Write what you know, they say. Of course, if you’re a writer, that may mean that you write about writing. Which is actually what I’m doing right now, despite the fact that I’m about to tell you why I shouldn’t and why in fact none of us should if we ever want to have there be such a thing as “popular literature” again.
Of course, the thought that writing about writing is a sign of the literary apocalypse isn’t even mine -- I stole it from another writer, the inestimably wise and amusing Nick Hornby. Well, just borrowed it really. He shouldn’t mind, I mean, at least I credited him with it as opposed to simply picking his intellectual pocket. Plus I’m doing my best Hornby right here and now, spinning out dry, chatty one-liners that conceal or explode deeper meanings within their sugary coating.
ANYWAY… despite the fact that I really meant to be reading The Great Nick’s newest novel Slam this week, it’s still hidden at bedside underneath one of his “massively witty” (says so right on the cover) collections of columns written for the British magazine Believer. Columns in which the Great One himself writes about, well, reading. In other words, he’s writing about other writers. Specifically, in the case of page 43 of Housekeeping Vs. The Dirt, writing about how he wishes other writers would stop writing about writing, or at least stop doing it so often.
Come on now, do try to keep up.
Hornby is justifiably concerned by the fact that the divide between the writers and readers among us and the rest of society has grown so large (a 2004 survey found that just 57 percent of Americans had read a book in the past year -- as in, so much as one single book, whether it be a Pulitzer prize-winning novel or an unauthorized tell-all biography of Britney Spears’ personal shopper). And he rightly observes that a sort of defensive retreat or shrinking inward seems to be occurring in the literary world, ticking off a stream of recent novels in which the authors’ central characters are also writers or otherwise part of the literary elite. He characterizes the danger like this:
“It excludes readers… maybe great art shouldn’t be afraid of being elitist, but there’s plenty of great art that isn’t, and I don’t want bright people who don’t happen to have a degree in literature to give up on the contemporary novel; I want them to believe there’s a point to it all, that fiction has a purpose visible to anyone capable of reading a book intended for grown-ups. Taken as a group these novels seem to raise the white flag: we give in! It’s hopeless! We don’t know what those people out there want! Pull up the drawbridge!”
And that is the attitude you can see not just online -- where on various blogs and message boards you’ll find the literati one-upping one another to see who can hold their brow the highest -- but on the bookshelves themselves. I was reading the other day about the fragmentation of popular music into a hundred tiny microgenres, and about how there are no Beatles or Led Zeppelins or even U2s any more and may never be again, because in a world of constantly expanding choices, the odds against any substantial subset of the population making the identical one have grown impossibly high.
The same thing seems to be happening in the world of books, where you have mainstream fiction, teen fiction, detective fiction, romance, sci-fi, non-fiction biography, non-fiction self-help, travel, cooking, sports, etc. And off in its own little elite corner of the published universe, you have literary fiction. Where the “real” writers hang out, you know. Members of The Club and all that. Literary lions who would not deign to write a sentence that the common folk might stumble across and see themselves reflected within, except as contemptuously-rendered caricatures.
This reflexive condescension toward the very masses that literary fiction nine times out of ten fails to reach ensures that it will remain safely ensconced within the gilded cage its authors seems to love so well. Hornby has spoken to this point directly:
Of course, the thought that writing about writing is a sign of the literary apocalypse isn’t even mine -- I stole it from another writer, the inestimably wise and amusing Nick Hornby. Well, just borrowed it really. He shouldn’t mind, I mean, at least I credited him with it as opposed to simply picking his intellectual pocket. Plus I’m doing my best Hornby right here and now, spinning out dry, chatty one-liners that conceal or explode deeper meanings within their sugary coating.
ANYWAY… despite the fact that I really meant to be reading The Great Nick’s newest novel Slam this week, it’s still hidden at bedside underneath one of his “massively witty” (says so right on the cover) collections of columns written for the British magazine Believer. Columns in which the Great One himself writes about, well, reading. In other words, he’s writing about other writers. Specifically, in the case of page 43 of Housekeeping Vs. The Dirt, writing about how he wishes other writers would stop writing about writing, or at least stop doing it so often.Come on now, do try to keep up.
Hornby is justifiably concerned by the fact that the divide between the writers and readers among us and the rest of society has grown so large (a 2004 survey found that just 57 percent of Americans had read a book in the past year -- as in, so much as one single book, whether it be a Pulitzer prize-winning novel or an unauthorized tell-all biography of Britney Spears’ personal shopper). And he rightly observes that a sort of defensive retreat or shrinking inward seems to be occurring in the literary world, ticking off a stream of recent novels in which the authors’ central characters are also writers or otherwise part of the literary elite. He characterizes the danger like this:
“It excludes readers… maybe great art shouldn’t be afraid of being elitist, but there’s plenty of great art that isn’t, and I don’t want bright people who don’t happen to have a degree in literature to give up on the contemporary novel; I want them to believe there’s a point to it all, that fiction has a purpose visible to anyone capable of reading a book intended for grown-ups. Taken as a group these novels seem to raise the white flag: we give in! It’s hopeless! We don’t know what those people out there want! Pull up the drawbridge!”
And that is the attitude you can see not just online -- where on various blogs and message boards you’ll find the literati one-upping one another to see who can hold their brow the highest -- but on the bookshelves themselves. I was reading the other day about the fragmentation of popular music into a hundred tiny microgenres, and about how there are no Beatles or Led Zeppelins or even U2s any more and may never be again, because in a world of constantly expanding choices, the odds against any substantial subset of the population making the identical one have grown impossibly high.
The same thing seems to be happening in the world of books, where you have mainstream fiction, teen fiction, detective fiction, romance, sci-fi, non-fiction biography, non-fiction self-help, travel, cooking, sports, etc. And off in its own little elite corner of the published universe, you have literary fiction. Where the “real” writers hang out, you know. Members of The Club and all that. Literary lions who would not deign to write a sentence that the common folk might stumble across and see themselves reflected within, except as contemptuously-rendered caricatures.
This reflexive condescension toward the very masses that literary fiction nine times out of ten fails to reach ensures that it will remain safely ensconced within the gilded cage its authors seems to love so well. Hornby has spoken to this point directly:"I profoundly disagree with those who equate 'literary' with 'serious' -- unless 'serious' encompasses 'po-faced', 'dull', 'indigestible'. Anyone who does anything that seems easy or light or which actually entertains people always tends to get overlooked -- apart from by the reading public, the only people who really matter. I reserve the right to write the kinds of books I feel like writing."
Can I get a "bravo"?
I for one am tremendously grateful that we still have a few talented writers like Nick Hornby around who believe you can better illuminate the human condition by writing about people you might run into while living a normal everyday life and reporting their experiences respectfully, with humor and pathos and texture and detail, than by indulging in snobbish literary navel-gazing.
It’s certainly what I aspire to. And after all, let’s face it, my navel just isn’t that interesting.
It’s certainly what I aspire to. And after all, let’s face it, my navel just isn’t that interesting.
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