False Opposition The ever-stimulating Metafilte…
False Opposition
The ever-stimulating Metafilter provided the link to The Complete Review?s long and trenchant response to BR Myers? ?Readers? Manifesto? in The Atlantic (all the relevant links are available from the CR page). Everything I wanted to say about it is covered in the response, as indeed it is in many of the gratifyingly intelligent views in the Metafilter members' response section.
Still, I'll add this: there is a false opposition between popular and ?literary? fiction. I mean, I can?t read most of those authors Myers attacks. I cringe at the ?poetic? language many graduates of creative writing courses seem to treasure (?Snow Falling on Cedars? being the most cringeworthy example). So I agree with him there. But the books that move me more than any others cannot be considered in the same bracket as the authors he champions, such as Stephen King. The distinction is the way the genre-writer considers the form as a given, while the literary artist, for want of a better phrase, suffers from a lack of such trust. He or she has to begin from the very beginning. In this sense, the authors Myers calls literary are not at all as they have turned ?literary? into a genre in itself. When someone begins from the beginning and finds a way forward, there is a unique sense of freedom and possibility. At least, I sense it.
Myers also labours under the illusion that critical attention and awards matter. Rather than demanding entertainers like King receive ?the recognition he deserves? (I?m sure he?s happy with his millions of sales), he should be asking in depth (and not impressionistically) what he likes about King and what he dislikes about The Shipping News, which would be a matter of literary criticism. But that wouldn?t be populist claptrap and might stretch the readers? intelligence too far, and we can?t have that, can we?
