I Don’t Write Jodi Picoult, OR the Perception of Literary Value
I read to be entertained. I read to learn. When I’m really lucky, I am entertained and learn something at the same time.
Most of my life, I’ve seen a real disconnect between my intellectual peers, my friends, and the average stranger in the store who lives near me.
I had some friends in college who refused to see films unless they were indie, avant garde, or foreign. They tended to agree with my politics and voted like me. When I came home, my local friends refused to watch films that had even a whiff of critical acclaim. They might vote like me, but their politics usually weren’t as progressive as mine. My parents and sibling like genre fiction, but they’re up for watching or reading anything as long as the plot is to their tastes.
Then there’s the average people I run into at the local cinema or bookstore or supermarket (actually, the bookstore isn’t even a representative sampling, because a lot of people around here don’t read books if they can help it). I rarely share the same politics or taste as they do.
All of our tastes are valid (political opinions aside). We all have the right to watch, listen to, and read what we want. It annoys me that others are not as willing to step outside of their comfort zones. I despise anti-intellectualism, but I despise snobbery just as much. Most intellectuals I know are not snobs, I should point out, but some are, and vocally so.
This brings me to Nicholas Carr and his ilk. People like him are bemoaning the incoming slush pile that will inevitably follow the disintermediation of art production. I call B.S. There’s a lot to be said about an otherwise smart man who gets it wrong so often, but I’ll save that for a later date.
One commenter called Nic on a thread at A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing lambasted advocates of independent publishing, said that “self publishing is NEVER going to take hold” (I have news for you, Nic: it already has. Have you seen the top hundred list at Amazon’s Kindle Store lately?) and called Joe’s and Zoe Winter’s writing amateurish at best. Never mind that he wasn’t expecting much because “it was a vampire novel” in Zoe’s case. *Eyeroll* He seems to be in complete denial about the fact that people are buying their books whether he liked them or not.
I couldn’t have expressed it better than Thomas Brookside did on J.A. Konrath’s blog:
One reason I think traditional publishing folks are in for a rude awakening is because of the disconnect between what publishers think is a quality product and what the genre public actually wants.
Most Golden Age science fiction couldn’t get published today. “These characters are flat and cliched!” “These situations are unbelievable!” “This is an empty spectacle without serious ideas!”
There is lots of self-published sci-fi in the Kindle store right now that I would never buy. The premises sound silly and derivative, the plots [when you can determine them from the description] sound hyperactive and unbelievable. And these books are selling. You know why they’re selling? Because there is a fanbase that wants that kind of material.
[...]
I think a lot of what you think is “terrible” quality work is actually just pulp. Pulp got driven out of the market for a few decades, but now ebooks will bring it back. And you know what? There’s nothing wrong with that.
The material that I would put in the ranks of the truly terrible is instantly identifiable in the descriptions, because the author can’t write a coherent paragraph. It takes virtually no effort to avoid that material.
So if the question is “How will the public avoid books written by crazy people who can’t write basic English?” the answer is “With ease.”
If the question is “How will the public avoid books that creative writing professors at major universities wouldn’t like?” the answer probably is “You know what? A lot of readers don’t want to avoid those books and will actively seek them out and buy them.” (emphasis mine)
I’m not interested in pleasing creative writing professors, not even the ones at my alma mater. You know why? I think they’re snobs. My first creative writing class there was a nightmare. My professor outright forbid genre fiction. She only wanted stories about the present, stuff that would fit into literary fiction or bookclub fiction at the bookstore. I’m sorry, but I don’t do existential mid-life crisis or cancer battles or sad stories about overcoming illnesses or the Meaning of Life.
All of those concepts may come up in my fiction, but they are not the faux center of my literary product. Character-driven stories are only excellent, in my opinion, if they have an equally riveting plot. I don’t want to read most of what passes as literary fiction these days, and I certainly don’t want to write it. Just because Don DeLillo wrote White Noise and Underworld does not mean I liked the sections where he turned paragraphs into laundry lists and tried to pass them off as high art. It was the plot of each book I liked and the plots that made them worthwhile reads; the well-rounded characters were just a bonus.
I am not interested in writing about the secret zen behind the trivialities of everyday, privileged, upper-middle class white Christians in small town America. Not unless they’re being killed off by vampires.
In other words, I do not do Jodi Picoult.
You know what? I think that’s A-o-fucking-kay.
