OK, maybe To Kill A Mockingbird wasn’t the best example, but it’s the sort of long, rambling book that doesn’t usually hold my attention. And I still think it’s a good example of a book that just arbitrarily ends. It’s like the author hit her word limit or something, and then decided to end the book by tacking on a couple of extra pages where the drunk guy (Ewell? Ewing?) attacks Scout, and gets killed by Boo Radley.
The Great Gatsby, however, stands out in my mind as the most pointless book I have ever been forced to read. It’s about a bunch of idle rich people who go to parties and gossip about their newly-arrived neighbor. Boooooring.
Remember my first post in this thread? The one that begins, “Part of the problem with this kind of discussion is defining what we’re talking about”? Nobody but you has explicitly declared the majority of bestsellers to not be bestsellers just because they aren’t novels.
Maybe before we go any farther, we need to define “hacks.” If your definition of “bestseller” is “anything written in the bestseller style” and your definition of “hack” is “someone who writes in the bestseller style,” then I think your thesis is well and truly proven. You don’t even have to worry about defining “bestseller style.” Good job.
Ooh! Grumpy today? Just for the record, I write nonfiction and children’s books. I don’t think my job description requires me to adopt your definition of bestseller. Personally, I consider any book that hits a NYT, Book Sense, or PW bestseller list to be a bestseller, even if you haven’t pre-vetted it to make sure that it’s a piece of fiction written by a hack. Not that it matters. If I understand you correctly, I can’t write a bestseller unless I become a hack anyway, right?
Nothing warms my heart like a new (not renamed) Dean Koontz book. I’ve read pretty much all of King, can’t stand the thought of reading Dan Brown and agree that some books considered “great” must have been talking about the fire you could create with them. I don’t want technical/factual information to whisk me away, toss me in the air, spin me around and drop me in a different world, but I sure dig it in my before-bed-book.
May I stand in the line with the folks that say that Mr. King couldn’t end a book well if his book contract depended on it. I agree with the Dark Tower post above, I adored the first three, Song of Susannah was hideous. I haven’t even bothered with the last book, which bums me out, because, well, the first three books!
I have over 1000 books. I adore them. They all exist for a reason, some just to be pretty, some to teach, some to entertain, some just to exist. You can pry my Misty of Chincoteague out of my cold dead heads when you can also pry my books of the letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Robert Browning out. (That is a pretty cool set of books by the way, fabric bound, in a box, but the outer label says “Elizabeth Barrett Barrett.”
Yeah, we’re mainly talking about quality of prose here, which, while always a bonus, is not the most important consideration when you’re talking about a historical biography, cook book, or children’s story book. I thought it was pretty clear that we were talking about fiction. 90% of the posts to this thread wouldn’t make any sense in a different context.
Yes, there is a best seller genre. Exapno clearly indicated that the NY Times list is filled with it. It changes over time, but currently, it’s various plot-driven mystery thrillers, many with elements of conspiracy written in. He did exactly what you asked him to do and you refuse to accept it.
Whether they’re written by a hack is a completely different issue. Some of the books may be quite good. But they are all written in the best seller genre.
I don’t recall anyone said that. The point is that most best sellers are marketed in the best seller genre, just like most fantasy novels are marketed in the fantasy genre. In both cases, there are exceptions (Chistopher Moore’s book is definitely a fantasy novel, but is on the best seller list), but most books on the best seller list are written in that genre.
Exapno analyzed two lists of novels. You have provided nothing to back your assertion.
But … but … okay, I’m not a professional literary critic, but I’m a pretty active amateur, and a slightly snobby one at that. I’m also a solid fan of Stephen King and enjoy his books quite a bit, even the lame ones. Great fun.
That said, I know his strengths and I’m well aware of his weaknesses (as an author, not a person of course). In general, I wouldn’t call him an outright hack, but I understand the reason that many people do and I think they’ve got a lot of valid points to back them up. I happen to think that SK’s high level marks outweigh the times when he pings the Hack-o-meter, but that’s just me. I certainly see the bad writing when it happens.
With all my love for SK’s books, I wouldn’t ever think to compare him on a literary field to say, Philip Roth. That’s just … what would you say? There’s almost nothing to talk about there.
Dan Brown raises my hackles in particular. (NB I haven’t read The Da Vinci Code, but I did read Angels & Demons). In broad strokes, his writing is poor and his characters are atrocious. Usually I would give some credit to the story – I thought the puzzle aspects of the plot were nicely thought out and while religious/occult/secret societies are not exactly new ideas, his presentation was fresh and snappy and hey, what’s not to like about bizarro conspiracy theories? It killed me though that the preface to the book, as well as his web site, insinuates that the conspiracy is grounded in reality, not fiction. I have yet to see Stephen King allude to the notion that his stories are performing a valuable public service by alerting us to the fact that something is rotten in the state of Maine. Dan Brown is propping up his stories with a tin foil hat, which bugs the living heck out of me. He gets extra hack points for being disingenuous.
Ah, but do you post bitter, condescending rants about how only a drooling moron would ever even think of trying to read something by Dan Brown? Or how the popularity of Star Wars and Star Trek is a sign that Science Fiction is dead, and the American public is doomed to degenerate into uneducated cavemen?
Seriously, a true intellectual snob really does equate popularity with lack of quality.
This isn’t to say that there’s no such thing as a hack writer. I refuse to defend Dan Brown against any charges of hackdom. I tried to read The Da Vinci Code. When he described his main character as “Harrison Ford in a tweed suit,” I closed the book and gave it back to my mother. Lazy writing, plus the obvious presumption that the book will be made into a movie (and the attempt to pre-cast the lead role) immediately turned me off to this guy.
Ha, okay yes on the first (I think in my post in a previous thread I said that reading Dan Brown actually made me dumber), and no on the second (I’ve also read every Star Wars novel up to the New Jedi Order ones).
Which assertion have I failed to back? The OP mentioned “bestsellers,” and specifically took the trouble to say, “Particularly when its a fiction book.” That says that the OP is addressing all bestsellers, but that the point of the first paragraph applies especially well to fiction (not just novels, mind you, but all fiction).
Exapno stated that “…bestseller is as much a category/type/genre as science fiction or mysteries.” I stated that his point (as far as it goes) applies only to novels. Do you disagree? Did I fail to prove that assertion in my post?
Exapno also stated that “Bestseller writers do tend to be hacks.” I argued that having your book on a bestseller list doesn’t make you a hack, although I’d be willing to concede that there’s a strong correlation for novelists. Did I fail to back that assertion adequately?
At first, I agreed with this point, but the more I think about it, the more I disagree. When I read lazy writing, I become a lazy reader. If I give myself a steady intellectual diet of junk, I begin to find myself less and less capable of digesting more worthwhile ideas. Minds, like muscles, need to be challenged and stretched in order to grow, and minds (and muscles) that don’t grow inevitably begin to atrophy.
It may indeed better to read junk than it is to not read at all, but there are enough good works out there that you don’t have to make that choice. Most people who enjoy reading can enjoy challenging, well-written fiction and they’d probably end up enjoying it more than hack writing if they would get into the habit of seeking it out.
I don’t have a cite for this, but… Did you know that James Michener and John Barth were neighbors?
When you think about the pantheon of literary greats, remember that the final word on a writer’s lasting importance isn’t written until about fifty years after he’s dead. Who would’ve guessed that Jim Thompson would be in the club and that Boothe Tarkington wouldn’t? When my father was in high school (late 1930s), Charles Dickens was considered too popular and commercial to be of serious scholarly interest. When I was in high school (late 1970s), Tolkein was in the same boat.
Will Vonnegut still be a big name 50 years after he kicks? Or Capote? Both of them are/were coasting on the reputation of one really good book apiece, and might be dismissed by future generations for this reason.
It comes down to a consensus of critics, most of whose judgment you absolutely shouldn’t trust more than your own.
If you really think that any writer, “hack” or not, can blithely choose to write a bestseller just to make money, I think you have a distorted view of both the industry and writers. It would be easier to decide to become a major league baseballer to become rich because I’m sure thare are more young men getting their first multimillion dollar MLB contract each year than are receiving their first multimillion dollar book deal.
I’m sure that any publisher that could correctly identify the elements of the “bestseller genre” would simply hire teams of genuine “hacks” to churn them out to order.
Whether you like their work or not best selling authors are writing what they like and doing it because they are writers - it is easier to write than not write. The fact that people buy the books is just potluck.
In all my reading about writers I have only ever read about one who deliberately wrote a “commercial” book. That was Mario Puzo, who after writing critically acclaime, non-selling “literature” told his wife he would write something that would sell. I’m sure you know what it was.
Maybe not a bestseller, but when I think “hack,” I think of the kind of writer who churns out half a dozen books a year, all written to the same formula, all disposable, none requiring much thought or creativity. I don’t know whether anybody does this any more, but back in the days of “pulp fiction” it certainly happened. If you want to make any significant amount of money through writing, you have to aim at either quality or quantity, and the hacks are the ones who aim at quantity.
Exapno did exactly as you asked: picked a reputable set of bestseller lists and shows that a majority of them were writers he (and you) considered hacks.
You, OTOH, merely said his results would be the opposite, and gave no examples to back it up. You didn’t even do what he did.
But the discussion was never about nonfiction. It was always about novels. Bringing in nonfiction and other books is merely obscuring the issue.
I was not discussing this issue; I was discussing the fact that you asserted (without bothering to researh it) that any best seller list is filled with “literary” quality books. Exapno showed otherwise, but you are afraid to even look it up.
I’m not really up on Capote’s work, but Vonnegut’s reputation to rest/currently resting on one book? Noo. The guy’s got a very memorable and mostly consistent canon. *Slaughterhouse * is certainly the one that brought him the most renown initially, but *Cat’s Cradle * and Breakfast of Champions, for starters, are at least as important to many people.
Vonnegut’s literary legacy will likely mirror Dickens’s, in my opinion. . . for one thing, because the guy’s so damn reader-friendly. If you’re in for one, chances are you’re in for the set.
This is the truest thing said so far in this thread.
A- frickin -men.
Reading junk is better than reading nothing, just like poking yourself in the foot is better than poking yourself in the eye. Good thing the dichotomy, as offered, is a false one.
