Replies

With the gates once carefully guarded by the centurions of high culture now flung open, the barbarians flooded in, and it is they who are running the joint today. The most lauded novelists in "The Cambridge History of the American Novel" tend to be those, in the words of another of its contributors, who are "staging a critique of 'America' and its imperial project." Thus such secondary writers as Allen Ginsberg, Kurt Vonnegut and E.L. Doctorow are in these pages vaunted well beyond their literary worth.

This is what I experienced as a student of literature as well.

As a writer most of us fundamentally know one thing. Phooey the content or subject matter. A great story is just that--a great story. The story itself is always what will drive people to read. If you have a good or great story just tell it and they will come :). (Be sure to edit though. Good writers rewrite. Stories are often shaped through the revision process.)

Once you go past the Bible and normal good fiction, it's all crap. Serious, spade it into the earth, grows good tomatoes crap.

Cory Doctorow's book 'Makers' was good.

See also Olson Scott Card's 'Enders Game'.

Then come chat about 'lit' rature.

/johnny

the comments following the article are quite interesting.

I have always thought that kids aren’t reading, not because of the internet, but because teachers/professors make them read a certain politically correct inferior book in class and tell them ‘this is literature’.

and so they say, ‘Well, I guess i don’t like literature’. They’re burnt -— once burnt twice shy.

Graduate and undergrduate students asked to do term papers now have it easy -— just say the assigned book exhibits sexism, racism, heterosexualism, and you’ll get a good grade. Simple.

If course you have to memorize the buzzwords.

sprinkle them liberally.
But what really bothers me is the current take on English literature — its ‘wrongness’ and pushing inferior works of propaganda (such as those by Doctorow and author of The poisonwood Bible -— can’t think of her name) driving young people away from reading, which is its final effect.

incidentally writers have long known that if you get your book on college and high school reading lists, youa re guaranteed good ales. The students have to buy it.

I am wondering if, in fact, some writers are writing directly for that market. It would make sense.

They may not make the best-seler lists, but with a politically correct, multicultural tome, they will have guaranteed sales when the book is assigned. But you have to stick to ‘America is evil’ and ‘all minorities are helpless victims’.

Not too hard, really.