It reminded me of an NPR story from last summer, where legitimate writers, supposedly people of taste, revealed their guilty summer reading pleasures. Writer Joshua Braff admitted that he enjoys John Irving, and Karen Abbott confessed to drawing insight from "Destiny Times Six: An Astrologer's Casebook."
At the time, my reaction was to applaud the courage of these writers. We are all flawed humans, weak to resist the temptation of mysteries where cats help find clues. Why not admit the weird stuff we're into and try to live openly, relating to each other on a more honest and authentic level?
I'll tell you why not. Pretensions and affectations, elitism and snobbery allow us to create an image of what we want to be, and when we aspire to be the sort of people who read Tolstoy and Jose Saramago, with an occasional McSweeney's thrown in for comic relief, we affirm the value of good literature over bestsellers.
None of us is perfect, but when we publicly air our flaws to make them seem normal and acceptable, we as a culture, sink deeper into the abyss of "pop". If an NPR reviewer tells you it's okay to read romance novels, you no longer have to feel guilty about it, so what will your new guilty pleasure be? Reader's Digest condensed classics? Reading "Playboy" actually for the articles?
Go on reading your Anne Rice, my dears, but please keep it to yourselves.
2 comments:
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A moral slippery slope of reading? :o If the only thing keeping us in the world of so-called "advanced literature" is a fear of what others would say, then I doubt we are even appreciating that literature. Personal honesty will only separate the chaff from the chaff (because once someone claims to be wheat, we can already know that they are not), and allow us to get to know people better. Once we get to know people better, of course, the next step might be getting to know ourselves...
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