An Aside: Good Literature

Debate has raged over what should be considered literature worthy of remaining for the ages, and who decides. Selling millions of book copies might be a temporary indication of popularity, but that is fleeting. Most have a lifespan of a favorable year. If a movie or television deal is made then it might extend for a few more years. These versions can end up outlasting the book by decades or a generation. What written works will exist in the hearts and minds of people as almost immortal is a question strongly argued and never answered.

An article from the July 2014 issue of the magazine Vanity Fair called "It's Tartt - But is it Art?" examined how important literary critics received a long awaited novel. There were those who considered the more than 700 page novel The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt as an instant classic. Still others, perhaps more prestigous, declared such great enthusiasm a sign of bad times ahead for literature. It was as if they were saying that the end had come and nothing good, unless a great change happened, will ever be read in the future.

The center of the controversy rests with literary favorite English novelist Charles Dickens who Tartt's book is compared. If the highest critics are appalled at this, they certainly might have a proverbial heart attack that popular crime novelists and non-Nobel Prize winners Caleb Carr and Alex Grecian have also been compared to the author. The power of words, the critics suggest, has been hijacked by children's literature and bad prose. They have a point. Of all the books published within the last 30 years, unless something else comes along, perhaps the Harry Potter books have the most staying power.

That is also why the most influential critics, at least as described by the article, are wrong. Very few readers care about prose and the craft. Story is and always has mattered first. Again as pointed out by the article, the works of Dickens received equal amounts of bad reviews for the same reasoning that The Goldfinch does. The reality of how good or bad the book is misses the point. Critics may scorn or find brilliance, but time and people alone decide literature's fate. Even that can be fickle, once more as the article points to books that had classic status and then fell out of favor and others rose to prominence. Very few read Gone with the Wind, for instance, but the movie based on it lives on in must watch lists.

One lesson to learn is that critics and academics are both lousy at prediction and nearly irrelevant. Sure they can keep a book alive by teaching them in the classroom. Find fault with a book or ignore it hard enough and a few people listen, making the choice from their opinions. They can even praise to the highest pedestal how great a work is, and select followers might take it as gospel. The majority of readers pick up literature because they want to for any number of reasons that are their own. More than ever "gatekeepers" of literary purity are losing clout.

Ironically,  it is the critics themselves that are helping with their own demise. All the accepted classic writers like Homer, Shakespeare, and Dickens have been reavaluated in the hopes of replacement. Ethnic, women, and other "outsiders" are taught to displace these old standards. There is nothing wrong with trying to study all kinds of literature in the hopes of expanding the consciousness of readers. However, trying to minimize the past works to glorify new ones darkens the probability either survive. That is where the influential critics are right. Not even those who would agree with them care about prose or the craft. In a strange way, the academics also see story first and foremost since they seek out new narratives to teach against the old ones.

The reader comes first as the judge of good and bad literature. The writer can only control what is put on the page, not how it will be received. Anyone who buys and comments on literature has as equal amount of influence as a critic with The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The Paris Review, The New York Times Book Review, and all the literary studies academics put together. A book that is not read will go missing. Books that are highly regarded by a few and read by an equal small number survives as relics in a museum, to be admired. Moby Dick, for instance, has a cultural standing that far exceeds how many people actually pick up the book. That is why it is important writers learn the craft and prose as a way to help build the story, not take its place. The best works seem to combine the two. Be familiar with all kinds of books, both popular and classic. Writers must then know what they want, what the readers want, and do the job. The writing will speak and the audience choose for themselves.