Addressing the High/Low bullshit

There's been a lot of talk lately about the difference between high and low fiction, between commercial and literary fiction, or literary and genre. I figured it was about time to weigh into the debate.

I don't read a lot of Literary fiction. Regulars to this blog may have noticed a rather sceptical attitude to what I like to call 'High/low bullshit'. This isn't because I don't think there's a difference in the way genre and literary writers tend to write, or structure their work. It's because I believe this difference is no more significant than the differences between the way (for example) horror writers and SF writers structure their work. It may be more pronounced, but it is not more important. Fact is, any genre has its own way of doing things and, to my mind, the fun comes when writers decide to trample those boundaries in every plausible direction. For writers, genres should be a shrug, should be a Captain Barbossa, "They're more like guidelines, anyway." If they aren't, they very quickly become a straight-jacket, a noose.

No, genres are not for writers. Genres are for readers. Genres establish a certain set of expectations. As well as setting and plot cues (space operas, HEAs, quests) they give you some idea as to the kind of mood you'll be in when you've finished reading. And that's all great. Honestly, it's really helpful. If I want feel life-affirming stuff with desirable main characters and bit of wittiness between fiesty people and brooding ones, I check out chick-lit, romance and Georgette Heyer. If I'm more in the mood to be kept awake all night by a sense of squirming terror and being unwilling to go downstairs to get a glass of water, then lead me to the horror section. Genres are signposts. Even the terminally lost like myself appreciate their utility.

 But the signpost of Lit fic is rather more difficult to define than that of - say - urban fantasy. The expectations I get from the designation of Lit fic relate more to theme, tone and diction rather than plot and action. From Lit fic, I would expect stories that do not tie together too neatly, novels that have an epiphany and just sort of stop rather than an 'ending' per se. I expect questions unanswered, trailing threads that will haunt me, images that will ring in my mind for months.

And actually, when I put it like that, I read tons of Lit fic. It just tends to be the kind you find in the SF, fantasy and horror sections of your libraries. And here comes the problem. If we define the difference between genres as qualitative, but not hierarchical, we cannot justify the automatic privilege that Lit fic receives. If it is just a way of pointing readers in the direction of what they are looking for, why then does describing a work as literary (with or without that capital 'L') make it automatically more serious, more worthy, more valid?

If literary were used merely as a moderator, as a way of further classifying within a genre, this would be less problematic, and this is how some use the term. But, to many, Literary fiction tends to imply a work that is founded in, or is a reaction against, the life-as-it-is novel. Magical realism can be literary but magic cannot. Romance is fine, provided it has a capital 'r'.  It's an exclusive club, and anything 'genre', anything 'commercial' is going to have to work a lot harder to get in.

And speaking of hard work, we are prepared to work harder for Literary fiction. Our cultural expectations tell us that, by definition, Lit fic it is better, it is more profound, more formally challenging. When we read a book marked with those signposts, our expectations guide us and there is the danger we will see insight where there is only pretension, genius where there is self-indulgence, and inventiveness in what is an unstructured mess.

Yet, some books are harder than others, some require more work from us. I stopped exactly halfway through Wilson Harris' incredible Carnival trilogy - actually halfway through The Infinite Rehearsal, a book that was moving and astounding me with every sentence - because I have kids and I was getting interrupted so much I couldn't follow the grace of the prose. Much as I admire her, if I read too much Doris Lessing I start getting a headache. Umberto Eco is easier, but still, I need to be on the ball. The tag of Lit fic is useful, it can give one a head's up: clear your diary before reading this.

What's more, it can guide us, because without the understanding that a book is trying to challenge, trying to unsettle and bend what is familiar to us, we run the risk of inverting those assessments, dismissing beautiful, intelligent stuff as "too much like hard work" and, "trying to be too clever."

Yet the assumption that harder books are necessarily Lit fic, and Lit fic is by definition 'harder' is no unsatisfactory. Something being difficult to read is not necessarily and endorsement, challenging =/= quality. Besides, other things that merit the capital 'L' can be read in the bath in one sitting: Angela Carter, George Orwell, Gabriel García Márquez... These books aren't any less clever, don't remain with you any less, don't change your world to a smaller extent simply because the very act of reading them is not a hammer applied to your grey cells. They are no less formally inventive, narratively challenging, verbally brilliant - they are just easier to read. 

On a similar note, genre novels aren't necessarily 'easy'. The number of times I've had to put down Banks' SF novels and massage my temples for a couple of moments while my brain cooled down are beyond counting, the number of friends who have returned Mythago Wood half-read depressing. Doing 'the clever stuff' is not the preserve of conventional, realist Lit fic, nor, for that matter, is Literariness. 

There is a double standard at work here. Lit fic - however middle brow, however simplistic - is given a legitimacy denied to other genres. Genre work is automatically 'not as accomplished', not permitted to make you work as hard. So, again, my copy of Little, Big comes back with an, "Honestly? I think he's trying to be too clever."

So, to get around this, we employ the strangest distinctions. We have the hundred times I hear the squirming self-justification of, "Yes, it's a comic book, but it's not a comic book-comic book". Because, of course, if a work of genre fiction gives the lie to the assumptions about that genre, that's because it's no longer really a work of genre fiction. No, it is elevated by dishonest little terms like 'Speculative Fiction', or 'graphic novel', it is given a half accepted place that does not quite have literary's cachet, that must always by preceded by excuses.

Yet to do this is to make life more complicated, make it harder to find a good book. In terms of book-shop organisation, it is literally to move the signposts. It is to reinforce the idea that anything,  'in genre' is, by default, incapable of being literary. It is to negate the worth of labels that have served us well, have guided us. It is to break down the links between books, the 'if you enjoyed x, then you might like..." If Shikasta is not SF, what of First and Last Men? If we let Stapleton across, then what of the works they inspire that do not quite meet the standard? As a reader, where do I go if I want dream-visiony, spiritual SF?

Terms like 'graphic novel', like 'genre slumming' are loaded with the implication that things which 'aren't' encompassed by those privileged works are even worse. Indeed, they serve to negate even those privileged works themselves. If we are put of by the 'graphic', we are reassured that this is a novel. The textual element, the 'acceptable' part, are receives plaudits, the visual element is overlooked. We ignore the fact that a comic is not simply a 'novel with graphic elements', it is an interaction between the two that should work to the enhancement of both. If we are alarmed by the 'genre', we are reassured by the 'slumming'. Yet why should we be reassured by the fact that the writer neither respects nor understands the genre in which xie is working?

I like good books. In my experience, good books are made by good craftspeople and to be a good craftsperson, one needs to respect, to understand one's tools. Good books are made by good artists, who have a passion, a vision, a drive. To set up false distinctions, to over privilege one mode of doing something, does not encourage craft in those less privileged places. It pays into the belief that certain readers are undiscerning, that certain types of fiction are, and can be, 'off the peg'. It encourages bad writing, it cultivates niches that do not wish to interact with the wider world of readers and experiences. And to someone who just likes to be nice about excellent books, this is very sad thing indeed.

Angela Carter: How to be a woman.

So, for reasons best known to themselves, the book group have elected to read Caitlin Moran's How To Be a Woman for next month, effectively throwing me into the path of a bullet I had been dodging since some time last year.

Bang. Splat.

Ouch.

I can't even be bothered to argue with it. Frankly, I'm having difficulty being bothered reading the damned thing. It's not so much inflammatory as dull. In fact to make the slog seem terminable, I have been interspersing its chapters with short stories from one of the better-loved volumes gracing my shelves, a book that must always be attended by score of superlatives, Angela Carter's incomparable The Bloody Chamber.

Its fitting, too, that it should be this book I use to re-engage my brain, restore my equilibrium and massage my affronted aesthetic sense. In part because I have, in my reading, hissed that any of Moran's factually correct statements were said, better, by Carter about thirty years before, and that the factually incorrect ones are refuted by she-who-must-not-be-contradicted with all her usual wit and perspicacity. Mostly, though, it is because I have been known to say that The Bloody Chamber should be placed before every girl in this country on her fourteenth birthday.

If I had my way, everybody would read this book anyway - as a work of literature, it is elegant, intelligent and powerfully done, its value is beyond doubt; but only to a pubescent girl is it a work whose value is beyond measure. I had always, always thought this, and I have never quite understood why. I think I get it now.

And I'm willing to admit that I have been wrong.

Wuthering Heights: In defence of amour fou

So, I took the plunge and went to a book group. 

Wow. Socialising. With real live people-persons who had real people personalities. That's not happened in a while. The book we were talking about was Wuthering Heights. I enjoyed the discussion; lots of interesting stuff raised, tangents and ideas about, not only the book in question, but about the nature of people-persons, and the way that said people-persons interact with books. It was good. Naturally, I did my usual seminar dear-God-no-wonder-you-had-no-friends-at-University routine, but that's a story for another day.

It also raised something that's been brewing in my head for quite a long time – something about the way our current society thinks about love. It may surprise none of you to learn that I agree with Angela Carter.

“Well,” my obliging hypothetical audience supply, “what do you agree with Angela Carter about, aside from 'practically-everything-with-the-notable-exception-of-clitoral-orgasm'?”

For a start, I agree with her about Wuthering Heights. And about love. There is a significant overlap between the two¹. 

Obviously, the whole 'love' thing came up at the book group – notably the conception that Wuthering Heights is some kind of a romance novel². We were asked, more as an opener to discussion than anything else, whether we thought Wuthering Heights was a love story. There was derisory laughter, slightly incredulous glances, and there was me, too much of a fucking coward to offer disagreement.

Which is this: 

We have a real problem with love in this country (or this society, or the English speaking bits of the world. Whatever.) We have a problem with it. So often, in the discussion, words came up to describe what Cathy and Heathcliff felt: obsession, infatuation. We are not, as a society, willing to believe that what those two experience is love. Ask people what love is, and there is a fair chance they will start quoting Corinthians 13:4 at you³.

Patient? Kind? Right... Are we even talking about the same thing, here?

No. We're not. That's one of the problems we face, just to have this discussion: there are a dearth of words in the English language to describe love. Of course, some kinds of love are patient, and kind, and they are valid, important types of love. They, however, are not what I am talking about. The Greeks have it slightly better, they have agápe, éros, philía, and storgē, but even they do not quite answer my purposes. These are different types of love used, exclusively or in combination, in different kinds of relationships. Most often, the distinction is used to separate basic human compassion from emotional love from lust. But I am not talking about physical love as opposed to emotional love, and whatever list of those one needs to build a happy relationship. I'm not, if I'm honest, talking about relationships. A relationship is an ongoing negotiation between two or more people; a relationship answers to sense, to reason, to common, human kindness.

No. I'm not talking about relationships.

There is, though, a distinction in the English language, a distinction that tells us more about ourselves than many of us would care to admit. We talk about loving and we talk about being in love.

Female characters: What is strong?

So, another year rolls round, and there is another best-selling book, read mainly by women, that we are getting told off for enjoying¹. The reasons we are given are plentiful, but familiar:  poor writing, slushy plot and a weak female lead. You know, a silly little bimbo who lets herself get pushed around, subscribes to a totally self-sacrificing ideal of love and ends up...

Actually, this is just far too boring. Go and look on any one of a million websites and you'll get some version of this diatribe in full. In fact, we heard it all last time anyway. I, for one, can't be bothered. Not getting involved, not interested. The reason I'm standing well back from it this time round can be traced to two female protagonists from books that are both acknowledged Classics² and can therefore be safely discussed without anyone getting too vehement.³

So, two names: Jane Eyre and Fanny Price.

Let's start with the confession, but please, don't shoot:

I hate Jane Eyre. It is not only the single set text from an academic course that I have never actually finished⁴, I failed to finish it on two separate occasions and once even pulled a sickie to get out having to discuss it in a seminar. It's not that I can't handle 19^th Century fiction (I love 19^th Century fiction) it's that it's a turgid, repressive and oppressive wish fulfilment fantasy related by a main character with the pizazz and inner strength of an over-boiled turnip. I first studied it at an all girl's school, and our gushing teacher burbled incessantly about how virtuous, how committed, how inspirational a main character was dear, sweet Jane. I could just see them force feeding us this stuff, trying to get us to toe the line, behave in the acceptable way. I called b/s. I'll admit it, I ranted, and I swore  to anyone who would listen and I dissected that novel to prove my point. I did exactly the kind of thing that this blog post is complaining about, because it got right under my skin.

Then, a couple of year later, this happened:

I gave myself a holiday treat by reading all of Austen's novels, and was just about to start Mansfield Park. My mum, the consummate Austen fan⁵, looked at it and smirked. “Have you started reading that yet?” She asked.

“No,” I responded, all innocence.

“Oh, you are going to love Fanny Price.”

And I'll tell you something. I did. I liked Fanny,⁶ I respected Fanny, I was glad⁷ Fanny got her man. Okay, she wasn't so much fun as Austen's other heroines, but she was sincere, committed, and determined. No matter what might happen, she would not compromise herself, her beliefs, or her limits; even under pressure, even when there was no hope. What's more, she got what she wanted. Okay, she could have done better, but, hey, what's so great about giving up what we actually want based upon some arbitrary value system concerning life choices?

Good for Fanny Price! Three cheers! An inspiration!

Then I started reading some literary criticism.

Oh dear.

Turns out people were saying of Fanny the same things that I had been saying about Jane⁸. Oppressive. Wish fulfilment. Pizazz and inner strength of an over-boiled turnip (okay, not in those exact words...) These people, they had quotes too; they too had dissected the novel, pulled out bits and pieces to support themselves (“Out of context!” I cried.) Some of them even compared Fanny negatively to Jane, for Jane is liberated, has strength of mind, makes her own way in the world, does not compromise... I'll admit at times, I started to wonder if there had been some kind of bizarre mix-up in the heads of these people, and they had got the names the wrong way round.

But then I started talking to other readers, and reading articles about books and found that people I respect were saying Jane Eyre had moved them, had driven them, solaced them. People, women, were saying that Jane had been, on some level, their liberator – or at least a friend in their struggle. So I tried to read it again and could still see nothing more than a narrator incapable of either ducking or dissembling when a man is about to hurt her⁹. Then, reader, she marries him – you know, the repulsive, broke one who kept his last wife in an attic for years.

That was when the realisation came to me: this is literary criticism, darlings. We can all be right.

That's not to say all opinions are equally correct, some after all are patently wrong. This, though, is usually based upon a misunderstanding . An example of this might be a misapprehension regarding the word 'ejaculate' in that lovey dovey scene between Jane and Rochester in the garden. Such an interpretation of that scene would be... interesting... but not exactly worthy of serious attention. Others, while valid and interesting, take a certain perverse inspiration and a degree of stubbornness. One is reminded of the four hours I spent arguing that the events of Dracula are a collective delusion, and the essay where I stated that the thing of the Count's that Mina is sucking? It's not blood. Yes, it was enormously good fun, especially that last one, but really? No, neither of those are what happen in the novel.

Still, with an honest reading of something, when we respond naturally to the characters and get involved with the plot, there is actually no wrong response. So, something in me didn't get on with Jane Eyre and still doesn't. Other people can't stand Fanny Price. So what? We each bring to a book our own set of experiences and values, so that certain things trigger us in certain ways – certain aversions, certain sympathies. We all take away something from a book which shapes us and our future actions.

In Fanny Price, I saw a young woman who knew what she wanted, however unobtainable, and would not be swayed from that course by the glamour of something 'better'. Sometimes, when I face certain people and decisions, I look to Miss Price¹⁰ for her strength and resolution. In Jane Eyre, though, I saw a young woman who faced bullies and let them hurt her, let them break her. That will not be me.

Other people, I appreciate now, feel that should be the other way around. Fair enough - that's their response. I have not changed my mind, but I have stopped hurling the insults. A character is strong in the strength she confers and the characters from whom we draw strength are our own business. If one¹¹ shy, lonely, unhappy teenage girl looks at Bella Swan and thinks, “It's okay. Adolescence ends. The things that scare me won't be scary forever,” then surely, for all the problems you personally see in the book, it can't be all bad.

I'm not saying don't argue about interpretations of books– for Gods' sakes, that's the fun of lit crit – what I'm saying is put down the pitchforks.

1No. I've not read it. I'm not going to. If I want erotica, I have Lost Girls and the works of Angela Carter.

2Whatever that means.

3Lights blue touch paper, retires.

4Okay, there is ONE other, but it was by the same author and had more or less the same main character and plot. (again, the bit about the blue touch paper)

5No, seriously, she's treasurer for the local branch of the Jane Austen Society.

6UK readers especially, please imagine an immature laugh at the end of each clause in this sentence.

7Double laugh .

8Nope. Can't help it. Smirk.

9At least in the first bit of the book there's an element of defiance to this, but... Jesus Christ. It doesn't get any better once she's been tamed, does it?

10Ha! Avoided it.

11Oh, god, here I go. For all the good it will do me.