Here's another thought: Bad literature sells well because it's generally confined to a very narrow, and popular, range of subjects. What sells well? Thrillers, action novels, detective stories, high fantasy (mostly YA), horror, tales of the supernatural, romances, "chick lit." Heroes defeating villains. Beautiful people not falling in love until they eventually fall in love. That sort of thing goes over big, regardless of whether or not it's well written. It takes an excellent writer to write a good novel that doesn't fall into one of those categories. Ulysses is basically a third of a million words about a couple of guys wandering around Dublin for a day, meeting and talking, and going their separate ways. It doesn't sound interesting, but Joyce did such a good job of writing it that it's been in print since 1922 and is generally considered a work of genius. Lolita is about a child molester, and not much happens except that he spends a lot of time driving all over the USA with the child he's molesting. It's pretty ugly and sordid stuff, but Nabokov wrote it so well it's been in print for more than sixty years. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is about patients in a mental hospital. What is The Catcher in the Rye about? There's no real plot; it's just the musings of a perplexed teenager trying to figure out the world. The Old Man and the Sea is about a fisherman catching a fish, then losing it. I could go on and on. My point is that a good writer can make good literature out of virtually any subject. Bad writers have to rely on tried-and-true formulas that are usually sensationalistic.
Fifty shades became popular because people told each other about it. Not because of some massive marketing push. Like the success of Titanic, that came later.
Many of what we now call literary was considered pulp or worse when it was originally published. Yes more than half of what is being published these days is crap--but there are still many great works being written in what is called the genres.
Huh? Of course not. I did not mean to imply that genre writing is crap by definition. Many excellent writers have produced masterpieces in genre fiction. What I meant to say was that it's easier to sell genre fiction than "mainstream" (for lack of a better word) fiction, so it doesn't have to be as well written. If the subject matter is lurid enough, sensational enough, people will buy it even if it's a piece of hack work. That's a fact. I meant to say that it takes excellent writing to make a good novel out of non-sensational subject matter. What publisher would want to publish a novel about a boring subject that's also poorly written? The examples I listed were brilliantly-written pieces about boring subjects (I shouldn't have included Lolita there, on second thought - subject was ugly but not boring), and it was the quality of the writing that made them great. Look at TV drama. What do you find? Endless crime shows over here and medical shows over there. Almost nothing else in prime-time drama. Genre stuff. Why? It's easy to sell, even when it's bad.
Like niche literature. There's a demand on certain genres, like a while ago for vampire romance. Meyer stumbled upon a gold mine with Twilight (maybe the agent smelled it), good for her. I have read the first book in the saga ("saga") several years ago for a university class on Children's Literature, and the novel was every bit as horrible as rumored. I threw it at a wall/bed/floor several times out of frustration and failed to finish it (watched the movie to find out whether Bella and Edward got hit by a truck and the good story would start. MISTAKE, it was even worse! Don't tell my professor, though). But I think I get it why it's sold so well. I'll be brutal: the unpopular, unsightly girl Millicent-Myrtle Mullersson can live a dreamy life through the empty slate that is the popular Bella Swan. And why not? I can see myself love the novel as a 13 yo. I'd want it cos everyone and their dog were reading it. Replace Edward with Spike, and I would have gladly fattened Meyer’s purse with my measly allowance. I disliked the book, but I do like the innocence around it, the shameless fairytale elements. As for the other huge seller, Fifty Shades of Crap. I read the beginning up until Anastasia met Christian, and that’s the furthest I got. It was awful. I’ve only heard what happens in the series, and it kinda makes me sick. Nothing against BDSM, but the author seemingly knows jackshit about it. Hey, I get it that Bella loves Eddie and Belle loves Beast and Buffy loves Angel, but old Chrissy seems like someone who’d get along great with Patrick Bateman, so yeah, he shouldn’t be admired but imprisoned. That’s just me. But if these novels bring pleasure to people, good, I’d rather you be happy and satisfied than sad and sexually repressed. My theory is that people are inherently lazy and hate to challenge themselves, so why pick an original, challenging book? In the Western world in particular, our lives are filled with the menial job, boring friends, fatty food. Hey, it’s nice and comfy and safe here, but our pot of hedonism is hardly brimming, so we want entertainment that caters things to us that we can’t or won’t achieve irl: sexy businessmen and vampires who adore and desire the little old me, the plain Jane. We want to become dashing, muscle-bound heroes who bed damsels despite (or because of!) the ruggedly handsome looks and volatile nature. We want to escape to the imperfect yet appealing world of adventure from our monotonous excess-filled life. We want stuff that’s readily chewed, so we don’t have to work for something that doesn’t pay us for our hard labor. I apologize if I was a bit frank there.
Kinda hard on readers, aren't you? Who's to say the same people who pick up FSOG aren't also picking up Dickens? That on some days they are, as you say, tired and worn out from RL and just want an easy escape, and other days they're looking for something different? Or that they find the story more compelling than the writing? Or that they simply have different tastes than you do? I think (and this is in general, not just picking on you) that people who put down other people for their choice of reading material is pretty egotistical, particularly when one doesn't know everything those other people read.
This is key -- I read FSOG, and it entertained me, even though I felt like I needed to pour bleach in my eyes afterward. Sometimes I don't feel up to parsing through David Foster Wallace or Jonathan Franzen, or paying close attention to Robert Caro or Richard Hofstadter. What I do question, however, are the people who write the reviews of FSOG on amazon or other sites and say things like "this is the best book I have ever read!" or claim that it was well-written, or that they look forward to more from this author. I've known of some folks who ordinarily wouldn't pick it up, but read it because it had become such a cultural phenomenon and wanted to know about it for that reason alone. It's possible to recognize it for what it is, yet still get some enjoyment from it.
Yeah, true. Though this is beside the point. I bet many people have read Harry Potter and Dickens. Like me. Merely offering a thought as to why does bad literature sell so good. There's a huge amount of people out there who haven't heard of Dickens but gobble down Fifty Shades, Potters, Twilight, Sookie-the-other-vampire-lover, [insert whatever you consider bad literature]. But I still think people are inherently lazy. If we weren't, we probably wouldn't have the wheel, the fire, the cellphone, and the yoghurt maker. Definitely. For the sake of conversation, I offered my view which, certainly, can be interpreted and read as me putting down people. Though, I have never picked on my friends who read books I -- and a bunch of people here -- consider bad literature. Like I said, I'm happy that at least they still read (let it also be known that in other areas, some less bookish friends of mine can kick my ass to the moon and back).
Or one could think people are inherently inventive and inquisitive. But why would you (or anyone else)? This whole business about what is bad literature is as senseless as people arguing about what's a bad vehicle, or a bad TV show, or a bad magazine, or a bad flower - people will decide based on their own criteria what is good and what is bad. Just because the criteria differs between people doesn't make one "better" than the other. That's all I'm trying to say.
Yep. Those traits aren't mutually exclusive. Well, you probably know the answer, this might be a rhetorical question, but... to feel better about themselves? Isn't a part of putting other people down to lift yourself up? You do feel a bit taller when you stand on someone else. Yep, but that's another topic. But the question was, why does bad lit sell so good, and I offered my non-scientific theory which, granted, overlapped with discussions on what's bad and what's good as it contained my opinions on certain novels dubbed bad by me--which is a rather fruitless topic (or let's say, produces plenty of rotten, worm-infested fruit).
I'm pretty sure there's objective criteria for what makes a bad vehicle, like, how reliable or safe it is?
But are all opinions equally valid? Of course not. If I'm wondering about whether a particular suspension bridge is any good, I'll take the opinion of a structural engineer who has studied it over the opinion of a ten-year-old who likes it because she thinks it's pretty. Most critics thought The King's Speech was an excellent movie, but my ten-year-old nephew was bored by it, probably because it didn't have enough explosions. I've seen it, and the critics were right and my nephew was wrong. If I'm trying to figure out whether or not to read a particular novel, I'm more likely to respect the opinion of a professional critic who has read and studied thousands of novels than that of someone who has only read what they had to read for school. Not all opinions are equally valid. Sure, the consensus of a group of critics is no guarantee of a novel's quality, but that's the way to bet.
If you're looking for an expert opinion, you seek out experts. That's not what we're talking about here. Here we're talking about what some people like and what some people don't like. The only opinion that has experts in literature is on the technical aspects - not on the storytelling aspects. Which is exactly why 'bad' literature sells well - it may not be technically good, but the story is what sells. And when opinions are about story, no one is an expert. We like what we like, we don't like what we don't like, and nobody's opinion in that respect is any more valid than anyone else's. And personally, I don't listen to professional critics at all when choosing books - I listen to people who have similar tastes to mine.
Boring literature too, apparently. I think people have really lowered the expectations of quality storytelling nowadays. All these reviewers consider Life of Pi to be a classic but so far to me it's just a average, sloppily-paced novel that needed more time and more exciting chapters. It's not horrible, but it's just average. When i say average, i really mean average.
That's subjective. And by 'literature' I mean artistic books. For me, Literature is art, while normal books are entertainment. I think you can have good writing that isn't literature. Some paintings provide insight, while others are just nice to look at. It's like films. Films are art, movies are entertainment. Both are legit. Just my opinion.
Actually, in a way, we are looking for an expert opinion. What I mean is, the more we read, the more expert we ourselves become. If we limit our reading to the most basic pulp action adventure stories, or the most basic romances, or whatever else, we get bored with the sameness of the characters, plots, and situations. We start looking for something else. Gradually, whether we plan to or not, we begin reading more original, more complex novels - perhaps even novels with strong themes and brilliant technique, with thought-provoking ideas and beautiful style. I know this happened to me; I got bored with all the science fiction I was reading in my early teens and started raiding my dad's bookshelf. He had Steinbeck and Hemingway and Aldous Huxley and Gogol and early Pynchon - I even remember trying to struggle through Gravity's Rainbow when I was twelve or so (I didn't make it - it's on my to-read shelf right now). I think that kind of graduation happens to a great many people. Our horizons widen; we challenge ourselves more because it's more exciting and satisfying to read the mind-blowing stuff. Eventually, we look back at the stuff we loved when we were kids and realize that it's not enough to satisfy us any more. When we've learned to love Beethoven's piano sonatas, Chopsticks just doesn't do it for us any more. When we've learned to love chess, checkers seems a bit juvenile. All this is to say that our tastes change as we get more mature and experienced. I think bad literature sells well because a great many people who read it aren't experienced readers. Those of us who are more experienced can't help but consider those books the sort of thing we graduated from. That's not a comment on the intelligence or emotional capacity of the people who read those books; it's just a comment on their inexperience as readers.
My reading experience hasn't been like that. I was reading the "classics" in grade school - I was also reading the Hardy Boys. Now, some 50 years later, I still read the classics and the Hardy Boys, along with a lot of 'good' books and books that people look down their noses at. If it looks interesting, I'll read it. I don't know why it's so hard to accept that people don't always like or dislike the same things we do and that it doesn't mean they're less intelligent or less experienced or less anything.
I think bad literature sells because despite the bad writing, it hooks the reader in some way, maybe allows them to live out a fantasy life. There's nothing wrong with reading and liking something that's "bad." But while it's enjoyed momentarily, it's usually forgotten soon after. The classics survive for a reason. BTW, I don't see how you can call "Harry Potter" bad literature. Sure it has problems (like that final Epilogue) but I think Rowling did an amazing job plotting something that ran 7 novels, each longer than the previous one.
She was able to do this because she was making stuff up as she went along. Most epic series does this, it's why Harry Potter as a series isn't very tight or focused. I would say Potter is certainly bad literature. It has this awful morality, something that seems to slip past a lot of people, the writing is fantastically pedestrian, and weirdly the only very interesting characters are characters who are not really that important, like Neville Longbottom.
It's not necessarily a good thing that each novel is longer than the last. Often that means that the writer has become famous and the editors are afraid to do anything. I've seen many well-established authors do things that less-established authors could never get away with. But as far as Harry Potter, I agree, Lemex -- I had never read the books or seen the movies. I am now reading the first Harry Potter book with my 8 year old. I've been surprised at how poorly-written I find it. Really, I've been shocked at the number of adverbs, especially that come at the end of a sentence, modifying a previously used verb, so the modification (which often is unnecessary) comes after you've already formulated a picture in your head. I've found the story thus far to be fairly pedestrian, but given that it's written for children, I don't really expect anything more.
To be fair, I do think Rowling's writing got better with each book, so give her some credit at least.
