Movie people can enjoy the worst schlock and Ingmar Bergman: they throw it all together. For book people, trash and art do not ride in the same part of the bus...more
This guy needs to widen his circle of lit-geek friends.
Most of the writers/"book people" I know are voracious readers, and will read anything that catches their fancy, whether dubbed high/low/middlebrow/fic/nonfic/self-help/comics etc. I don't think I personally know many writers who *don't* read widely. The only people I know who are serious book snobs of the type written about in this article come out of the English department here at the University (rather unsurprising, eh?), and (oddly enough) a couple of sci-fi genre purists who turn up their noses at anything with the slightest whiff of fantasy to it.
Otherwise, it's a Great Big Readin' Playground, and we're all hyperactive. ;D
His generalizations about book people are insulting and egregiously reverse-snobbish; despising people because they like David Foster Wallace is just as ludicrous as despising them because they like Dave Barry. "Michael" is singing the praises of the lowbrow reader's bookshelf, but if he's sneering at the highbrow readers while he's doing it, that doesn't, in my book, make him any more populist or any less narrow-minded than the frustrated martini-sipping academic in the black turtleneck at the publishing party. It just means that he's snotty about an entirely different set of books.
In my experience, there are plenty of people who like books the way that he claims movie people like movies--and man, just to undermine that part of the argument as well, I have met some film snobs over the years--they are omnivores, curious and eager and fun to talk to. Despite what Michael seems to think, it is possible to like both Jorge Luis Borges and Stephen King. I am one example, and I can think of many others.
Well-put. Snob is a snob is a snob . . . and someone who claims that they only read soi-disant 'highbrow' literature either has a lot of spare time or is lying. My mom reads big thick dense historical novels -- and then a handful of Agatha Christie mystery novels partially to change the pace up and partially to recharge her brain.
Often the way movie people validate their tastes in movies is to take junk and declare it to be high art and therefore they are allowed to watch it. I don't remember where I read it but in some book there were two people; one was making jokes about Jerry Lewis, and the other said, "Well, actually, in high film circles, his movies are beginning to be regarded as classics." One's views of highbrow vs. lowbrow are, of course, subjective: I regard Pride and Prejudice as light reading because I've read it so many times. (This does not reflect on the intrinsic worth of the book, as determined by the Pritchard Scale [or whatever it was in Dead Poets Society].) However, that doesn't mean that I can take Plan Nine from Outer Space and declare it High Art. (I've seen it. It isn't.)
And anyone who says they didn't like Jurassic Park, either the book or the movie, because it's too popular (or populist), is either lying or much less intelligent than they think.
My first thought was, the earnest highbrow book people he talks about are the ones whose opinions get published.
He did point out that book people he knows can also be too earnest and highbrow, making me wonder what crowd he's hanging with--are they New York publishing professionals anxious to be the next Tina Brown? Because I don't know any book people who read only the earnest and high minded stuff...well, one. (And I use him as my template: if he loves it, it's sure to be depressing, without one iota of humor, but packed solid, within its experimental form and first-person-present-tense prose, with good sermons about the Meaninglessness of Life. Therefore I don't need to read it, because despite its collection of small press awards, it's going to be just like all the other earnest, first-person-present-tense, plotless lessons in the Meaninglessness of Life.)
The rest of the book people I know read comics, they read slam bang space opera, they read Terry Pratchett along with Proust and Joyce and Atwood. They read for pleasure, and what gives them pleasure is not the mere presence of the current de rigueur philosophy of misery, but ideas about everything as well as an engaging story.
Of course, my view could well be skewed because my reading friends are mostly in the sf/f world.
I work for a publishing company that deals mainly with literary fiction, and most of my friends work for publishers or agencies. We all read a hugely eclectic variety of books too, from comics to crime to children's fantasy to whatever happens to light our candles, and we don't feel remotely 'guilty' about any of them. So I'm also vaguely puzzled by this idea that literary book people only read 'highbrow' books: only vaguely, though, as it's such a silly article.
This made me giggle, though: ...the British book-world people I've known have been much more buccaneering and extraverted than American books people, and much more devil-may-care. Much better at parties too, by the way.
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(no subject)
Date: 2004-01-12 07:52 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-01-12 08:17 am (UTC)Peg
(no subject)
Date: 2004-01-12 11:24 am (UTC)This guy needs to widen his circle of lit-geek friends.
Most of the writers/"book people" I know are voracious readers, and will read anything that catches their fancy, whether dubbed high/low/middlebrow/fic/nonfic/self-help/comics etc. I don't think I personally know many writers who *don't* read widely. The only people I know who are serious book snobs of the type written about in this article come out of the English department here at the University (rather unsurprising, eh?), and (oddly enough) a couple of sci-fi genre purists who turn up their noses at anything with the slightest whiff of fantasy to it.
Otherwise, it's a Great Big Readin' Playground, and we're all hyperactive. ;D
(no subject)
Date: 2004-01-12 08:07 am (UTC)In my experience, there are plenty of people who like books the way that he claims movie people like movies--and man, just to undermine that part of the argument as well, I have met some film snobs over the years--they are omnivores, curious and eager and fun to talk to. Despite what Michael seems to think, it is possible to like both Jorge Luis Borges and Stephen King. I am one example, and I can think of many others.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-01-12 02:03 pm (UTC)Often the way movie people validate their tastes in movies is to take junk and declare it to be high art and therefore they are allowed to watch it. I don't remember where I read it but in some book there were two people; one was making jokes about Jerry Lewis, and the other said, "Well, actually, in high film circles, his movies are beginning to be regarded as classics." One's views of highbrow vs. lowbrow are, of course, subjective: I regard Pride and Prejudice as light reading because I've read it so many times. (This does not reflect on the intrinsic worth of the book, as determined by the Pritchard Scale [or whatever it was in Dead Poets Society].) However, that doesn't mean that I can take Plan Nine from Outer Space and declare it High Art. (I've seen it. It isn't.)
And anyone who says they didn't like Jurassic Park, either the book or the movie, because it's too popular (or populist), is either lying or much less intelligent than they think.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-01-12 08:09 am (UTC)He did point out that book people he knows can also be too earnest and highbrow, making me wonder what crowd he's hanging with--are they New York publishing professionals anxious to be the next Tina Brown? Because I don't know any book people who read only the earnest and high minded stuff...well, one. (And I use him as my template: if he loves it, it's sure to be depressing, without one iota of humor, but packed solid, within its experimental form and first-person-present-tense prose, with good sermons about the Meaninglessness of Life. Therefore I don't need to read it, because despite its collection of small press awards, it's going to be just like all the other earnest, first-person-present-tense, plotless lessons in the Meaninglessness of Life.)
The rest of the book people I know read comics, they read slam bang space opera, they read Terry Pratchett along with Proust and Joyce and Atwood. They read for pleasure, and what gives them pleasure is not the mere presence of the current de rigueur philosophy of misery, but ideas about everything as well as an engaging story.
Of course, my view could well be skewed because my reading friends are mostly in the sf/f world.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-01-12 04:52 pm (UTC)This made me giggle, though:
...the British book-world people I've known have been much more buccaneering and extraverted than American books people, and much more devil-may-care. Much better at parties too, by the way.
- arcly, who is British