According to a recent Forbes list, the following fiction writers made the most money out of all their colleagues in the past year:
1. James Patterson ($70 mill)
2. Stephenie Meyer ($40 mill)
3. Stephen King ($34 mill)
Jodi Picoult Asked For Her Latest Book Advance In Cash So She Could Get A Jonathan Franzen Haircut And Suit Right Away
4. Danielle Steel ($32 mill)
5. Ken Follett ($20 mill)
6. Dean Koontz ($18 mill)
7. Janet Evanovich ($16 mill)
8. John Grisham ($15 mill)
9. Nicholas Sparks ($14 mill)
10. J. K. Rowling ($10 mill)
If there is a God, I sincerely hope he regrets the whole free will schtick right about now. Although, this list isn’t all bad. I am fine with J. K. Rowling and Ken Follett. But Patterson, Meyer, Sparks and Steel earning that much money in a year is unholy. And you know who’s to blame? The general public.
It is no secret Literature’s Police Woman thinks the general public’s choice of books is about as intelligent as Bristol Palin’s baby. With good fucking reason. According to the bestseller lists (and this Forbes list), the general public loves Dan Brown, James Patterson, Nicholas Sparks, Danielle Steel and Stephanie Meyer. The general public is incapable of picking up a book from any genres except romance and crime. The general public has an eerie buying power, leading me to believe some of these people might actually have college degrees. The thing is, I know countless people who shun the reading tastes of the general public with an equal or greater amount of snarkiness than I do. But an actual member of this mysterious breed? If I know one, I am being tricked by a most deceitful Iago.
Who are you people?
What are your physical characteristics? How can I spot one of you on street level? Are there any particular phrases or gestures that reveal your identity?
If you are a member of the general public, I would greatly appreciate a comment or guest post demystifying your ubiquitous (yet oh-so-sneaky) presence. I’ll pay you for it. In birth control pills.
Unfortunately, I have a sneaking suspicion any lover of the commercial fiction writers named above is also the type of person who scoffs at literary “elitists” who don’t understand The Da Vinci Code is the best book in the history of the multiverse and that literary fiction is like, so dumb, seeing as it requires you to actually think while you read rather than just chill back with a piece of pulp that demands about as many brain cells as a re-run of an a particularly predictable episode of Law & Order. That you’ve already seen. Twice.
The “general public” buys their books at Walgreens and airport gift shops. Seldom have I seen anything worth reading in either of those locations. (This also explains the 10,000 types of literary Chicken Soup.)
I was at Walgreens today. My eyes hurt when I saw the book section. Every single book was a romance novel. Oh – sorry. There was one stack of James Patterson’s newest.
I enjoy pulp fiction I will not lie
I enjoy cheap thrills I know not why
I bow before the Stephen King
I enjoy his words they sting
I follow what you say
I read anyway
mayhap the masses just want simple and easy,
at least they are reading . . .
If this blog had a Facebook-y “like”-feature, I would “like” this.
You have to give Stephen King some love too-he totally agrees; one of his articles for Entertainment Weekly called out the general public for their crap taste in books. I don’t know how he remains on the list when he actually writes intelligent fiction.
I haven’t read Sparks, Steel or Patterson, but I admit to enjoying Meyer, Rowling, King, Follett and Grisham (Koontz and Evanovich, notsomuch). I don’t understand the vitriol with which pop fiction is assaulted; they’re fine reads, and no book “requires” more or less thought–some may be accessible with less, but those same books to which you condescend are just as deep as tried classics when within active minds.
Perhaps the coolest thing about books is, you can own them past the capacity of their writers. By speaking as though it’s sinful to prefer “trash,” you implicitly insinuate that books are varying levels of depth written for varying levels of reader. Minds aren’t gladiators of quantifiable prowess.
Though I make no claims about the books’ respective authors, I can find more for me in Twilight than in Wuthering Heights. I think you’d be a fool to say that that necessarily makes me lesser than those who would disagree.
Wow. Romance is just another word for deja vu, so I don’t get why people like it so much. If you’ve read one, you’ve pretty much read them all. There’s a damsel in distress, a prince comes to save her, they run into some problems, split up, and then get back together. So why are people wasting their life on Nicholas Sparks’ books and/or Stephenie Meyer’s books? I’ve personally only read Sparks’, Meyer’s, and Rowling’s novels and I’ve got to say that I like Rowling’s novels. However, Sparks’ books are all the same sappy pieces of crap — I don’t even know why they keep making them into movies and Meyers’ books are thick only because every single atom is described even though she intended for the reader to be in Bella’s shoes. :I
Okay. I’ll bite.
I read Koontz, Patterson, Evanovich, and Rowling.
I like commercial fiction because after dealing with problems all day at work, enjoying precious little time with my spouse, and the complete overload of information and things that need to be done, I want some entertainment that will end well. The key word here is: entertainment.
I find “intelligent” and “literary” books to be almost uniformly tragic at the end. No thanks.
I know life is pain, but I want to escape into some little adventures where the hero wins, the bad guy loses, and my time-crunched brain doesn’t have to spend hours wallowing in misery.
However, I will say that even I have limits. Just the thought of a Sparks novel makes my eye twitch. Pass.
Go ahead. Rake me over the coals. But you did ask.
keep it real, iight
I read the following in The Economist a while back:
“A lot of the people who read a bestselling novel, for example, do not read much other fiction. By contrast, the audience for an obscure novel is largely composed of people who read a lot. That means the least popular books are judged by people who have the highest standards, while the most popular are judged by people who literally do not know any better.”
Makes sense to me.
I read that too. It’s a very lucid and eloquent summation of the motherfucking truth.