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.
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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.