quote by Joseph Brodsky from his 1987 Nobel Prize acceptance speech, “Though we can condemn … the persecution of writers, acts of censorship, the burning of books, we are powerless when it comes to [the worst crime against literature]: that of not reading the books. For that … a person pays with his whole life; … a nation … pays with its history.” Ms Kelly’s manifesto seems to be in direct contradiction given she censors thousands of ‘non literary’ authors and books.

As a reader, ideally I want a book that engages me intellectually and emotionally with a strong storyline and interesting characters, there are as many genre books that provide me with that combination as literary titles. I am tired of justifying my choices of reading material for book snobs who make what can only ever be subjective judgements. I’ll read what I damn well please, because the most important thing is that I do read whether it is a blog post, a magazine, a newspaper, a classic, a poem, or the latest blockbuster and in doing so I continue to think and feel and grow as a person.

Tell me, do you read mainly genre or literary fiction? Why? Do people judge you for what you choose to read? Or perhaps you judge others for what they read?