# Popular Literature vs. Good Literature **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [May 11, 2011, 1:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/popular-literature-vs-good-literature/581456 "2011-05-11T01:04:47Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/f04885/32.png) [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qin_Shi_Huangdi)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2011, 1:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/popular-literature-vs-good-literature/581456/1 "2011-05-11T01:04:47Z")
To quote from the 1959 Encyclopedia Britannica on its article on the “Novel”: > [@](#): > > "It (the novel) has become, overwhelmingly, the most widespread and influential form of literature produced in the 20th Century, The great majority of novels, however, can scarcely be regarded as serious works of art or indeed as serious contributions to literature of any kind; they are, rather, the market products of a highly commercialized industry. The future of the novel would seem to depend on the ability of the novelists, and perhaps society in general, to break down the separation that has arisen between the good and the popular. Since then it seems, sadly, the difference has continued to grow. Most novels that for instance have won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in recent years are difficult to read and digest. ---
**Author:** ![Lamar\_Mundane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/85f322/32.png) [@Lamar\_Mundane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamar_Mundane)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2011, 1:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/popular-literature-vs-good-literature/581456/2 "2011-05-11T01:25:20Z")
I don’t see any difference between now and the 1950’s in the types of novels that have won the Pulitzer Prize, nor do I find them difficult to read or digest. I do think that more people are wedded to literary niches and find it difficult to follow a modern novel if it doesn’t feature elves and princesses, for one example. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2011, 1:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/popular-literature-vs-good-literature/581456/3 "2011-05-11T01:37:58Z")
Popularity and quality are independent variables. Some popular books are great books; some great books are unpopular; some lousy books are very popular; and some lousy books don’t sell worth beans. ---
**Author:** ![Malleus\_Incus\_Stapes](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/malleus_incus_stapes/32/3293_2.png) [@Malleus\_Incus\_Stapes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malleus_Incus_Stapes)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2011, 1:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/popular-literature-vs-good-literature/581456/4 "2011-05-11T01:43:15Z")
> [@Lamar\_Mundane](#): > > I do think that more people are wedded to literary niches and find it difficult to follow a modern novel if it doesn’t feature elves and princesses, for one example. _raises hand_ That pretty much describes me, yup. ---
**Author:** ![Taomist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/53a042/32.png) [@Taomist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Taomist)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2011, 1:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/popular-literature-vs-good-literature/581456/5 "2011-05-11T01:49:03Z")
I’m still wondering…seriously wondering…why A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man was ever considered good reading, much less required reading. I have yet to make it past the first few pages, and have always been scared to death to tackle Ulysses in fear of furiously fragmented flippancy. :dubious: People read…well, _I_ read…for several reasons. Entertainment is one of them, but the chance to be simply astounded by a sentence, or truly delighted by a turn of phrase, is also important. Not many authors can both interest me and intrigue me, and that’s ok. I get plenty of enjoyment out of what many folks would call trash, and can be bored silly by some pretty damn good writers. It really just depends on the mood. ---
**Author:** ![JessEnigma](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/cdc98d/32.png) [@JessEnigma](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JessEnigma)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2011, 4:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/popular-literature-vs-good-literature/581456/6 "2011-05-11T04:26:42Z")
> [@Taomist](#): > > I’m still wondering…seriously wondering…why A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man was ever considered good reading, much less required reading. > > I have yet to make it past the first few pages, and have always been scared to death to tackle Ulysses in fear of furiously fragmented flippancy. :dubious: I really adored _Portrait_ when I first read in high school. I was 18 and something about it just clicked – I think I related to it very much, especially Stephen’s teenage religious issues. I reread it last year at 25 and it felt much less immediate and rather less fun than my first read. I wonder if that might not be the issue for you…though upon rereading your post, I guess the style might be more of a concern. 😉 It’s less fragmented later on, certainly not like _Ulysses_. Hell, I have a degree in Irish literature and a keen interest in 20th century lit and I haven’t finished _Ulysses_ yet. It sits on my bookshelf, taunting me with its bookmark firmly wedged somewhere around the 3rd chapter. Joyce’s work is important, I think, because it’s been influential. Even if you don’t much care for it personally (and goodness knows I don’t really like Joyce much myself, for all that I did love _Portrait_ once), there certainly are plenty of writers who liked it enough to try their hand at a similar style. It makes for a curious sort of popularity, I guess. As for good vs popular…I would agree with others that it’s a false comparison. Books can be both or neither or just one. And I rather doubt that there has ever been a time when commercial considerations were not a factor in publishing novels, regardless of the doom and gloom from the Encyclopedia Britannica writer about the future state of the industry, so it seems a bit odd to criticise novels for appealing to the masses only in 1959. ---
**Author:** ![Argent\_Towers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e8c25b/32.png) [@Argent\_Towers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Argent_Towers)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2011, 4:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/popular-literature-vs-good-literature/581456/7 "2011-05-11T04:36:38Z")
Tom Wolfe’s books are very popular and also very good (critically acclaimed, not just in my opinion.) ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2011, 4:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/popular-literature-vs-good-literature/581456/8 "2011-05-11T04:40:21Z")
I personally feel the influence of the novel as an artform peaked in the 19th century. The dominant influential artform of the 20th century was the film. ---
**Author:** ![Argent\_Towers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e8c25b/32.png) [@Argent\_Towers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Argent_Towers)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2011, 4:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/popular-literature-vs-good-literature/581456/9 "2011-05-11T04:49:34Z")
Absolutely true. And, I think we are seeing that the dominant artform of the 21st century so far has been television. The writing for television series today is orders of magnitude better than the average cinema film. ---
**Author:** ![lisiate](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f05b48/32.png) [@lisiate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lisiate)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2011, 5:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/popular-literature-vs-good-literature/581456/10 "2011-05-11T05:20:20Z")
I gave up on ‘literary’ novels about a decade ago, when I realised that most of them just weren’t that enjoyable. I think _The Life of Pi_ was the straw that broke the camel’s back. A Booker prize winner I came away thinking it was about as enjoyable as a fair to middling genre novel. And on further reflection I realised that the last dozen or so ‘serious’ novels I’d read hadn’t even reached that level. So it’s been elves and princesses (and spacehips) for me from then on. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2011, 5:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/popular-literature-vs-good-literature/581456/11 "2011-05-11T05:42:07Z")
> [@lisiate](#): > > I gave up on ‘literary’ novels about a decade ago, when I realised that most of them just weren’t that enjoyable. I think _The Life of Pi_ was the straw that broke the camel’s back. A Booker prize winner I came away thinking it was about as enjoyable as a fair to middling genre novel. And on further reflection I realised that the last dozen or so ‘serious’ novels I’d read hadn’t even reached that level. > > So it’s been elves and princesses (and spacehips) for me from then on. I look at literary fiction as just another genre of fiction. It’s fine if that’s what you like. But fans of literary fiction should stop acting like their genre is inherently and universally superior to everyone else’s. There’s good literary fiction and bad literary fiction just like there’s good mysteries and bad mysteries or good science fiction and bad science fiction. ---
**Author:** ![GameHat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/ed655f/32.png) [@GameHat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GameHat)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2011, 5:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/popular-literature-vs-good-literature/581456/12 "2011-05-11T05:48:22Z")
> [@lisiate](#): > > I think _The Life of Pi_ was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Awww… I really enjoyed The Life of Pi. That said, my junk food reading these last couple years has been Martin’s _A Song of Ice and Fire_ and Brett’s _The Warded Man_ and Rothfuss’ _The Kingkiller Chronicles_. So yeah, I’m no stranger to popular fantasy fiction. I’m still a literature (and art) snob. I enjoy the above books to death, but they’re still literary junk food. Pleasurable, but fleeting. ---
**Author:** ![Tapioca\_Dextrin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Tapioca\_Dextrin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tapioca_Dextrin)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2011, 6:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/popular-literature-vs-good-literature/581456/13 "2011-05-11T06:39:04Z")
Thank heavens no published modern rubbish like Finnegans Wake way back when. It would have given Tristram Shandy a case of the vapours. ---
**Author:** ![lisiate](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f05b48/32.png) [@lisiate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lisiate)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2011, 7:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/popular-literature-vs-good-literature/581456/14 "2011-05-11T07:20:44Z")
**Gamehat** I did actually like _Life of Pi_, it’s just that I like books in my favoured genres somewhat more. **Little Nemo’s** summed it up well I think - literary novels are just another genre, and one whose golden age is long past. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2011, 8:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/popular-literature-vs-good-literature/581456/15 "2011-05-11T08:40:36Z")
> [@Tapioca\_Dextrin](#): > > Thank heavens no published modern rubbish like Finnegans Wake way back when. It would have given Tristram Shandy a case of the vapours. Thank goodness nobody published purulent, disgusting nonsense like _Gulliver’s Travels_ in the pure lily-white 1950s. It would have sent the whole of Boston into the terminal fits. ---
**Author:** ![Alka\_Seltzer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c89c15/32.png) [@Alka\_Seltzer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alka_Seltzer)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2011, 10:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/popular-literature-vs-good-literature/581456/16 "2011-05-11T10:42:27Z")
I have room for both. Some of the more literary novels I’ve enjoyed are _Wolf Hall_, _Life of Pi_, and _The Name of the Rose_. I also read Discworld, Harry Potter, LOTR and recentely Robin Hobb. My popular reading outweighs my literary reading considerably. I’m very glad both that there are good writers who focus on story-telling, and that there are books available with much more depth to them than _The Da-Vinci Code_. ---
**Author:** ![Malleus\_Incus\_Stapes](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/malleus_incus_stapes/32/3293_2.png) [@Malleus\_Incus\_Stapes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malleus_Incus_Stapes)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2011, 4:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/popular-literature-vs-good-literature/581456/17 "2011-05-11T16:38:09Z")
> [@GameHat](#): > > Awww… > > I really enjoyed The Life of Pi. That said, my junk food reading these last couple years has been Martin’s _A Song of Ice and Fire_ and Brett’s _The Warded Man_ and Rothfuss’ _The Kingkiller Chronicles_. So yeah, I’m no stranger to popular fantasy fiction. I wouldn’t call those literary junk food. Rothfuss in particular I think is one of the best writers to come along in years. If the Booker Prize and such included genre fiction, I think he’d be a shoo-in. EDIT: I liked _The Life of Pi_, too, although my suspension of disbelief snapped when he found the island of carnivorous plants. ---
**Author:** ![Tom\_Scud](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/f08c70/32.png) [@Tom\_Scud](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Scud)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2011, 4:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/popular-literature-vs-good-literature/581456/18 "2011-05-11T16:45:54Z")
> [@Tapioca\_Dextrin](#): > > Thank heavens no published modern rubbish like Finnegans Wake way back when. It would have given Tristram Shandy a case of the vapours. Indeed, deliberately difficult fiction is clearly [an artefact of the 20th century](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Faerie_Queene). ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2011, 4:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/popular-literature-vs-good-literature/581456/19 "2011-05-11T16:50:47Z")
A novel can be classified as “good literature” for purposes of this discussion if it might, conceivably, someday be assigned or optional reading in high-school English classes. Stating it that way should make it clear enough that “good literature” is **not** necessarily worth your time to read. Think back to high school, when you were expected to read _Wuthering Heights_\* while you couldn’t wait to get back to _Lord of the Rings._ - I read the first two or three chapters and passed the test based on meticulous classroom-lecture notes (didn’t even bother with Cliffs). Two years ago I finally finished the book, and you know what? It’s a piece of shit. ---
**Author:** ![Peremensoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ce7236/32.png) [@Peremensoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peremensoe)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2011, 5:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/popular-literature-vs-good-literature/581456/20 "2011-05-11T17:09:50Z")
> [@1959 Encyclopedia Britannica](#): > > The great majority of novels, however, can scarcely be regarded as serious works of art or indeed as serious contributions to literature of any kind; they are, rather, the market products of a highly commercialized industry. With appropriate substitutions for “novels” and “literature,” can’t this be said of any form which has attained great popularity in some of its works? > [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > I look at literary fiction as just another genre of fiction. It’s fine if that’s what you like. But fans of literary fiction should stop acting like their genre is inherently and universally superior to everyone else’s. There’s good literary fiction and bad literary fiction just like there’s good mysteries and bad mysteries or good science fiction and bad science fiction. I’m completely baffled by this. What is a “genre” characteristic of “literary fiction” that would distinguish it from other genres? I would have said, rather, that the best mysteries, the best science fiction, _are_ literature. _The Lord of the Rings_ (the book) is assuredly literature in every sense that I understand. It certainly wasn’t produced to meet the expectations of a commercial industry. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/popular-literature-vs-good-literature/581456.md?page=2)