Popular Literature

Welcome back, gentle reader. I hope your Christahanakwanzica was as relaxing as mine (for those of you who don't feel like breaking down the above insane jumble of letters, that's Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa forced together until they form one monstrously mutated holiday, begging in a distorted voice for it's own death).

Oh, and happy New Year, too.

We discussed high literature a few weeks back, and I feel that today is a good day to discuss books again (because I haven't gotten through enough of Fallout 3 to make a review of it). This time, however, I would like to talk about popular literature.

Perhaps you are considering rolling your eyes and preparing yourself for my devastating criticism of your favorite books, but rest assured: I can't stand the know-it-all pricks who like to shit on everything everyone else likes, just because everyone else likes it. Those guys are assholes.

The waves of immensely popular books that have been seen over the last few years are very good things. Book series like Harry Potter, Eregon, or Twilight are great because they get people to read who normally wouldn't. They are interesting stories that are written well enough to hook readers and keep them reading. This will, hopefully, get the reader to branch out once that series is finished and read other books.

There are problems with this kind of popular literature, the largest of which is that one cannot talk about the problems of popular literature openly because big brother is watching, and he is an obsessed Harry Potter fan. Note the comic care of Derek Barnett. The sad part is that this is not a gross deviation from an actual conversation.

I'm not saying that these books aren't good, because if that were true, no one would ever read them, but the authors are not Homer and their works are not perfect. Authors such as Ken Follet or Phillip Roth are much more skillful in the craft and when Rowlings or Paolini are compared against them, there is no comparison.

I read all seven Harry Potter books and I liked them all (some more than others). I also read the first two Eldest novels and I liked the first one (the second one was crap), and my girlfriend (also an English major) really enjoyed all the Twilight books, but I will not allow myself to think that these authors are perfect when they are not. Rowlings needs to work on the way she describes her interesting world and just because Paolini published a novel when he was nineteen doesn't mean that he can't grow as an author anymore.

I brought up Ken Follet and Philip Roth earlier, and Derek's comic mentions Joyce and Faulkner. Popular literature is nothing like the works of these three, but here's the thing: that's okay. When I was a child, I read Goosebumps. These short, scary novels for children are nowhere near high literature, but I wouldn't read one and say to myself “these characters are terribly developed and the plot lacks any real depth” because the books are a hundred pages long (if that) and meant to be read by third-graders. I read Goosebumps because they entertained me as a child and made me want to read more so that the whole broad world of literature was opened up to me.

Popular novels open up the world of literature for those that may not have been interested in it before, and that's a great thing, but it must be remembered that they don't have the same quality of writing as other, more prestigious authors have. Enjoy them for what they are, but know that they are not made of gold, and they were never intended to be.

Oops, I fell out of the high writing style I usually adopt,
Zac