Dear Friedrich --

The Wife and I just spent a happy evening watching the DVD of a 1980 Roger Corman horror picture, Humanoids From the Deep. It's full of tacky pleasures: shag haircuts on both the girls and the boys; lots of naked pre-Nautilus bodies (it was fun to remember that a certain amount of flop-and-dimple was once considered sexy); rubber-suited, seaweed-draped monsters; and a blessed absence of souped-up, computer-generated imagery.

"Humanoids" is a likable hybrid of a movie, caught somewhere between a cheapo postwar monster pic and an '80s conglomerate-driven extravaganza -- which means in practice that the first thing the otherwise very '50s monsters do when they see a girl in a bikini is to yank her top off. (Very '70s). It's from an era when I was able to find contemporary movies a lovable medium, something I can't do anymore. Rather wistfully, I watched the film thinking: now this is a movie I can imagine going out with my friends and having a good time making.

But, for probably quirky reasons, what the movie really made me chew over was the difference between the movie-person's view of the world and the book-person's view of the world.

A quick word of explanation and qualification: by "movie people," I don't mean everyone who likes movies. I mean people who wind up in the field, whether as techies, execs, publicists, journalists, directors, designers, etc. Same for "book people"; for the sake of this discussion, I don't mean book fans. I mean people who spend a hunk of their professional lives in the books world -- as agents, retailers, critics, editors, writers, designers, etc.

I'm going to make the daring assumption that we can all tolerate some wild overgeneralizations for the sake of a point or two. So, if you're with me ...

As you certainly don't need to be told, the movie-person's view of the world swings happily back and forth between art and trash. It's a view that grows out of discussions of the movies and of popular culture that were pioneered by such people as Gilbert Seldes (here), the Cahiers du Cinema crowd (here), and Pauline Kael (here). It's a cartoonish view of their arguments, but nonetheless there it is.

The movie person's conviction is that trash and art are closely and necessarily connected -- that, since movies have their roots in lowbrow entertainment, the ultimate movie is one that fuses the oomph and power of popular entertainment with the values, complexity, and pleasures of high art.

Movie people aren't much different than many foodies, come to think of it. (I haven't been friendly with the kind of food snob who looks down on anything that isn't three stars and French.) The foodies I've known are pluralistic eaters: "I love food," they're prone to say. They adore cheap ethnic dishes, high-end fusion cooking, a good burger, a home-cooked plate of macaroni and cheese, exquisite sushi, etc. It's a kind of daredevil, whirling approach to food. Go for the gusto where and when you find it, caution and cholesterol levels be damned. What they dislike isn't lowbrow food; it's blah or uptight food.

Your typical movie person seems to me a similar creature. He loves monster pictures and avant-garde shorts; he's a specialist in some genre or other; he enjoys a couple of porn stars and worships a few legit actors -- but he's also thrilled to have a chance to argue about Fellini, Godard, and Hou Hsiao-Hsien. What the movie person tends to dislike (even if he's profesionally caught up in making them) is middle-of-the-road movies.

For the moment, I'll refrain from all discussion of the downsides and upsides of this mindset. There it is -- the fact of its existence is what interests me for now. Roger Corman himself exemplifies this view: he's a very smart guy, a Stanford engineering grad who hustled trash movies, gave early jobs to some of the most talented American filmmakers of recent decades, and was distributing Bergman's "Cries and Whispers" at roughly the same time he was producing "Humanoids from the Deep."

The book-person view of the world is quite different. It's more respectable. As the recent King-vs.-Hazzard dustup demonstrated (here's a recent Washington Post article about it, which I found thanks to Terry Teachout, who's got a good posting on the topic here), in the world of books trash and art still don't ride in the same section of the bus; the books mindset -- at least the respectable-publishing mindset -- is still segregationist. If the movie-world view is all about the vital connections between art and trash, and about how each is the lifeblood of the other, the book person's imagination is taken up with the neverending struggle of art, talent and brains to triumph over the forces of money, hustle and fame.

Quick note: I've met plenty of individuals who didn't conform to the above templates. I've met snooty film executives, and I've known film critics who, although they write zingy pop-culture criticism, are among the least socially-ept people imaginable. I've also spent lunches and evenings with smooth hipster book-world folk. But I think that, as generalizations, the templates hold true enough; you might make similar flawed-but-useful comparisons between a college's English Department and its Engineering Department.

Movie people roared with laughter on seeing themselves satirized in Robert Altman's "The Player." They didn't take offense at being roughed-up in public; they saw the film's portrayal of their world as accurate and funny. This generally rowdy character helps explain why Quentin Tarantino has been both a critic's fave and a movie-world person's darling. Whatever they think of his films, movie people look at Tarantino -- with his love of violence, of comic books, and of European film, and with his endless babble about art, criticism, storytelling, comedy and visuals -- and they see someone who's got the same movie-lovin' fever that brought them into the field.

American book-world people? A drearier -- and much less worldly -- bunch. (IMHO, of course.) They're often introverts, as well as sensitive souls who howl in outrage if you dare to crack a joke about their sacred cows. Many like little more than working themselves up into a red-faced paroxysm of indignation about the cruelty of ... of ... well, just about everything, you know? I mean, life, huh? (FWIW, and I don't have wide experience here: the British book-world people I've known have been much more buccaneering and extraverted than American books people, and much more devil-may-care. Much better at parties too, by the way.)

God knows movie people aren't afraid of appearing ludicrous. They simply can't be; if they were, they wouldn't last long in the field. (This is one reason movie people crave honors so badly: because they spend most of their lives looking and feeling ridiculous.) Books people, though, are often indignant about how they're seen, or (usually) overlooked. While the movie-people view is that high and low feed each other, book people are quick to sense their dignity threatened by commerce, and are almost never invigorated by a brush with the market. Movie people see real virtues in trash, but there are no (or very few) Tarantinos of high lit.

Explaining why this contrast exists probably isn't a big deal, though I may be missing some pieces. Movies? Well, it's impossible to avoid the presence and importance of sex, money, deal-making, technology, egos and hustle in movie history. Life in the movie world can be rough, and movie pleasures themselves, though they can certainly be refined ones, generally tend to have to do with (and to be based in) personality, sex, action, and drama -- low, easy, crude stuff.

In the books and lit life, it's easy for the person who prefers to remain ignorant of the messy process that gives rise to books to think of reading-and-writing as an epic tale of geniuses fighting to soar above the degradations of everyday life.

Well, bullshit to that!!!

Oops, sorry, got carried away there for a second. Apologies.

Practically speaking, many people who join the books world do so because they're scholarly and quiet sorts. You won't find many movie professionals who spend a lot of time regretting that they left academia, or who went into the moviebiz hoping to find a quiet refuge from the stresses of business, ambition, competition, chores, and sex. But you'll find a lot of such people in the book world.

Also, the simple fact is that, for many people, books equal school -- while movies represent weekends, vacation, time off, romance and sex. And so life in the books world is for many books pros a way of trying to continue living life as though in school. Here's a Robert Birnbaum interview with the Boston Globe book reviewer Gail Caldwell. It's an excellent interview, and Caldwell's an excellent reviewer who does a first-class job. That said, what kind of person does she strike you as? She seems to me to be a born student, ever eager to square off with her next assignment.

As a consequence, the books world has a quiet-study-and-thought-at-war-with-everyday-distractions feeling. IMHO, many of the characteristics, and many of the endlessly recycled arguments and discussions that preoccupy bookworld people -- standards at war with money; the way striving for the good becomes a matter of holding the world at bay; a dreamy leftism -- can be explained from this simple fact: many books people are bugged by life outside of school. They wish life were like school. They were happy in school, and they did well there. Money, business, leaky roofs -- it all interferes with how they want to live, buried in their books. They feel put-upon by life; they want to be taken care of; no one cares; give me a grant; omigod, they're cutting the NEA's budget again!!! ...

While I have some sympathy for that set of feelings and thoughts, I also tire of it quickly. And although I've liked reading and writing a whole lot since I was a small child -- and although I have in fact spent professional time hanging around the books and publishing world -- I simply seem to have a more hardy temperament than true book-world people do. I wouldn't bother with books if I didn't first find it fun to do so; for me, interacting with books begins with recreation, not with an assignment.

I find the gestalt of the book world oppressive; it gives me a pain and it makes me grumpy. And I'm often left wondering: how can books people say of themselves that they love books when they look down their noses at 90% of the books that are published? They disdain not just Stephen King but also self-help books, visual books, and trash biographies; they relish intense discussions about what measures up as a "real book" and what doesn't. (My staggeringly original response to this tiresome issue: They're all books, for god's sake.) IMHO, what books people love isn't books; what they love is their own standards, and their fantasies about what literature should be.

The Wife and I, occasional semi-pro writers both of us, often scratch our heads over the drabness of the respectable books world, which can seem full of people who don't care for sensual pleasures and who are quick to politicize a naive hysteria. The books view of the world is such a prissy and worthy one that it makes me want to throw stones. Stranded among these people, I quickly take to pointing out that the history of books, writing, and reading -- and, yes, even of literature -- is inextricably caught up with such vulgar matters as copyright, business, technology, ambition, ego, politics and money. This particular rant of mine never fails to horrify, I'm pleased to report.

Movie people are usually hearty souls who don't mind a robust disagreement; books people cleave to what's been pronounced worthy. Tell a respectable publishing-world person that you like a Jackie Collins novel (and I liked the one I've read very much), insist that you see real merits in the book, and watch your interlocutor recoil in chagrin. She feels pity, pain and horror for your benighted soul. Tell a film world person, on the other hand, that you adored the movie version of "The Other Side of Midnight" (and I did), and he's likely to crack up and start telling you about all the gaudy trash that he loves too.

What might a more earthy, worldly, and pleasure-centric view of reading and writing be like? I've seen very few signs of such a thing so far. The movies have had Seldes, Sarris, Kael, etc; as far as I know, the books world has had no equivalent. For a few years about a decade ago, Margo Jefferson reviewed books for the NYTimes and seemed to hit exactly the right note. She picked and discussed books like an honest-to-god human being, and not like someone whose dearest dream is to be back in Freshman English. But few people took note of how refreshing and innovative her reviews and her approach were, and she went on to other assignments. (Where, alas, she's been a bore.)

The sensational Princeton historian Robert Darnton has written enlighteningly about reading habits, and about the close connections between philosophy and pornographic fiction in pre-Revolutionary Paris (here). I understand that he's preparing a big work on the history of book publishing -- can't wait! Alberto Manguel's A History of Reading (here) is generally sensible and helpful. The editor (and first-rate raconteur) Michael Korda has written a couple of books (here and here) about American publishing that are worldly, informative and amusing.

A tip of the hat to the Frenchman Daniel Pennac too. Have you run across his short book Better Than Life (highly recommended, and buyable here)? It's a small, informal, point-of-purchase thing, but the respectable lit and publishing world ought to be forced to re-read it every year. Slight though the book is, I think the point Pennac makes in it about pleasure and reading -- that reading and books should be part of the good life -- is far more important than anything I've ever found in the work of many scholarly heavyweights. (George Steiner, are you listening?) Pennac is earthy, practical, and amoral about enjoyment. Here's a link to a page explaining and presenting Pennac's "Reader's Bill of Rights." Here's an interview with Pennac for those who can manage French.

The portrayals of the books life in Gissing's New Grub Street and Balzac's Lost Illusons are still entertaining and accurate. And Charles Simmons' comedy The Belle Lettres Papers (buyable here), which is set at a thinly-disguised New York Times Book Review Section (where Simmons had a job), certainly nails that institution once and for all. Paul Goldstein's Copyright's Highway: The Celestial Jukebox (here) is nonfiction about what's happening with copyright law as we move into the digital era; it's another eye-opener. Eager to hear from you (as well as from visitors) about books, movies, and other sources you've found helpful.

How might a more roughhousing conversation about books and writing get started? I'm not sure, but I do have a hunch. One of the many things about the books world that that took me by surprise was that it hasn't gone through a guilty-pleasures phase. Remember what a kick it was when movie people started admitting that the lousy movies they loved gave them as much pleasure as they got from their art-movie faves? Books people, bizarrely enough, almost never allow themselves such indulgences.

So I vote we start a guilty-reading-and-writing-pleasures discussion. It's too easy to make large claims for good crime writers. It's been done already. And whether or not you think the best crime writers are the equal of the best lit writers (I think they're better), they're clearly solid and good, and few would dispute that. But how about all the lousy books you've loved spending time with? How about all of the throwaway books you've had a good time with? How about the books you never finished yet enjoyed? How about your bad reading habits? These are all part of a rich reading-and-writing life too.

Huh? Wha'? Oh: I guess it's up to me to kick the discussion off. OK, for starters:

• I'm always in the middle of a half dozen books. Often I finish none of them. This doesn't bother me -- it's part of how I like conducting my reading and writing life, dammit.
  
• I think the Italian porno comicbook artist Milo Manara is a genius. Here's a good example of his work.
  
• There are many respectable books I'll never read even though I'm semi-interested in them. But I'll often spend a half-hour with such a book, snooping thru the index, the credits and acknowledgments, looking for telltale passages. I feel at the end of the half hour that I know the book pretty well, and I go around giving the world my opinion of the book. Fair? Unfair? I don't care.
  
• Since there's almost no one I want to read 600 pages about, I've read very few biographies all the way through.
  
• But if I can't be bothered to wade through an entire superlong biography, I'm often pretty happy listening to an abridged audiotape version of it. A four-tape abridgement is the equivalent of about 150 pages -- which is the length I think most biographies should be.
  
• I think most novels, especially literary novels, should be about 50 pages long. Or even shorter.
  
• I like looking through books that collect and present movie posters.
  
• I think some publishers -- for example, Jack Jenson of Chronicle Books, Kent Carroll of Carroll and Graf, and Peter Kindersley of DK -- are more interesting creators of books than most authors are.
  
• I adore collections of interviews, and I think it's a wonderful form.
  
• I keep a shelf of camp favorites: Pamela des Barres "I'm With the Band" is a proud possession. But I suspect that the Baroness Sheri de Borchgrave's A Dangerous Liaison: One Woman's Journey into a World of Aristocracy, Depravity, and Obsessive Love (buyable here) will probably never be surpassed. It's blissfully vain and self-serious -- wonderful, completely inadvertent trash. This shelf of books is one of my most-prized shelves.
  
• I collect books about cheesecake artists.
  
• Despite my advanced age and my physical decrepitude, I still flip through sex books looking for the good parts.
  
• I own a ton of books I'll never read, and that's OK with me. I enjoy having them around. Some I wouldn't read all the way through even if I had the time. They're there for reference, for grazing through, and for company.
  
• So far as nonfiction goes, I see no reason not to consider websurfing the equal of plowing through a nonfiction book. If you're interested in a topic, a website -- or a bunch of websites, since there's no reason to stop at one -- can be as good as a book.
  
• I wish more porn-fiction publishers were still around in these post-VCR days.
  
• I often enjoy the porn-for-women fiction published by Black Lace, an innovative, female-run porn-publishing company in England. Here's the website of one of Black Lace's authors, Emma Holly. Writing sex scenes (let alone sex stories) that have some conviction and heat isn't easy, and being able to do it seems to be a rare talent. I think Emma Holly is darned good.
  
• I think that crime writers are, on the whole, better fiction writers than lit-fiction writers are. For one thing, they've got more respect for their readers; for another, they're less bound up in ego.
  
• I think the modernist (pomo/decon/etc) fixation on "writing" per se -- whatever the hell that is -- has been absurdly overdone. Was Defoe a great writer in this idiotically limited sense? Was Stendhal? If I had to choose between "The Charterhouse of Parma" and all of post-WWII American lit's fancy sentences, I wouldn't hesitate for a second about which I'd kiss off.
  
• I like and search out thin existential French novellas about women, despair, sex and suicide.
  
• I've bought, used and enjoyed a number of For Dummies and Idiots books, some of which struck me as very well done.
  
• I think David Pogue (who writes a NYTimes computer column, and is the author of numerous computer-tip books) is first-class.
  
• I often have a better browsing time at comic book stores than I do at bookstores. There's more waywardness, more fetishism and more fantasy on display. It's a fringe scene, and the authors, artists, designers and publishers often make freer and more imaginative use of the book medium than respectable authors and publishers do.
  
• I thought Robert McKee's how-to-write-a-screenplay book Story (buyable here) was a more interesting book about the movies than any volume of film criticism or film history that I've read in recent years.
  
• If a creature arrived from Mars and asked for a book that did a good job of conveying what life in the US is like these days, I wouldn't hand him anything literary, I'd hand him one of The Onion's humorous books of mock news stories.
  
• I love short fiction but I hate 99% of contempo literary short stories. It pleases me to go around saying things like "I love short fiction but I despise 'the short story'."
  
• I enjoy reading Dave Barry a lot more than I enjoy reading David Foster Wallace.

Incidentally -- a preemptive effort here to keep the conversation from flying off in a direction I'd hate to see it go -- I enjoy quiet and reflective pleasures as much as the next person. Really I do. I'm someone, after all, whose idea of fun includes reading Ellen Dissanayake.

Got any guilty reading-and-books secrets you dare 'fess up to? Or any thoughts about what a more down-to-earth and pleasure-centric view of reading-and-writing might be like?

Suggestions -- and especially confessions! -- from visitors are encouraged too, of course.

Best,

Michael

Do you (or anyone) think that McKee's seminar
http://mckeestory.com/homepage.htm
would be of interest even if one has absolutely NO interest in writing a screenplay?

Posted by: David Sucher on January 9, 2004 08:30 PM

What guilty pleasures? I don't feel guilty about enjoying genre fiction, I proclaim my enjoyment to the world. (But then, you knew that.) Because of its disdain for genre fiction, literary fiction by definition isn't going to be about the things I'm interested in: interesting tales, well-told.

My experience is that every person who reads the latest literary fiction in judicious quantities and considers themselves "bookish", there are three or four who simply can't live without books and will unselfconsciously read anything that appeals to them.

(Did you know that four out of five statistics are made up on the spot?)

Posted by: Will Duquette on January 9, 2004 08:30 PM

> ..literary history is a subset of book and publishing history...

Any references or links on this topic? I'm intrigued...

Posted by: Jacob on January 9, 2004 08:56 PM

Manara is a genius. Even though he has done highbrow stuff as well, apart from the porno, in his Giuseppe Bergman series.

And I cherish a collection by Wislawa Szymborska - Nobel Prize winner for literature once - in which she reviews books nobody else ever reviews. Like a DIY guide, Goethe's Wahlverwandschaften, or a communist tractate on fruits and vegetables that have served the people. She shows in this jewel that books, and especially the so called high literature are treated much too seriously. It is the perfect antidote to almost any other book reviewer.

Posted by: ijsbrand on January 9, 2004 09:14 PM

Lowbrow?

How about almanacs? I could spend hours with world almanacs, sports almanacs, etc.

I also love sleazy Hollywood tell-alls, like "The Club" or "You'll Never Eat Lunch In this Town Again."

I also love movie books---like 75 years of the Oscars, or something like that.

I love biographies, as long as there's nothing too historically important about the main character. Like, Walter Winchall, Jane Fonda, Patty Duke, Meryl Streep, fifties stars of all sorts (Brando, Grace Kelly, Audrey Hepburn, Debbie Reynolds---I confess, Debbie Reynolds. Who didn't want to know her firsthand version of calling Eddie Fisher's hotel room in the middle of the night and having Liz answer the phone? C'monnn). I tried buying three different bios of different directors---Coppola, Scorsese, Speilberg, but couldn't finish them.

I also really liked "Presumed Innocent" and "The Silence of the Lambs." Read them both in one sitting. And Gore Vidal's "Lincoln".

I also went through a real phase once of True Crime---"Fatal Vision" about Jeffrey McDonald, several about Bundy, the nurse in Texas who offed several patients by injecting something into them. Then I finally went...eeuuww, what am I doing?

Lowbrow enough for ya?

I also wonder if movies had come along sooner if some very entertaining fiction ever would have been written. Like would the Brontes, or Jane Austen or Edgar Allan Poe have been penning screenplays for Bela Lugosi or Tarantino if the outlet had been available?

Posted by: annette on January 9, 2004 10:08 PM

P.S.---I also loved Pauline Kael's criticism collections, and I agree that a really good interview with a funny interviewee is delicious reading. John Lennon's final interview with "Playboy" is one of my all-time favorites.

Posted by: annette on January 9, 2004 10:24 PM

P.P.S.---sorry for being a comments hog, but one other, just because one of this blog's other (shyer) readers, who I don't think ever posts, sent me an email saying her copy is dog-eared: "Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady." It's really good!

Posted by: annette on January 9, 2004 10:27 PM

I don't know, wasn't it Beavis who said (responding to some text flashing across the screen in a music video), "If I wanted to look at words, I would be in school."

For myself, I tend to read mostly in highbrow moods, and devote my lowbrow ones to TV, movies, and the internet. But maybe that's because there's a very, very limited amount of lowbrow fiction targeted at guys.

As for the other observations -- too many good ones for one post, you need to spread those gems out over time -- I personally don't have a problem with long novels, as long as their length is justified (War & Peace, A Dance to the Music of Time). Most non-fiction books though, I think, are way, way too long and could easily be reduced to a magazine article.

I think a lot of literary modernist classics are worth reading, but that you don't need to read them all the way through. For me, at least, some of Ulysees was fun, but too much of it stank.

Posted by: williamsburger on January 9, 2004 10:39 PM

David -- I've attended three McKee seminars, believe it or not. He's brilliant, but I'm not sure you want to subject yourself to him unless you at least fantasize about writing screenplays. He is a bombastic, stage-hogging asshole (who enjoys playing that role). Did you ever see "Adaptation"? There's a McKee character in there, very accurately done. If you're curious about screenplays and dramatic structure, I'd suggest (ever so humbly) starting with an easy book on the topic. I think Linda Seger's "How to Make Good Script Great" does a really excellent 101-intro job of laying out what an act is, whawt a scene is, what a beat is, what a "turn" is, etc. McKee's like the grad school seminar version of that, brilliant but sometimes hard to follow.

Posted by: Michael Blowhard on January 9, 2004 10:44 PM

I like non-literary fiction by smart guys who are not artists but instead want to teach you tons of stuff -- Tom Clancy, James Michener, Robert A. Heinlein, Len Deighton, and so forth.

Posted by: Steve Sailer on January 9, 2004 11:11 PM

If it's a book that's been banned somewhere or called "controversial," I like it, or at least feel the need to read it. (When I was 12 I picked up American Psycho and used it as a restaurant and shopping guide for a family vaction to New York City. Also liked the porn passages.)

Other observations, confessions, comments:

I get a kick out of the fact that books can still get a rise out of people--like Michel Houellebecq's novel "Platform" about sex tourism, death and Islam or Catherine Millet's "Sexual Life of Catherine M.

Every third year or so I read the It author of the moment.

Most short stories don't seem to tell stories.

Only James Jones should be allowed to write books over 500 pages.

I can't get enough of books about war.

I grew up on a of lot trash--fantasy, sci-fi, anything on Vietnam, WEB Griffin's the CORPS series. I think that's made me impatient with more literary books that don't really make sense. Take Gravity's Rainbow for example.

Someone was telling me the other day, or I read it somewhere,that the problem with lit nowawdays is that it's all about the sentence not the story. I kind of agree. Louis L'Amour versus Cormac McCarthy...

Posted by: MH on January 9, 2004 11:24 PM

I enjoy good writing. I also like good storytelling. When you get both together, paradise. If it happens to be 'low-brow', that's the critic's problem and not mine.

Hell, I'm writing a lowbrow book. For a look at the rough draft you can go here and get a glimpse at how I mangle things in the first draft. You can also comment on it, but that requires registration.

If it wasn't for bad taste I'd have no taste at all.:D

Posted by: Alan Kellogg on January 9, 2004 11:52 PM

Hooo-eee, reading these comments is a lot more fun than reading the New York Times Book Review Section. People talking happily about what they really enjoy -- what a fun spectacle! I think the Oscar for honesty so far has to be heading in Annette's direction for 'fessing up to loving almanacs, though I dunno ... Much of Ulysses stank, American Psycho used as a travel book, reading Michener for learning, and Kellogg as usual managing to out-funky everyone ... Well, the competition here is already pretty strong, and the weekend is still young ...

Is anyone else as amazed as I am by how unconcerned the usual book-review pages are about the kinds of books many people read voluntarily? I mean, why are they all covering the same small bunch of serioso titles? Who are they trying to impress? I know the answer, actually, or close enough. But I'm still amazed -- I'd think that a bookchat program or publication that talks about books with the kind of openness and zing (and the kind of respect for real pleasure) that you-all are showing here might do really well. An essay about almanacs; an appreciation of Deighton; Will Duquette on his beef with lit books; IJSbrand telling us about Szymborska's reviews ... Sounds like a lively, quirky publication by a bunch of free-roaming brains to me.

Jacob -- I don't know of any one book that lays it out, and I'm largely relying on my own years messing around the publishing world. But the books I list in the posting (Korda, Darnton, Simmons, New Grub Street) do a good job of conveying what the process and the life are like. I suspect Darnton's history of publishing will be fabulous -- he's supersmart and worldly in ways profs usually aren't about how the process and the product are intertwined. I'd never say (as the Marxists would) that the process -- the conditions of production -- determined the product. But I would say that they condition it. An interesting thing about blogging is that the blogging process is so much easier that new kinds of voices and reading-and-writing experiences are emerging. I wonder if Darnton will ever take note of that ...

Posted by: Michael Blowhard on January 10, 2004 12:14 AM

Speaking of enormous books - Erich Auerbach's long but never ponderous "Mimesis" goes three quarters of the way toward explaining what it is about modern literary fiction that upsets even many snobs (myself included - fortunately, since I'm still in college, I've got several centuries' backlog of classics to enjoy). That is to say, modern highbrow fiction, po-mo or otherwise, has got hardly anything to do with reality. Writers like J. S. Foer don't even seem to recognize that words can be used to interpret the world; more realistic fiction, on the other hand, is bound by an obligation to revelation (for which already-canonized writers like Bellow and Carver are largely responsible) that somehow prevents the kind of luminous representation of the real that writers like Stendhal used to such brilliant (and enjoyable) effect.
This is the result, to use Auerbach's pet phrase, of a new separation of styles. High literary fiction nowadays has its own obnoxious rhetoric - periods, mostly, of unnatural length or terseness - that prevents a realistic representation of the world through thought. Comparing even a moderately competent modern writer - Ian McKewen, say - to someone like Nell Freudenberger (an altogether readable example of a style we might call "high mediocre") is a bit like setting Shakespeare side by side with Corneille. One makes people speak and think, the other doesn't; in consequence, Corneille, Freudenberger and her fellows are merely well-intentioned shifters of statues.
This isn't to say that a writer like Tom Clancy is, by default, superior to his more literary competitors. He hardly could be, given that he operates primarily by holding up a very flattering mirror to his audience. It is to say, however, that modern literary culture is blind and therefore dysfunctional. On the other hand, this has more or less always been the state of things - the world of books is generally a swamp out of which one or two classics come in a decade.

Guilty Pleasure: Manon Lescaut.

Posted by: Martin Guerre on January 10, 2004 12:43 AM

How about almanacs? I could spend hours with world almanacs, sports almanacs, etc.

Annette, the FBI agent will see you now ...

Anyway, I suspect a pleasure-centered theory of reading and writing would look quite a bit like Roland Barthes's Pleasure of the Text, in which he compares the experience of literature to that of sex.

As for guilty pleasures, I've decided not to feel guilty over pleasures -- except, of course, when they happen to be respectable.

Posted by: Tim Hulsey on January 10, 2004 01:02 AM

Serioso books? Natch. Go for bubblegum and try YA (young adult) fiction. I particularly enjoy Mordechai Richler's _Jacob Two-Two Meets the Hooded Fang_, which tells the story of little Jacob, who is two plus two plus two years old. He "fails" to order a bag of tomatoes properly, and is sent to the child's prison, which is run by a former pro wrestler. There are talking chickens and fish. There is smoke. Chocolate and goo blobs add intrigue to the plot.

Goo blobs? Goo blobs. Revive your inner junior high geek and check out some fab YA authors: Lois Lowry, Philip Pullman, Jerry Spinelli, Katherine Patterson, Jean Craighead George, and Lawrence Yep.

Posted by: SuzieQ on January 10, 2004 01:41 AM

I love technothrillers, and in addition to the old standards, there are some really fun relative newcomers. Jack du Brul is good. Matthew Reilly is the gem of the bunch, though - you can just see him smiling in delight as he goes. I would recommend Temple or Area 7 in particular, but they're all great fun.

More or less out of random curiosity, I've been browsing fantasy/romance and horror/romance hybrids lately. No particular recommendations, but it's funky to see familiar tropes through new lenses.

Posted by: Bruce Baugh on January 10, 2004 02:20 AM

Omigosh, Tim---you're right! I forgot a terrorist hallmark was supposed to be almanacs! But I don't carry them around, just read them. Really, your honor....

Posted by: annette on January 10, 2004 07:16 AM

Hmmmm....I generally dont feel "guilty" about what I read. "Sheepish" might be a better word at times especially when my dear husband is reading some long boring tome on the history of waterpower or something and I am reading something he calls "fluff."

But I do like cookbooks, especially if they were written before 1950. And space opera, a relatively recent discovery. And the Kay Scarpetta books by Patricia Cornwell. I used to read Tom Clancy books until he killed off the entire American Government including Congress, The Cabinet and the Pres in one fell swoop of an airliner and left, who else, Jack Ryan, in charge.

What gets me the most razzing from folks is Trollpe and Dickens, tho. Either the reaction is a mystified "Who?" or a smug look and a muttered "hack writers."

Oh, and bathroom books...those compilations of short blurbs of things that are perfect for short periods of time when you have a few minutes, um, alone, to read.

And SuzieQ is right about kids fiction--there is some dynamite writing that adults are missing out on. I second most of her suggestions and would add Robin McKinley, Eleanor Estes, Margarite D'Angeli and Lloyd Alexander. And Harry Potter, too. It may not be great writing but goshgollygee it's a fun story.

I am reading a book called "Knitting for Anarchists" right now if that tells anyone anything.

Posted by: Deb on January 10, 2004 10:49 AM

Sheepish works!

So does juvenile fiction. I'd forgotten that I'd read and enjoyed a couple of VC Andrews novels. "Flowers in the Attic" is pretty terrific, and I even enjoyed one that I'm pretty sure was written by the writer the family hired to keep the series going after VC died. I enjoyed that one too. Is it illegal of me to say I found the books pretty sexy?

Deb's got the right spirit too -- books you "play with" or nose around in instead of plowing diligently through. I'd say I play with five books for every one I plow through. Which is not to disrespect such books, at all -- I often enjoy a book I play with more than a book I plow through.

A good quote book, for instance, can be wonderful to spend a few minutes here and there with --what's wrong with that? Why isn't that considered a "good book"? (Let alone a "real book"?)

The tedious people would have us believe that a "real book" is something that ought to be "really written," and "really read" (ie., plowed diligently through). I'm glad such books exist, but there are skillions of other ways of making books, and skillions of other ways of interacting with them too. I'm surprised these ways aren't more openly recognized and discussed.

Cookbooks, juvenile novels, technothrillers, almanacs, scandalous French memoirs, porn, visual books of many kinds, collections of reviews, atlases, compilations of lists and quotes and jokes ... What a cool and open-ended world, and what a fabulous variety of ways we have to interacting with it ...

Posted by: Michael Blowhard on January 10, 2004 12:04 PM

P.P.S.---sorry for being a comments hog, but one other, just because one of this blog's other (shyer) readers, who I don't think ever posts, sent me an email saying her copy is dog-eared: "Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady." It's really good!
annette said the above.

Sci Fi and Fantasy- Phillip Pullman, Asimov's Foundation Series always gave me a thrill, Hicthhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, those Terry Prachett novels, Ender's Game and Anne McCaffery, etc.

'black' books- the usual suspects here- Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, Richard Wright, bell hooks.

what I call 'trashy' books, but I don't know what the genre is called- She's Come Undone, Confessions of a Shopholic.

graphic novels- are these considered 'books'? On one hand, they are in book form, in the other, they aren't prose. Anyway, the usual suspects on these too - Maison Ikkoku, Love and Rockets, Paradise Kiss(ok, maybe not usual), Hana Yori Dango(called Boys Over Flowers)

I like non fiction too- I think that Stephen Jay Gould's Panda's Thumb was tops, and enjoyed The Tipping Point. The Way We Never Were was pretty good too.

Posted by: Shannon on January 10, 2004 12:24 PM

I've been a fan of porn actress Nina Hartley ever since discovering her bubbly enthusiasm in a compilation entitled "Girls Who Give Handjobs" (fast becoming a lost art, I might add). I met her once when she was performing at a local "gentlemen's club" several years ago. Candida Royalle's FEMME line of erotic videos is quite good. Check out "Eyes Of Desire".

Posted by: Michael Serafin on January 10, 2004 01:07 PM

Darn---I was hoping that Deb was going to keep her streak going and say she draped a dishtowel over her head in order to read "The Nun's Story" or something!

Cookbooks are good, too!

Posted by: annette on January 10, 2004 01:11 PM

Hollywood Babylon, by Kenneth Anger. I didn't realize until I read it how badly I needed to know the real story of Jayne Mansfield's death.

I also owe a suspiciously large part of my inadequate education to Wallace and Wallechinsky's The Book of Lists.

Posted by: Aaron Haspel on January 10, 2004 01:31 PM

Whether embarrassing or not, I used to read any book on religion ... conservative, liberal, old, recent, Christian, Hindu, Buddhist. I'm forcing myself to quit actually. I've decided that I found what I was looking for a few years ago, yet I couldn't seem to let go of the habit. I'll pass the "Religion" section at a book store now and gaze wistfully at the titles thinking, "Yes, those were good times."

The same thing also happens when I pass the "Self Help" isle. However, this infatuation I find VERY embarrassing. Maybe it was my age-old major in psychology that got me hooked. But God help me, I still love them. Who could possibly resist titles like, "Taming Your Inner Gremlin" or "Who Moved My Cheese?" Who? If anyone makes fun of this ridiculous pastime of mine, I'll... I'll... reread "Your Erroneous Zones" yet again.

Posted by: laurel on January 10, 2004 01:55 PM

Annette, there are certain things even I wont admit to in public....suffice it say I have an old and battered copy of "The Nun's Story" on my bookshelves, ok.

Posted by: Deb on January 10, 2004 05:15 PM

Hey, no dis to "The Nun's Story" (Or to Deb!). I read it and enjoyed it. Is that embarassing?

While mentioning these two books right after "The Nun's Story" might seem to be a non sequitur, someone mentioned Des Barres' "I'm With the Band." They might also enjoy "Rebel Heart: A Journey Through American Rock 'n Roll" by Bebe Buell, Liv Tyler's mom and a seventies groupie chick. Cameron Crowe kept a copy of her picture taped up when he wrote "Almost Famous." Through American Rcok 'n Roll ain't braggin' if you did it! :)

Posted by: annette on January 10, 2004 05:40 PM

Hey Annette, did Leslie Caron or Audrey Hepburn play the nun in the movie? I cant remember.

And I read dictionaries for amusement too. Old ones are more amusing than newer ones and my goal, which strikes most of my family as bizarre, is to someday own a complete OED.

Posted by: Deb on January 10, 2004 06:12 PM

Audrey Hepburn. 1959.

And did anybody notice that "blog" was added to the dictionary this year?

Posted by: annnette on January 10, 2004 06:16 PM

Annette, there are certain things even I wont admit to in public....suffice it say I have an old and battered copy of "The Nun's Story" on my bookshelves, ok.

I have Lewis's The Monk. What a wonderfully bizarre tome it is. Very Gay, too -- but so was Lewis, as far as we can tell.

I also own a copy of Witness. Admittedly, the book is not as fashionable as it used to be, but that's because recently disclosed US intelligence has proven Chambers's account of Communism correct in every detail.

Posted by: Tim Hulsey on January 10, 2004 07:26 PM

enjoyed the article & comments; i pretty much agree. but if you think the world of "serious fiction/literature" is stuffy, you should try the world of "poetry"--!

i write on my blog about truly awful writers of the past (recent & farther back), which somehow fascinate me--as well as my own pantheon of Greats. i'm afraid not many of my literary compadres appreciate such a variegated sensibility, though their movie tastes (as you note) are hardly so exclusive...

Posted by: graywyvern on January 10, 2004 07:45 PM

So far no one seems to have mentioned Dr. Seuss -- who used the techniques of the advertising artist to create some of the most engagingly naughty books of our time. It goes right back to *Hop on Pop* with the page that has the rhyme "play-day -- we play all day" with two teddy bears playing, and on the very next page "fight-night -- we fight all night!" and the picture showing the same two teddy bears slinging at each other with baseball bats. Is there the slightest chance that such a knowing work -- for preschoolers, yet -- would be accepted today by any publisher? And let's see -- *Cat in the Hat* teaches children that all the interesting stuff happens after the stranger gets into the house; *Mulberry Street* is all about lying to your parents, *Green Eggs and Ham* is a sales pitch in which the customer is convinced to eat something disgusting... one could go on. Great stuff.

In an unrelated point, Tolkien is also considered the epitome of trash literature, in many quarters.

Posted by: Redcoffin on January 10, 2004 08:28 PM

For Michael... I'm a little reluctant to recommend something you can't read, but as long as you're going to bring up Euro-comics by mentioning Milo Manara, I'm going to mention something you'd probably love if you could only read it. It's a Dutch series called FRANKA by an artist named Henk Kuijpers, which has gone through at least 17 volumes (or "graphic novels"). It started out as kind of cutesie-wootsie adventure/comedy kid stuff, but evolved considerably. In her present version, Franka is a pretty-girl private detective (about six feet tall and amazingly bosomed) specializing in retrieving lost or stolen works of art. But that doesn't begin to describe the strip. Kuijpers draws amazing cartoon panoramas of modernday Amsterdam street scenes, Franka's detective capers in the art world have a sly wink of knowing satire to them, and the stories have just gotten more hard-boiled as thrillers over time. The books are now definitely for adults and often take place in a seamy underworld where drugs and prostitution are part of the background, yet it's all drawn in a more than slightly loopy cartoon style that may not have evolved quite _enough_ from the early days of the more juvenile orientation of the strip. Kuijpers knows his way around American pop culture, too: I particularly recommend his tenth Franka volume, "Gangsterfilm" just for the 1950s American visuals. (In fact, a Dutch friend had Kuijpers autograph a book for me at a comics fair. Hearing the first name of the book's eventual recipient, Kuijpers drew a picture of Franka pointing to an election poster reading "I Like Ike.") I realize getting hold of this stuff might be a problem, since I don't know of any Dutch equivalent for Amazon, and you can't read it anyway... Oh well, maybe IJsbrand knows about it...

Posted by: Dwight Decker on January 10, 2004 08:51 PM

My guilty pleasures:
"Valley of the Dolls" - I was so embarassed that I actually put a book cover on my vintage late-70's edition so I could read it on the bus. I could not put it down.

Untold numbers of self-help books that I'd be ashamed to tell my professors that I enjoy. (I'm an English major.)

English teachers today have absolutely no taste for good trash. They are too "into" dour, obscure post-colonial minority Marxist writers to allow themselves to enjoy a good old time in bed with a spicy book.

Posted by: SixFootPole on January 10, 2004 11:31 PM

Tim, ok I will bite. Which Lewis wrote "The Monk"? Sinclair or C.S.? And I am gathering that Witness is not the book the movie with Kelly Whatername and Harrison Ford was based on, right.

SixFootPole--English teachers have NEVER had a good sense of trash--at least they didnt when I got a degree in it close to thirty years ago--they were all pushing dour,post-colonial minority Marxist writers back then. It doesnt go with the job description.

Posted by: Deb on January 10, 2004 11:56 PM

Actually, given your description of the motives of the literati--

Money, business, leaky roofs -- it all interferes with how they want to live, buried in their books.

--it kind of makes hash of the old criticism of lowbrow books as 'escapist.'

Actually, the other night as I was reading a detective story because business worries weren't allowing me to sleep, I thought again how silly a criticism that always was. Escapism is probably the single best reason that books exist. And people who downgrade 'escapism' probably don't have nearly enough grim reality in their everyday lives.

Posted by: Friedrich von Blowhard on January 11, 2004 12:01 AM

Friedrich von Blowhard wrote: "Escapism is probably the single best reason that books exist."

I think a lot of people mistakenly believe that "literature of consolation" -- which is what Tolkien once said all fantasy should be -- means "literature of appeasement."

As for guilty pleasures -- I confess to a secret pleasure in racist colonial literature like Rudyard Kipling's "Little Foxes," about the Brits putting Africa in order. Borges once said that Kipling's later work is better than Kafka, but try defending him in a literature department these days. But my "hide it on a train" confession would be Masamune Shirow. Amazing how many people confess to graphic novels. The people who write them are always complaining that they want "legitimacy." They should be careful what they wish for.

Trash literature is trash literature, but aren't there limits? It seems that using Google to search for unusual keyword combinations in Alt.sex.stories.* and reading what comes up -- that just goes beyond the pale.

Posted by: Redcoffin on January 11, 2004 12:24 AM

Tim, ok I will bite. Which Lewis wrote "The Monk"?

Matthew Lewis, in 1796.

Witness is the anti-Communist autobiography of Whittaker Chambers (of Alger Hiss fame). The American Left has worked for fifty years to discredit the book and the man, but recent Venona Files transcripts have revealed that Chambers was right on the money.

i write on my blog about truly awful writers of the past (recent & farther back)

Do you know William McGonagall? I can quote a few of his verses from memory. Hilarious stuff.

Posted by: Tim Hulsey on January 11, 2004 12:30 AM

A guilty pleasure of mine is a chap by the name of Lin Carter. Did a series on an ersatz Conan by the name of Thongor.

He also wrote a series about a stereotypical mighty thewed hero adventuring around the time the Moon is supposed to crash into the Earth. In the series (...Of the World's End) he parodies many an adventure story trope and cliche.

The series itself being an expansion and re-imagining of his "Titan of the World's End". A vicious, dark satire of the same stories he would later treat more gently in the series.

With Lin Carter what you get is someone who's best work (Titan of the World's End) is unjustly ignored because he did write some Godawful dreck. Enjoyable dreck, but dreck. Since people tend to generalize about others, some rather good examples of the writing and story telling art from an obscure author get overlooked because he did pen some rusty clunkers.

Then there's "Lankar of Callisto". (Part of his Callisto series, the series itself being Lin's 'tribute' to Edgar Rice Burroughs and similar authors.) The 'in-joke' behind the story being that Carter (the hero of the tale) was then suffering from more ailments than an educated hypochondriac and diagnosed with inopeable cancer.

So if you need some hard core guilty pleasures do a google on "Lin Carter" or "Ken St. Andre" and see what you get. (Ken is a big time Lin Carter fan and something of a spiritual successor. But you'll want the designer and author of the Tunnels and Trolls roleplaying game Ken St. Andre instead of somebody else.)

Posted by: Alan Kellogg on January 11, 2004 01:39 AM

I've read some Lin Carter... I think his tragedy was that he was such a fan and enthusiast for various writers of fantasy fiction that his own books were seldom more than pastiches of other writers' work. He wrote several series that more or less replicated Edgar Rice Burroughs' interplanetary adventures, and of course there were the Robert E. Howard-imitating Thongor that pastiched Conan, and he imitated other, less-known writers. I'm sure he had fun doing it, but as a reader I have to wonder where were the novels that only Lin Carter could have written? On the other hand, as a fan and enthusiast for fantasy fiction, his non-fiction surveys and his editorship of Ballantine Books' fantasy line helped introduce the field and a lot of forgotten authors to a new generation of fans. I think it's in his non-fiction where his real legacy lies.

Posted by: Dwight Decker on January 11, 2004 03:03 AM

This is a great topic! Partly for work and partly for personal interest, I've recently been researching and thinking about why boys (say, 9 - 18) allegedly don't read. I say allegedly because that's what I hear from publishers, librarians, teachers and parents--"well, we all know that boys just don't read." However, I happened to find a great book called "Reading Don't Fix No Chevys" last weekend--it's by two education professors who did a study with high school boys on their literacy habits. Turns out that boys DO read: they surf the Internet to find movie reviews, read manuals about fixing motorcyles, read the sports page in the newspaper to follow their favorite teams, read magazines, etc. But they don't often read books because that is "schoolish" and the books they are given in English class don't resonate with them. (One reason for this is that boys want "exportable" text--that is, a cool scene from a book or a piece of information from the newspaper that they can quickly and easily drop into a conversation with friends. Most books assigned in school are too nuanced to be useful in this way.)

Anyway, this has led me to think about how books could be written to reach boys; I suspect that many of the approaches that might work would mean that the final product would not be considered a "real" book. For example: Short chapters, lists, sidebars, etc would be good for non-fiction. Novels that deliberately draw on the visual imagery, action and pace of Hollywood movies. Oh, and book covers that don't look girl-y (i.e., soft colors, pastel paintings, etc.)

I also love the idea (from these blog postings) that books could be presented with verve and spirit--what a great idea to publish books that have a "buccaneering sensibility"! I think the key to reaching younger readers is to make books sound like fun--just as TV, movies, video games, etc. are fun.

I agree with several posts that there are a lot of fun YA novels and they've had great sales success. However, I think that success is still being driven by the girls in the audience.

I'd love to hear ideas from others about how to get the boys to read...

Posted by: sharper on January 11, 2004 02:47 PM

On a sober note... Boys get hooked on reading and writing if teachers tap into their interests outside of school whether it is sport, video games or four-wheel-driving, a program in primary schools has discovered

Posted by: Jozef on January 11, 2004 06:40 PM

Sharper,

everytime a teacher tells me boys dont read I just snort with laughter. I've been taking away books from my now 16 yo son for years as "motivating device" to get him to anything BUT read. The problem with the establishment that I see is that they are starting too late and they are sending mixed messages.

Reading as a love and as a habit should be taught and modeled BEFORE the kid hits school. I read to my son constantly from birth onward, put books in his crib, bought him books, took him to the library, read him comic books, sports stats, etc etc. We talked about what he read, shared jokes and scenes from books and generally included it in our family life. We read road signs, backs of cereal boxes, instructions for legos, adult magazines that had topics--dinosaurs and space were hot for longer than I care to remember-- that interested him etc. By the time he got to the teachers and librarians he was soooo ready to read and love books that there was very little they could do to stop him.

Schools and parents also send mixed messages to boys. Boys are supposed to be athletic, energetic and rough and ready. They arent supposed to enjoy something as girlie as reading a book for a couple hours. There are many after school and summer sports for boys to play in but very few activities that require reading to enjoy. Given a choice between a boy who can tune up the Chevy and carry a touchdown pass and one who can tell you the finer points of a book, my bet is most parents will unconsciously choose the former. Not that they are mutually exclusive. They just seem that way.

As far as literature that interests boys, there seems to be plenty of it from what I can tell and more and more each year. My son would have loved the Dav Pilkey books, for instance. Handled well, traditionally girl books like the Little House series are just as much fun for little boys as little girls--they are going to have to spend a whole lot of their lives with women, you know.

I do agree with you about the "exportable text" thought tho. My son often drops jokes from books into his conversations with friends. He also avidly reads jokes in magazines just to be able to tell them at school.

And he's not the quiet bookish sort either. He watches football with a passion, tunes up the Chevy, hunts, blacksmiths in his papa's forge and loves Star Wars. He's also ADD and by the school's definition is a kid at risk for reading disabilities. Feh.

Posted by: Deb on January 11, 2004 06:43 PM

David Foster Wallace. He's observant, fresh and funny. Go Dave! If he writes another giant book, I'll read it.

Posted by: j.c. on January 11, 2004 07:57 PM

I admit to reading romance novels, especially historical ones. The cheesier, the better. Johanna Lindsey, who really only wrote the same story a few score times, is one of my favorites. Anne McCaffrey's Pern series has also remained gooey fun for years. Techno thrillers never really grab me, even though I love them in movie form. But then, I like those for the explosions.

Posted by: Elisabeth on January 11, 2004 10:20 PM

Who here remembers Richard Bach's "Jonathan Livingston Seagull"? The book of the century according to some. An exercise in bad masturbation according to this then young reader. (Pretentious crap was my assessment.)

A couple of months later I picked up a book by the title of, "Ludwig von Wolfgang Vulture." A parody of JLS. "Ludwig von Wolfgang Vulture" is the story of a near-sighted buzzard with a yen for health food and a desire to learn speed reading. It is not only a satire on the drivel found in JLS, it also pokes fun at the health food craze of the time, exercise regimens, popular culture, and (in case you didn't know), speed reading.

"Going fast means never having to say you're slow." Ludwig von Wolfgang Vulture

"A thousand deaths is not cowardice, it is merely repetition." Ibid.

If you find a copy, get it. It's a hoot.

Posted by: Alan Kellogg on January 11, 2004 11:07 PM

Count me in as a reader of romances. Marion Chesney writes wonderful Regencies that are a step above the usual. In her "Poor Relations" series of six books, the storyline focuses more on the older people, cast aside by their wealthy families, who decide to band together and open a hotel in London during the high season. The idea was that they would embarass their relatives (by going into business!) into handing over more of the ready. There's still the usual romances, but they're treated like they were in Marx Brothers movies, e.g., something to get over with quickly and back to the comedy.

And speaking of "the ready," that reminds me of P.G. Wodehouse, who wrote the same book over and over again, but did it really, really well for an awful long time.

"My Secret Life" is, ahem, eye-opening porn, and "The Pearl" is a great collection of Vic porn. The best in one-handed reading, you might say.

"Who Had Who" is a British book that took the "6 Degrees of Kevin Bacon" and applied it to sex. They devoted an entire chapter to Ryan O'Neal.

Then there's George Macdonald Fraser's "The Pyrates," which takes nothing seriously except the characters, and tells a ripping story. I've read that about six times so far. (Of course, that leads into the "Flashman" series, but with its concentration on telling the dirty side of history, there's a chance you might learn something, and thus is beyond the reach of this discussion.)

Posted by: Bill Peschel on January 12, 2004 12:27 AM

What fun to meet and hear from people who really enjoy books, and feel free to interact with books in a whole variety of ways. It's really kind of shocking how pained many "books people" can act around many books ...

Posted by: Michael Blowhard on January 12, 2004 01:35 AM

You mention Ellen Dissayanake, but she's basically "pop" compared to the general run of aestheticians in whose line she falls--after Plato and Aristotle, we're talking about the likes of Immanuel Kant, whose "Critique of Judgment" my poor students admitted was basically unintelligible (most academics don't even understand his concepts of purposiveness and disinterestness, though they may quote them endlessly) on down to the thick but stirring goo of Shaftesbury, Hegel, Heidegger, Bell, and the rambling later Wittgenstein, and then there are the barely comprehensible but strangely magnetic babblings of Adorno, Lyotard, Althusser, Derrida, and so on. By comparison, really, Dissayanake is Kool-aid--but satisfyingly refreshing, by any measure.

Posted by: Tregaron on January 12, 2004 04:27 AM

We all must remember that great works of literature are not just books but artistic masterpieces. English professors seem snobbish because they see themeselves not just as avid readers but also as art critics, as do many over-enthusiastic undergraduates. The entertainment derived from such great works is not just reading them, but in analysis, discussion, debate. Very few books can capture the imagination as much as the great works, changing one's perception of other books that do not aspire to such heights. After reading O'Brien's 'The Things They Carried', I knew I would never read a Tom Clancy novel again.

Are the same criticisms levelled at book people aimed at connoisseurs of classical music or high art? Should lovers of Mozart be chased out of the temple for not liking 'American Idol'?

Who's more snobbish? The one who doesn't like Jackie Collins or the one who thinks that all literary works should be less than fifty pages long?

Posted by: Stephen Fleming on January 12, 2004 05:54 AM

I actually saw "Humanoids from the Deep" in a decaying old cinema in Shepherds Bush over twenty years ago. Both were terrible.

Posted by: Peter Briffa on January 12, 2004 05:56 AM

I can't believe you don't know the Washington Post's wonderful critic, Michael Dirda, who is a man after your own heart. Here's his recent Christmas wish list:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A37283-2003Dec4¬Found=true

Posted by: Theophylact on January 12, 2004 09:28 AM

Your distinction is dead-on, and I pleady guilty on all counts. I'll watch and enjoy pretty much any movie that's "good" in its own terms, whether commodity Hollywood fare or the artistically ambitious. But I read almost nothing but "serious" fiction. Why? Principally because reading takes time and commitment, and watching movies doesn't. There are so many books that I'd like to read but haven't got round to. But I don't have time to read those *and* veg out with the potboilers. But there's anothre reason, more important: in my view, popular movies are by and large simply better than popular novels. Why is that? Perhaps it's because movies are an expensive, complex collective endeavour and novels aren't. But more likely, I think, it's because modern movie audiences are visually highly sophisticated and "movie-literate" (and hence won't tolerate poorly crafted movies) but have the lost the ability to discriminate between good and bad writing. Once in a while I pick up a piece of popular fiction, often because someone's recommended it, but invariably toss it aside after three pages. I just can't believe that people will tolerate such a stew of cliches, bad grammar, misuse of words, witless wit and so on and on. The plain bad writing typical of many pop novels wouldn't be tolerated even in poppest of tabloid newspapers.

Having said all of which, pretty much all modern serious fiction is overhyped and unreadable too. Discrimination is all...

PS What about music? Nick Hornby recently went on record (sorry) as someone who won't listen to anything except pop music, broadly defined, and went on to one-line dismiss everything else (for example, classical music is "too much like going to church"). This struck as one of the crassest remarks I'd ever read by a novelist-- so much so that my previous minor reservations about Hornby blossomed into full-blown dismissal. Any thoughts on the even bigger divide in music?

Posted by: Graham Finnie on January 12, 2004 09:35 AM

The Monk is a great Gothic trash read. It was written by Matthew Lewis.

My favorite trash reads are noir novels written in the 50s.

Posted by: Carrie on January 12, 2004 10:26 AM

Thankfully, literary merit and enjoyable writing are not mutually exclusive. Technical achievements aside, The Great Gatsby is the best book I have ever read. It's funny, sad, beautifully written, and amazingly concise (it's only about 180 pages - the length most books, with exceptions, should be). The Sun Also Rises and Lolita come to mind as well. Poetry, fortunately, is another area where the two mix often. I know people who read Dr. Seuss and e.e. cummings in equal measure and spend as much time with Macavity as with The Waste Land. And then you get a poem like Prufrock that's thoroughly enjoyable and worthy of serious study. I think there's a reason these are classics.

Posted by: Marc on January 12, 2004 10:41 AM

Fun conversation, and many thanks again to all. Don't stop gabbing now -- interested in all kinds of feedback here.

Again, y'all are suggesting to me what a real, lively, open book-chat publication could be like. What appalls me about the bookchat world isn't (generally) the quality of the reviewing or essay-writing, which I (generally) find pretty good and better; it's the ultra--restricted view of what what interacting with books consists of.

Only because I just finished my coffee and am feeling a bit revved, let me rant on a bit more. Responses to this are encouraged too.

I notice that many of us tend to gravitate back to the pop novel vs. literary novel thing. Interesting, and there's much to be said there. (Time for another posting, not that I'm a specialist in pop novels.)

But I also want to put in a pitch for two considerably more general topics:

* The many kinds of books we interact with: reference books, picture books, joke books, instruction books, self-help books, quote books, bathroom-reading books. I'm looking around my desk and office as I sit here typing, and I see (in addition to the "real books," some books about yoga, a few hot-to-paint books, a few computer-tip books, a couple of bios and autobios of film-word figures I'm interested in, a whole bunch of film reference books, a couple of books about Tantric sex (time for another posting), collections of essays and reviews, books on tape, comic books and graphic novels ...

I hereby submit that, IMHO of course, each and every one of these is a "real book." Each one has been made; each one has a creator (or bunch of creators); and I have interacted or will interact with each one of these books, probably in some way that's semi-unique to that book.

I also volunteer that each and every one of these book-interactions might very well give me as much pleasure and utility (whatever that means) as might "really reading" an example of the book world's idea of a "real book."

I honestly can't explain why the bookworld, for example, hasn't recognized Ephraim Katz's "Film Encyclopedia" as the classic book it is. It's quite an amazing achievement -- the best film encyclopedia ever put together. IMHO, it long ago proved itself more substantial and enduring than whatever lit novel was on the cover of the NYT Book Review the week the Film Encylcopedia first was published. Yet Ephraim Katz, to my knowledge, was never profiled, and no feature article was ever published about him in a bookchat publication.

* But I also want to focus a bit on the many ways in which we interact with books. A book doesn't have to be "good" in the book-world sense for us (or at least me) to enjoy it -- to giggle a bit, or learn something, or dally away the time, or provoke our interest, or dazzle our eyes .... Subject matter can carry me through; utility can make me glad to own it, etc. There are many, many books I've enjoyed that I've never finished, and in many cases never expected to finish -- I've poked around in them, and that's been fun, as well as terrific in its own right. There are visual books -- does anyone start on page on of a visual book and laboriously turn pages until it's over? As earlier commenters pointed out: hey, how about almanacs and cookbooks? And, of course, there are what are usually considered to be throwaway or trash books -- self-help, financial tips. I suspect that nearly everyone, proud of it or not, has spent a few hours poking around at least a few of those.

Here's my twofold purpose in making the above observations. (I'm into bullet points today.)

* First is that I do generally buy the movie-person's view of art -- that low and high pleasures feed each other. My love of a fine literary novel is an extension of, the pleasure that I take in interacting with books generally. It isn't distinct from the pleasure I take in all kinds of books; instead, it's an aspect of that.

And how about serious lit? Well, like many people who have a taste for it, I worry about the fate of serious lit; I think it's steered itself off into a bizarro little corner where it's become (all too often) a very un-vital, coterie activity. It has, IMHO, walled itself off from the vitality to be found in the rest of publishing, let alone the rest of life. IMHO: the lit crowd need to open itself up to the kind of energy, commerce, life, and vitality that you can find right before you in the rest of publishing. Instead, the lit world tends to hold its nose and turn away. Which might or might not result in some good work -- but the batting average these days is remarkably low. It's also bad p-r. I'm all for showing terrific achievements some respect. But I don't see any need to be hyper-rigid about it.

These are very typical complaints, by the way, and not just mine: too much cotempo lit (and serious writing of all kinds) has renounced narrative and character, even subject matter. Instead, it's all about "issues" and "writing" and word games and ego. It's a bunch of people -- fewer in number every year -- showing off for each other. Out of something or other (high mindedness is my guess) it has renounced almost all of the basic-and-easy reasons why people have traditionally paid attention to books. That strikes me as self-destructive behavior, a way of turning yourself into something completely irrelevant to most people's lives. Which is something that no one should pass a law against, and I've got an appetite (however limited) for coterie, avant-garde fiction myself. But the whole activity gets to be a little bloodless. The leaves start to fall off the trees.

And the conviction that "real book" people have that the whole industry and institution of reading-and-writing exists so that this very specialized activity can occur strikes me as narrow-minded (and, as I say, destructive to the art of the book) to the max. In my view, literature arises out of the general activity of reading and writing, all of which is based on the pleasure people take in the two activities --- and the pleasure we take in them comes in many different varieties.

* The second arm of my agenda (lordy, the caffeine really is pounding through me) is to try to open people's eyes to the many really marvelous achievements in book-making that already do exist. "All-word books written by prose specialists and intended to be read straight through"? That's a very, very narrow segment of the books world, and it's unfortuntely one that we tend to fixate on.

And, between you and me, the taste for this particular kind of book is a very, very specialized taste. It's a good taste to have, but I think all of us who have it need to be a little more tolerant and open to those who don't, as well as to the many kinds of books that aren't intended to appeal to that taste. It's a very strange activity, sitting there, glasses on, plowing through heaps of prose in a linear fashion. And as Robert Darnton and others have shown, it isn't the way most readers through history have read. The more general way people "read" is to interact with books on their own terms: a few pages here, looking at some pictures there, scribbling a few notes here, maybe plowing through a book there, picking one book up and setting another aside, flipping through indexes, rummaging around for a list or a quote ... The idea that the only kind of "real" reading is plowing straight through, cover to cover, heaps of prose seems to come from our English teachers -- who, we have to remember, are generally people who read from assignments, not from pleasure...

How about instruction books, kids' books, visual books, reference books, lifestyle books? Many of which are, IMHO, quite amazing achievements in book-making. Years ago, as I was learning my way around book publishing, a friend with experience said to me something I found mega-helpful. He said, "Look, don't get hung up on the idea of writing books. Think of it as making books instead." It was a brilliant and mind-opening tip that shook a lot of English-major foolishness off me. For one thing, it opened my eyes to the many people who play roles in the creation of books: editors, photographers, publishers, anthologizers, designers, etc. It reminded me that books don't exist without a big infrastructure of talent, money, distribution, etc. For another, it make me take note of all books as made-and-created things, every bit as much as any selfserious attempt at literature is a made-and-created thing.

From this point of view, books such as children's books and cookbooks become quite marvelous, even avant-garde -- proto-web products. You use them in your own way -- you put together your own experience. You might go through them in a linear fashion; you might not. They're often hypertexts -- you leap aruond inside them, following clues, links, hints, and your own interests. They're often visually quite stunning, and often in ways that interest me more than the products and concerns of the contempo art world. You might interact with them not just in one sitdown, "I'm here to appreciate this" session, but over many sessions of many different lengths -- they can get folded into your life experience in fascinating ways. (The cookbook that's full of stains and flour dust, for example.)

Incidentally, since I'm having mischievous fun scoring off the English teachers and profs: one type of book I often enjoy playing with or interacting with but seldom read straight through is the scholarly book, the academic's book. There's often interesting info in there, and often some useful info. But talk about bad writing! Worse than popular novels by a longshot. But an hour or two with the index, thumbing through, following up on footnotes, chcking out who the sources are and what the general thesis is? Academics, dull writers though 99% of them are, do seem to announce and then repeat their main points on a regular basis, which is convenient. I find I can get a lot out of such a book without ever reading all the way through, and I may well spend an enjoyable hour or two with such a book.

I dunno, I'd guess that over half my interacting-with-books life consists of nosing around, thumbing around, checking things out, setting them aside and moving on to other books. Heck, I'd guess it's more than half. I spend some time reading through books (some "real books," some not) too. But I marvel that we don't take more note of how various (and rich and wonderful) our interactions with books are...

Posted by: Michael Blowhard on January 12, 2004 11:48 AM

Two words. Fan Fiction.

Posted by: Ivy on January 12, 2004 12:08 PM

I think the issue isn't so much trash books vs. classics but quirky personal choices vs. relatively safe choices that everyone's heard of. I like people who have a thrift-store mentality about books--the kind of readers who follow their taste wherever it leads but who may not have heard of the latest NY Times Notable. We need more readers of books who are like this: how many readers of The Corrections have read anything in translation, a non-hip comic book (like a Jim Lee superhero comic, for example), contemporary poetry, or something written more than 200 years ago? (Even if these things are bad, it¡¯s important to read because they explain why the greats are great: I didn¡¯t ¡°get¡± Shakespeare until I¡¯d gone and read lots of post-war American poetry.) Comic book readers know what I mean?because a lot of great comics aren¡¯t collected, you have to be assertive in your tastes and hunt out back issue bins and go to conventions. A lot of book readers, however, have been socialized into being passive book consumers (probably because of class room syllabi) and eagerly await the New York Review to arrive like a series of cultural homework assignments.

I think the problem between the movie vs. book audience isn¡¯t so much that book people are more humorless, etc.; the problem¡¯s that books seem more relevant to our identity (William Empson said something about how writing is much closer to the way we think) but most people don¡¯t end up having very individualized literary preferences. This is not true for film (maybe because we end up seeing more movies than books); even the regular film goer often has very specific favorite movies and a kind of audience loyalty (i.e. seeing every movie with Tom Cruise, etc.) that only the rarest book people have. This (the book problem) is spiritually dangerous but also artistically dangerous: I think it¡¯s much harder for book people to cope with innovation than film people?hence, Dickinson in her attic, Moby Dick closeted for years, etc.

Why is this? I think first it¡¯s normative: our culture tends to promote this distinction between high and low. I told a friend the other day that _Pirates of the Caribbean_ was one of the smartest movies I saw this year and reminded me of Shakespeare and Oscar Wilde; I quoted a scene and asked what the difference was and he said ¡°Well Oscar Wilde is high culture and Pirates is a Hollywood movie.¡± Note: this is not an artistic difference. So it¡¯s hard for people to escape our pre-provided categories. Also, books end up attracting an audience that reads mainly to get cultural brownie points?they go to books specifically because they seem like the ¡°right¡± answer. (And what would our literary world be like if people had the same honesty and skepticism about books as they did about movies?or if no one read books merely because they thought they ought to in order to be a responsible smart citizen?) Pauline Kael has an essay (her review of Truffaut¡¯s Fahrenheit 451) where she talks about a booklover shocked at finding Kael using a cheap paperback mystery as fireplace kindling; Kael was shocked at her friend¡¯s blind worship of books in all forms. Movies liberate us from ¡°taste¡±; everyone watches them?they¡¯re the casual easygoing social currency of our culture.

Second, it¡¯s a lot harder to get ¡°further¡± into your aesthetic with books because each step (an individual book) takes a lot more time than with movies. Thirdly, book people tend to be way more literal thinkers than film people (I think because reading books is correlated with so-called ¡°smart¡± people); this makes it hard for even very sophisticated readers to see the intuitive greatness in work that may seem gaudily crappy. See most English critics on American free verse; conservative critics on multicultural writing or pop culture.

I think the biggest problem with this is that most book people have de-linked reading with pleasure and re-linked with responsibility. Movies make no such claim towards greatness or truth (whether personal or metaphysical) and so people are more willing to pick favorite movies that are fun. I showed a friend of mine a comic by Manara (who, incidentally, did comics for Fellini) and he seemed almost offended! It¡¯s hard to make mere pleasure the ground for books if you have made them your secular religion.

Some of my tastes: I¡¯ve been pretty long-winded so far, so maybe I¡¯ll just say that I think movie reviews?capsule movie reviews?are the greatest literary form of all time. They combine the analysis of literary criticism with the need for accurate description of fiction and the act of sitting through an object and thinking about it that I associate with philosophy. Capsule movie reviews (more in alt. weeklies, like the SF Bay Guardian, the LA Weekly, and the Village Voice, rather than the often insipid New Yorker) are even better: they¡¯re like the pop culture critical equivalent of poetry?the maximum points in 100 words!

Posted by: Ken Chen on January 12, 2004 12:25 PM

I realize that your distinction is between movie people and book people (that is, people somehow involved in those fields), but this same distinction can often reside in the same person, as Graham Finnie aptly points out (above). The time factor is certainly key to understanding this distinction also. It certainly is for me. I am a movie omnivore, but when it comes to reading, I typically go for the good healthy brain food. Although, I recently read, "Utopia," a techno-thriller by Lincoln Child. It is NOT GOOD even by trash standards, but I did rip through it nonetheless. I felt cheated, but entertained. My wife promised to guide me toward the good trash books.

Now, my wife is an interesting case. She is a poet and Ph.D. student in English. She reads voraciously and at least half of it is genre "trash": romance, crime, thrillers. The other half tends to be poetry and literary novels, or stuff for school. She loves reading and easily becomes immersed, so that I can be speaking right to her and she doesn't hear a damn thing. When it comes to movies though, I have to twist her arm if it isn't a romantic comedy. She wants fluff and candy. Movies are for escape, while books can serve many purposes. It is telling, however, that she hides the junk books in the closet, lest one of her classmates catches sight of her stash. The smart books are out in the open.

Finnie also makes a good point when he says that most people have the movie-literacy to appreciate a variety of films, while the same is not true when it comes to books. This might also explain why book reviewers tend to focus only on literary books -- it signifies their place in the cultural elite. It is a form of distinction to be able to appreciate the rarefied pleasures of a high-brow novel. Of course, I think it could be argued that at any level of depth, the average film viewer's level of literacy isn't much better. There are surface pleasures, and there are less obvious treats that are there for those who can see them, that is, people with the specific cultural capital. For example, tons of people enjoyed the "Scream" slasher movies (at least the first two), but far fewer took notice of the intertextuality and parody that was densely woven into the films.

Mark

Posted by: Mark on January 12, 2004 12:34 PM

I agree with Ken Chen that movie reviews are pretty great.

I wonder if there are a lot of book re-readers out there. I find very few books that I am willing to sit through for a second or third reading.

One I might consider re-reading is Anne Rice's Feast of All Saints. This has one of the most satisfying scenes in any fiction I have read. Anyone who has read this might guess which one it is!

Rice has only a few historical novels and this one is a must read if you like historical novels.

Posted by: Kitty W. on January 12, 2004 01:20 PM

I reread books all the time, but almost never reread a "classic". I go back and read books from my childhood as a form of escape. For the length of that book I escape fom reality and responsibilites and can recapture the freedom that I had as a child.

Posted by: carrie on January 12, 2004 01:31 PM

I typically prefer rereading books I've previously enjoyed to reading new books. I often like the book better the second time through because you pick up so much more, particularly if your life has changed since you last read it because you come to it with a completely different perspective. There are books like The Brothers Karamazov that you could reread every few years and always gain some fresh insight from.

I also wanted to know what people think about comparing self-help books and almanacs to fiction, literary or otherwise. Granted, Moby Dick and Chicken Soup for the Soul are both books, but aren't they inherently different despite sharing that format? Isn't one art and one a service book in the same way that a marble sculpture of David and a marble toilet are two different things? Can the two really be compared here?

I also wanted to emphasize that I don't think literary fiction is as bloodless as people are saying. Kurt Vonnegut is funny and plays with genre a lot like filmmakers do. If you want some more current examples, Salman Rushdie and DBC Pierre are also enjoyable reads (I actually haven't read Pierre, but I've heard enough to believe this), Martin Amis, Chuck Palahniuk (who wrote Fight Club), and the list goes on. I think part of the problem is that people's attention spans are constantly decreasing. Books are a slow, quiet, solitary pleasure and most people don't enjoy this anymore. Incidentally, movies can be the same way. Go watch Bergman's Cries and Whispers by yourself and tell me you really had a good time. I think what it comes down to is that movies, particularly pop movies, are just easy. They require little commitment and even less thought (though a good pop movie can still be studied if the viewer decides to do so) the way that Danielle Steele doesn't require all that much thought. As to why serious book people deride commercial fiction, I think that's mostly a question of status and they need to pull their heads out of their asses.

Posted by: Marc on January 12, 2004 02:24 PM

I'm starting to think that the book people you know and the book people I know are completely different kinds of book people.

The book people I know love all sorts of books, from David Eddings and Tom Clancy to James Joyce and William Faulkner. I find, though, that as much as I *love* Eddings and company, they are never as satisfying as Calvino, or Borges (and I'm going to have to disagree with you about Ulysses, although the first time I read it I thought it was crap; I had to approach it with new eyes, and more than a few times, to really appreciate it for the comic masterpiece that it is). I can whisk through a Stephen King book in an afternoon, and I'm satisfied for an afternoon, and then I move on to something else. It takes me three or for days to read something by Nabokov, but I'm still thinking about it two years later. It's not so much that one is pleasurable and the other is not; it's simply a matter of degree, and I find that those degrees get farther and farther apart the older I get and the more I read.

But one thing I find is that the book people I know are more than just book people; they're also movie people, art people, music people, food people, and so on, whereas the movie people I know are just movie people. I've worked on a couple of literary journals, and with a few publishers; I've met quite a few people in the Canadian book industry, and almost all of them love books and literature, but they love other things as well. I guess the "trash" parts of their personality tend towards other things.

And then I've met a few people in the Canadian film industry (grew up with some of them), and with one or two exceptions, I find they are *only* movie people. They don't love books, or food, or art, or whatever alongside movies; they just love movies. And I think that contributes to their capacity to love all aspects of their art/industry with equal gusto.

Book people aren't always as ecclectic in the kinds of books they love, but they seem to be more ecclectic in the kinds of things *other than books* they love.

Posted by: August on January 12, 2004 02:25 PM

I love the Laurell K. Hamilton books about Anita Blake, vampire hunter. These books combine many of the most delectable "trashy" elements: mystery, vampires, werewolves, sex. A delightful escapist pleasure.

I also love memoirs, especially travel memoirs.

My favorite personal essay collection is "Waiting for My Cats to Die" by Stacy Horn. Laugh-out-loud funny.

One of my favorite reading activities of all time is surfing the web and finding recommendations and articles and blogs by passionate book people who rave about what they love and rant about what they hate. I also love the internet groups I read daily - 4 Mystery Addicts on Yahoo Groups and the Dorothy L listserv group.

My favorite magazine is Bookmarks, which summarizes major reviews for books. They have a great format and lots of great features. (Well, really it's my second favorite. Entertainment Weekly is my absolute favorite.)

Posted by: Alice on January 12, 2004 03:03 PM

My wife's an elementary and middle school librarian. At the beginning of the school term, she scheduled RL Stein to read as part of the New York Is Book Country festival. A few parents and teachers were disgusted. Stein is considered anti-intellectual; his books are worthless and having him read would be sending the wrong message about 'literature.'

The result? When Stein came to read it was as if Elvis had entered the building. Kids flocked around the library to get a look at the guy.

You can get kids -- particularly boys, who are notoriously bad about reading for pleasure in junior high school and beyond -- to read if you entertain them.

Posted by: Brian on January 12, 2004 03:31 PM

In your