I don’t mean to be unkind, but I don’t get how you can claim to “love books” and have a shelf full of Harry Potter and Jodi Picault. Have we created a nation of people who honestly believe that “reading” is one of their hobbies because they own a copy of The DaVinci Code? Where did we go wrong?
Your homework: Burn your books. All of them. If you think they’re good books, then burn everything else you have that you think is good. Don’t give them away, or donate them – that’s just moving the problem on to some other poor bastard.
Now populate your shelves with: William Faulkner; Vladimir Nabokov; Ernest Hemingway; Hunter S. Thompson; Kurt Vonnegut; Nikolai Gogol; Fyodor Dostoevsky; Frank Kafka; and that’s just for starters.
Come back to me for further recommendations when the fog has lifted from your brain.
I’d forgotten about this lovely reply to one of my photos from 7 years ago. Oh, literary snobbery, you haven’t changed much.
I’d forgotten about it too. I hope you’ve developed a love of literature in the last 7 years, or at least burned your copy of The DaVinci Code.
And what have we learned?
Never confuse “snobbery” or “elitism” for having standards. (If you don’t have any standards for yourself, then why should anyone else?)
Never confuse “popular” with “good”. (If every book on your bookshelf appeared on a best-seller list, how do you tell the difference?)
Learn to accept criticism, especially from people who have no investment in whether you take their advice or not. (If you find it difficult to accept criticism, you’re missing out on many opportunities to improve. Here are my book reviews. I might have got it all wrong. Please feel free to reblog any of them with any criticism you may have – let’s get a conversation going! I’ve also started a blog of simplified classics called Pretend You’ve Read. Please feel free to criticise anything you feel I got wrong there, too. Why not? Hone your reader’s instincts.)
Keep pushing forward. (Otherwise, what are you doing with your life?)
Always try to be a better version of yourself. (ditto)
Put your energy into creating things, making things and helping people, not into destroying things, taking things apart or trashing people. (I made that post with the sole intention of improving your life. I wasn’t try to upset you or make you feel bad or come across as “snobbery”. I was trying to help you understand what literature is, what it can do, and how you can cut yourself off a slice of that crazy action.)
A great way to learn to be a better version of yourself is to read literature. (I assume you understand this better than you did seven years ago. At least, I hope so!)
All from that one little post I reblogged from you 7 years ago.
Let’s be friends!
Well actually, my career in publishing and the book industry – which I hadn’t yet begun when I posted this – is down to my passion for all books, whether they’re deemed to be “literature” or not. The book industry is not sustained by holding onto the novels of dead white men, but by recognising that there are gems in all genres, and valuing all readers.
I personally love children’s books and YA. But I also ran a successful Classic Challenge for five years. (Don’t think that was anything to do with you, dear reader).
I have not moved on from Harry Potter or A Series of Unfortunate Events (maybe Dan Brown, but hey, it was seven years ago) and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.” – Haruki Murakami
William Faulkner; Vladimir Nabokov; Ernest Hemingway; Hunter S.
Thompson; Kurt Vonnegut; Nikolai Gogol; Fyodor Dostoevsky; Frank Kafka.
Wow. White guys. So many white guys. They are the one true coming of all literature.
Wow. This guy. Telling OP that all her interests are trash and that she should burn them so she could learn about real literature. Then, seven years later, telling her he was doing it to improve her life.
This whole set of interactions is so new and different. It’s almost like it hasn’t happened a billion times in the last day. Wow.
Good grief. What a tool.
Don’t you know all good arguments start with “burn that book”?
Frank Kafka.
Frank.
The day someone tells me to burn books of any kind is the day I know that they are a moron who believes in censorship of individual taste and of FUN. The day that person only recommends books that are on any school syllabus and doesn’t branch out beyond them underscores the point with fifteen exclamation marks.
Probably my favorite is the fact that OP had 2 obvious Richard Dawkins books (The Selfish Gene and The Greatest Show on Earth) indicating a wide and well-nourished range of interests – from evolutionary biology to young adult fantasy to women’s fiction. (and how satisfying and beautiful is her bookshelf!!) I mean, the cure for a balanced literary diet is not “apply a small wodge of tedious historical men’s fiction following the same themes.”
Meanwhile, her self-appointed critic literally just has a list of dead white American/Russian men who wrote Gritty Literary Fiction About Sad Stuff during a narrow period of history. THEY’RE NOT EVEN THE PRETENTIOUS CLASSICS! THEY’RE NOT EVEN THE OBSCURE FARE!
I am actually a lot more accepting about people being snotty about Classics ™ because I accept that they’ve gone so deep that they probably don’t realize how much they need to decompress – they have lost their adaptations to surface life and normal human interaction, like those deepwater fish that you have to bring up slowly in your net, or they’ll burst. But imagine bringing yourself to be snobby about angsty men’s fiction written between 1800 and 2000.
(Also, Frank Kafka. We shouldn’t laugh)
the day i let go of the Dead White Men School of Worthwhile Fiction was the day i began to truly live as a writer.
i’ve read all of those things Judgy McCriticpants thinks are the only real books. some were brilliant, some were okay, some were disappointing. i’ve also read most of the things on OP’s shelf. same spread of quality. funny thing – being the beloved darling of the establishment doesn’t make you a better or worse writer than the ones who get relegated to the ‘girl stuff’ and ‘kid stuff’ pile. it just makes you more famous.
even that’s not really true anymore. the wheels of academia grind slow, but they grind exceeding fine, and as the literary establishment gradually wakes up to its own shameful obsession with bygone fuckboys, it embraces a wider array of authors and genres every year.
i read all the classics, but i wrote pulp, and i was disappointed in myself. why couldn’t i aspire to The Great American Novel? no one would ever respect me if i kept writing slam-bang action, especially with queers in it! but there came a time when i took a step back and thought, no, you know what, the one i need respect from is myself. i write what i enjoy, and it’s okay to pour all my skill and inspiration into that, because it’s what i goddamn well want to do.
it started as an act of defiance. before long i realized it was actually just common sense. the illusion of Real Literature is only that – an illusion. hype that believes itself.
oh, and for the record, and keeping in mind that i have in fact read every damn one of the books you’re Supposed To Read: the best writing i have ever seen is in fanfiction.
i’m not exaggerating.
on an almost daily basis, i find fanfiction that shames hemingway with its powerful simplicity, or joyce with its experimental creativity, or kerouac with its joyful freedom, or tolkein with its intricate worldbuilding, or – really, name anyone and i could rec you a fanfic that does their thing better. and you know what? most of these writers are women or queer men. the literary world still sees them (us) as alien, but they (we) are no less skilled for all that.
tl;dr: farenheit 451 here can take his snooty nose and shove it up his clenched ass. he doesn’t have the faintest damn clue what he’s talking about.
just moving along like everyone else 