what we talk about when we talk about books
So, turns out that the Bike Hero video I posted last time was actually part of Activision’s viral marketing campaign for Guitar Hero World Tour. I’ll admit, there was a part of me and was thinking This is too good, while I was watching the video, but it’s still a great concept, and it’s generating interest in the game when their sales numbers haven’t been as good as they had hoped.
In other news, Sophisticated Dorkiness posted earlier this week about Stephen King’s recent Entertainment Weekly article. Her post is here. King’s article, titled “Who Says Real Men Don’t Read?” is here. Basically, the gist of the article is King speculating that it’s not actually true that men aren’t reading, but rather that those who are are mostly reading a very specific genre of literature, what he calls manfiction. Manfiction is of course the obverse of chicklit and is full of hard men, soft women, guns, wars and flamethrowers. This whole phenomena–and the various comments I’ve read about the article–underscore for me that crisis that literature is in right now. It’s clear that, in most literary circles, words like “manfiction” and “chicklit” are pejoratives, in much the same way that “fantasy” and “sci-fi” still are. Some of the arguments seem to be suggesting that “manfiction” is not good literature for men or anyone to read. It’s branded as escapist and light, in comparison to “good literature” which has the influence of historical popularity trends and academic merit behind them, and is thought of as better for you, in the way that broccoli is better for you than fudge.
My perspective is that this entire rigid dichotomy is what’s really the problem. There is, frankly, a pretty elitist mentality that would place some books as universally beneficial over other books which get classified as merely slush, brain Cheetos. My counter argument to that is this: Who says? Who gets to decide for the whole of the human reading population what qualifies something as worth reading or not? The entire notion is just absurd to me.
Reading as always been a very personal experience for me, and I’ve tried to read where my inclination has led me. Sure, I’ve read a lot of “great literature” in my life; it comes with the territory of being an English major. And I’ve absolutely loved some of it–I can’t imagine not having read Faulkner when I did. And that’s in part my point, the reason that I loved Faulkner so much is that, at that moment in my life, it spoke to me. That sounds corny, but bear with me. This is the entire reason that I read what I do, because every so often I find books that hook into me and don’t let go, books that become a part of my life experience. For that reason, I try to read omnivorously; I try to give everything a chance to hook into me. But the truth of life is that, not everything does. I hated Wuthering Heights with a passion in high school because it didn’t do it for me. Today, it might. I’ll have to pick it up again sometime and see how we like each other, see how it tastes.
The point is, people, just ditch these classifications, your literatures and your literary fictions and your manfictions, or at least don’t read based on what category a book falls into. Sure, you may not like Lee Child, but the bare facts that he’s selling books signals to me that someone does. And for anyone to impress any system of thinking that would bar someone from the books and the stories that hook into them, that, friends, is the scariest thing I can imagine as a book lover. Because where does that stop? If we judge a book by how it falls into an arbitrary and exclusive category that we would not deign to ever dip into, what’s to stop someone from judging another on the basis of the books that they read? Those who read “easy” books become then “easy” people.
In the end, it’s all about subjectivity to me. Are certain books better than others? Of course I think so. Does that mean I think I have some authority to instruct others in One True Faith of Literature? Of course not. To do so would be damaging to the entire reason that I read. I read because I like what I read, and I try very hard to not look down on someone because they’re reading something that I personally loath–though admittedly that’s often hard. This is not a complete chucking-out of classification, but rather gaining some ironic distance from them. I’m not saying that everything is alright, because of course I don’t think it is. I think some books flat out suck. But that’s just me. That’s just where my inclination leads me. Rejecting the pejorative, books for me are essentially escapism, they are essentially entertainment; that’s the whole point for me.
If I love a book, I will tell you why it’s awesome. And in return you have my promise that I will always listen to you tell me why Wuthering Heights is the greatest thing in the history of recorded human language. And maybe what you say will allow me to look at the text anew, see it from a different angle, see why it digs into you, and maybe it won’t. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter either way.
What matters is that we keep reading. Whatever it is we choose to read.
