Do you really think that pajama-jeans-wearing soccer mom in the park is going to flip the final page of “Breaking Dawn” and pick up Plato next?
And even if you did, how is the “gateway drug” book relevant at all aside from being just that, a gateway drug? A million ravenous preteen Twihards would tear your esophagus out if you suggested this was true about their desert island book of choice.
There’s this idea that people who select books as if they were CW shows in print form will at some point gobble down one too many paranormal romances about star-crossed Merman-human relations and the heartbreaking challenges of fish sex and suddenly see the light and praise Hemingway and sing Kumbaya in the classic lit section of Borders shutdown sales and the gateway drug book fall will into oblivion. SHENANIGANS! Hoards of these kids are just plain lifers for commercial lit. One sniff and they’re hooked. Yeah, maybe one or two will grow up a little, get a library card, realize Nabokov is awesome. Whatever. Those are just the kids the Twihards pick for Indian burns when the heresy is unveiled.
It’s not a gateway drug if it’s the only thing you keep snorting. Or if you’re over the age of twelve.
I hereby announce a war on literary gateway drugs. Just say no.
PS: Zadie Smith wrote this nugget of awesome: “readers fail when they allow themselves to believe that fiction is the thing you relate to and writers the amenable people you seek out when you want to have your own version of the world confirmed and reinforced.”
Got that quote from this sweet article, which also recounted a story about Jodi Picoult saying her readers tell her all the time Stephenie Meyer was a gateway drug for them to find her novels. On that note, stop the world. I want to get off.
Anyway, here’s the sweet piece, from Newsweek http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2009/04/10/why-is-it-a-sin-to-read-for-fun.html
“If we remove the assumption that reading is virtuous (a Picoult novel is better for you than a reality TV show), then the good/better hierarchy (Virginia Woolf is better for you than Jodi Picoult) collapses, and books are left to stand on their own merits, not their implied nutritional value.”
I like the phrase nutritional value here, because it reinforces what I’ve felt about Twilight and Twilight-esque books being as devoid of nutrition as a can of Beefaroni. You know what happens to a child who isn’t introduced to healthy options? They grow into obese adults who turn their noses up at plates of raw vegetables and then wonder why they’re standing in line to compete for the chance to star on The Biggest Loser.
I say it’s time for a new reality show where a Gordon Ramsey-type star leads intellectually obese adults through the proper way to shop at bookstores the way Gordon would at a grocery store; pointing out aisles to avoid and screaming at the top of his lungs, “WHERE’S THE STANDARDS?!”
By the way, my desert island book is Neil Gaiman’s AMERICAN GODS. Not for everyone, I know, but it’s like a new mind fuck everytime I read it.
That show would be the fucking best. Also, American Gods is awesome.
I love this: “Implicit in this theory is the idea that at some point reading should stop being a pleasurable diversion, and start being work. ” Because reading anything but shit is, of course, so fucking difficult.
“Smith’s argument has its merits, but it leaves little room for the flashlightunder-the-covers, stay-up-till-dawn-to-find-out-what-happens thrill of reading.” That’s how I read Dante, Goethe, Phil Dick. Shit literature I don’t have to stay up til dawn reading. I can guess what happens and skim to confirm. “Yep, just as trite as I thought”.
And working in the medical field makes me read this: ” a fan in remission from leukemia wrote that she learned a lot more about her disease reading “My Sister’s Keeper” than the doctors ever told her.” and want to vomit.
But more importantly than all this, who won the Nicholas Sparks competition?!
(Interrobang ftw)
This reminds me of discussions I used to have about photography on dpchallenge. There are some purists out there, that think that there must be a higher purpose in everything that is done so much that they verge on megalomania. Everything must be art. Fluff is not fluff, it’s actually an abomination, you neophytes just don’t understand…. blah, blah, blah… You seem to be one of these people.
Sometimes, you just do crap for fun, sometimes you DON’T want to really think about what you’re reading, you just want to read it and let your mind wander into a new world. Sometimes, people really do have such a limited breadth to their understanding on a given subject, that fluff is all they can live up to, Whether that’s reading, writing, painting, sculpting, etc. really doesn’t matter.
And what’s so wrong with that? Not everything we do as humans is epic or even necessarily worthwhile. So what? What if you take up a hobby and you’re really bad at it? So what if people write for money and not for the ideal of perfect literature?
Maybe your “elitist” demands that everyone do things and read things for a higher purpose or for some edification stem from your own inability to create anything that you deem worthwhile, upright, or whatever it might be.
Some of the truly greatest writers in history have taught us that any activity isn’t really worth it without enjoyment. You seem to hate everything and enjoy nothing, so why are you doing this? Maybe if you were doing something that you actually loved you wouldn’t speak in pure vitriol all the time.