Forget the expanding congressional divide. Literature is seeing its own structural breakdown, thanks to an increasingly petty argument between two integral types of authors: highbrow and lowbrow. Nearly one month ago, Time book critic and The Magicians author Lev Grossman was criticized for his commentary in The Wall Street Journal in which he dissed high-minded “Modernist” authors: “The Modernists felt little obligation to entertain their readers…Conversely they have trained us, Pavlovianly, to associate a crisp, dynamic, exciting plot with supermarket fiction, and cheap thrills, and embarrassment…If you’re having too much fun, you’re doing it wrong.”
Then there is the latest dustup over the lowbrow book of the hour: Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol. British novelist Philip Pullman took the intellectual approach while talking to a U.K. paper: “All the usual literary things [Brown] just doesn’t know how to do, but he’s not interested in those and nor are his millions of readers…It is not great writing.” The Firm author John Grisham then responded to Pullman’s criticism of Brown by knocking classic literature as a whole: “I’ve read literature in the classic sense. We’ve all got those type of books on the shelves at home…I admit that I didn’t like them much. I couldn’t understand why they were said to be so good.”
I’m not sure which side I take, but I do know one thing: We seem one step away from a Twitter fight of Speidi-Ryan Seacrest proportions here. And it seems the debate will rage on. After all, sales for lowbrow lit only seem to increase (Hello, Stephenie Meyer and James Patterson!), while highbrow lit still garners all the accolades (not to mention an occasional endorsement from the big O). But since I would say a majority of us avid readers enjoy dipping in both reading pools, can’t we all just get along?
So tell me, Shelf Lifers: Which side are you on? Team highbrow? Team lowbrow? And are you, like me, feeling uncomfortable with the fact that Grisham knocked hundreds of years’ worth of amazing reads?
Photo Credit: Maki Galimberti
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I’m on Team “Read Whatever You Want as Long as You’re Reading Something!!!”
Agreed.
I like good books. I have no brow preference.
I’ve always held the belief that it doesn’t matter what someone is reading, as long as they are reading something! Whether it’s Twilight or Jane Austen. Any reading is a good thing in my opinion.
Agreed. I may prefer Jane Austen and Michael Ondaatje, but I have no problem with others reading Patterson or Brown. Not enough people read these days, so if Brown makes you happy, good for you!
BUT don’t get me started on Harlequin “books”!!
me too, louise!
I like both “teams”, it really just depends on what mood I’m in. After a semester of reading textbooks non-stop, sometimes I feel like reading something entertaining and interesting, but not so metaphorical like much of the “classic” literature tends to be. I think there is a place for both types of literature, & they both need to chill out & stop bashing each other.
This is what my class is debating right now, today. We read A Prayer for Owen Meany, a #1 best seller, and we are discussing whether it is escapist fiction or interpetational fiction.
What I find most interesting is many of the “classics” were written as popular fiction. Jane Austen, for instance, did not write her books with the intention of being a classic so much as wanting to tell and story and make money. Does that negate the classic-ness of the work? Hardly, but who’s to say what will be a classic two hundred years from now (although I certainly hope literary toilet paper like Twilight is not).
I can see both sides… I had to forcibly drag myself through 100 Years of Solitude, but can’t stand the tacky airport novels with their generic plots and characters.
If I had to choose one I’d go with low-brow, and I’m kind of ashamed to admit it.
BTW, what do people think Harry Potter qualifies as. High or low, or even middle-brow…?
I was just trying to figure out what Harry Potter would be; people like Stephen King have bashed JK Rowling’s style of writing, so I guess that would make it “low-brow”. However, I love the Harry Potter books, & I think they are well-written and will stand the test of time.
That’s not true. Stephen King likes JK Rowling, they even did a reading event together with John Grishman in NYC in 2006. I think you are thinking of Stephanie Meyer…he hated her.
Wha?? Actually, King has praised the Harry Potter series to the skies! And did so in EW, no less. http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20044270_20044274_20050689,00.html
He has made comments about her use of adverbs. Maybe “bash” was a strong word.
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/05/20/deathly_adverbs/
Harry Potter probably wouldn’t classify as either. It has its own group “children’s fiction” although the low-brow probably more accepting of it as the high-brow wanted it off the New York Times bestseller lists even though a lot of the readers were adults.
You’ll never find a book that everyone appreciates, but I think the problem is that the literature professors and critics have become so jaded that if a book doesn’t confuse the hell out of you, it doesn’t “matter.” The best books are the ones that speak to you while having a good plot, so many populist books really are good and show a lasting ability. To Kill a Mockingbird and Of Mice and Men are good reads that speak to people. I firmly believe that Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption by Steven King and Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving will stand the test of time for the same reason, and they are about as populist as you can get.
I’m a switch hitter on this one. Every so often dig into a great bit piece of literature to see the amazing feats of acrobatics the English language is capable of. You can’t read “Lolilta” without feeling like a pitiful excuse for a writer. Modern “high lit” can be equally dazzling and leave you thrilled.
That said, i mostly read lovely low brow books: Julia Quin, Sookie Stackhouse, Dan Brown, The Time Traveler’s Wife, Elizabeth Gilbert, Everything Matters… I refuse to be pegged into a genre.
I simply love to read. 
Have to agree with you. I love to read and don’t need to be edified to enjoy a book. The more I read the more I recognize and appreciate great writing, but I hate having to feel embarrassed to admit I loved Twilight. Reading any book is better than sitting in front of your TV for the same amount of time. I say enjoy the books that keep you turning the page.
What a fantastic thread! If forced to choose between the two, I would have to pick low-brow literature, but I would sorely miss some of my “classics.” I think Ben makes an excellent point about how “low-brow” can evolve into something more if it weathers the test of time. Someday an English professor will look back on the last 20 years of publishing, give it a catchy name, and suddenly we’ll all be vindicated in our choice of literature.
As long as people are reading, how can I complain? I like some of the high brow reading, but since I graduated college with my English degree, I’ve been especially appreciating “low brow” works. I couldn’t get through Wallace’s “Interviews with Hideous Men,” but I could devour “Twilight” (it’s not like I’m proud!) along with Lionel Schriver’s novels.
I read “Twilight” just so i could figure out what they were talking about in the Popwatch blog everyday! LOL
I just wanted to throw it out there that I’m really enjoying the new Shelf Life blog, and I am so glad that an entertainment website is paying attention to books!
Oh and I’m on the “just read, whatever it is” train, but with a caveat: I think if teens (or tweens) are reading, we should help them to analyze the work, just so they realize it’s not necessarily indicative of real life. If Twilight is what kids want to read, that’s great, but I truly hope there is an adult discussing what actual relationships between young men and women should be like.
Totally agree. As an Adult I read Twilight and shuddered at Bella as a role model. However, when I was a young teen I gobbled VC Andrews novels with equally scary heroines.
Both have value. My tastes generally run high-brow, although I can certainly appreciate a well-plotted “low-brow” book, as most of the classics I’ve read are more character-based than plot-based. Look at Atonement: extremely popular, deservedly acclaimed. I love authors like Nick Hornby and Zadie Smith, who aren’t really either. While I appreciate a challenge, not all highbrow works are difficult to get through. Books like Nabokov’s Pnin are unbelievably well-written, but are easy to read, not too lengthy, and funny. Want a good detective book instead of the supermarket thrillers? Try Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett. I think when people hear “classics,” they automatically go for the most famous book first instead of trying the more accessible parts of an author’s canon; they’re often just as good. Don’t start with Ulysses–start with Dubliners! Also look to short story collections, a forgotten treasure of good authors.
I would have to good-naturedly say that I would recommend Joyce to VERY few people. Even the Dubliners
Love this thread. I tend to be a high-brow reader only because I can’t stand lazy writing (but count me out for Joyce, too). That said, I tore through all nine of Charlaine Harris; SS books in a week, then her “Grave” series after that. Not exactly high-brow, but fun books.
Hemingway, Steinbeck, and Austen easily stand the test of time. Dan Brown, though he has interesting plots, is a truly terrible writer. I read a few Grisham books back in the day, but soon tired of reading about other women’s legs. I have legs; don’t need to read about legs.
An aside: My heart was warmed to see “The Jungle” mentioned on Sons of Anarchy last night. Made me love the show all that much more. Almost turned Jax into a Vegan, indeed.
I would like to know where Lev Grossman would put his book, The Magicians – is sure isn’t high brow and although I have not read the Twilight books, I think it might fall between Harry Potter – which will be considered classics 50 years from now and the Stephanie Meyers books.
There is good and awful on both sides – I think it is snobbery to say one only reads high brow – since I do not think you can always put a book in a definite category. I though The Magicians fun, but mostly angsty….my new made up word for today.
I say John Grisham has a good point.
As an unrepentant book addict who’s read everything from VC Andrews to Euripides and everything in between, I think a book has value as long as it gets people reading today.
Reading books is a dying habit. I saw this through my experiences working in the book publishing and book retail industries. So if a Danielle Steel book will get you to read, great! Maybe reading that book will lead a person to reading others in all areas of “browdom.”
Doesn’t this argument go well beyond books to a presence of intellectual curiosity, or a lack of it?
I appreciate both, but I tend toward the high-brow, I guess. I studied literature in college, so I just tend to seek out that kind of fiction. When I’ve tried low-brow, I tend to get bored, not always but usually.
But I am certainly of the opinion that as long as you read something, then your time spent is worthwhile. I worry more about book culture in general fading rather than any segment of that culture. Keeping reading alive is the main thing, particularly with the ever growing dominance of electronic media.
Don’t really see how this conversation is any different than one about people who like art house movies vs. those who like summer blockbusters. These two camps exist in every form of art/entertainment. Some sports are even seen as high brow vs. other seen as low brow.
Both classes of books still get published, for now, and the audiences remain savvy enough to seek out and find what they like.
Not all classics and high-brow books are dense and hard to read, and not all low-brow and commercial books are terribly written. Quality is key and not restricted to high-brow, and readability is not only the purview of low-brow. I enjoyed Stieg Larsen’s terrific mystery “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” (and the follow-up, “The Girl who Played with Fire”) as well as Nobel Laureate Orhan Pamuk’s “Snow”. And I agree, Sam, Chandler and Hammett are terrific writers, and yes, start with “Dubliners”. It’s a wonderful collection and a much easier introduction to Joyce than “Ulysses”.
Brows, schmows. Silly question. Why either/or? Good readers love both styles of fiction. Poor readers can’t be bothered with either, if there’s a Wii or a garage handy. I don’t expect everyone to be like me, or even to like to read. Intellectual curiosity can be served through many media, including just talking to family and friends.
I refuse to accept the premise of the question. Great literature is provocative and entertaining. It is revelatory and amusing. It is literate and accessible. To suggest that any one characteristic is more important than another is to underestimate the medium. The argument over high and low-brow suggests that we expect too little from our authors.
Grisham’s statement about classic literature is ridiculous, but so is Pullman’s suggestion that great writing requires authors to do “all the usual literary things.”
I’m a scientist so my job requires a lot of mental heavy lifting. The last thing I want to do on my free time is read a book that feels like work. A lot of the so-called “high-brow” classics feel like work to me. They are boring, long-winded, and they are not very engaging. Of course, there are exceptions, but overall, I enjoy a good story that won’t put me to sleep and these tend to be “low-brow”.
I’ll admit it, I like what I call popcorn books, which I guess are low-brow. But just because they’re low-brow doesn’t mean that they have to be poorly written. I read Twilight just to see what they hype was about, and I felt like I was reading something a 13 year old had written. The writing was just not very good. The same with the Da Vinci Code.
However, reading is always good. So, who knows?
I always felt that the best kinds of books were the ones that managed to blend the high and low brow situations together. Pynchon, Crowley, Marquez, L’Engle, Le Guin, DFW, Adrian, Byatt, etc etc. Pieces that still populated with characters and ideas and different views of examining life but still weren’t afraid to have a mad scientist get his foot stuck in a toilet? And didn’t a lot of the earlier classic literature, the ones now printed in Penguin black covers feature unprecendented levels of adventure (“Count of Monte Cristo”), ghosts (Shakespeare), monsters (Poe), slapstick (Cervantes), melodrama (Austen), and fantasticism (Carroll)? It seems that authors and audiences want to be polarized, want to be separated into their categories where they can comfortably tell their readers, hey you know what you like here, why would you like to try anything new?
What we should look at, as always, is the worth of the piece itself. Meyers hasn’t written any good books and it’s unlikely that she ever will. Same with Grisham. Yet people like King, while not having the strongest prose style, can spin a good story, one of those, And What Happens Next, sort of pieces. Crichton too, though he lost a lot of momentum later in his life (“State of Fear” was dreadful). And high litararyly speaking, I can’t really stand Flannery O’Connor, Hemingway is a terrific bore, and I don’t think I could sit through another Willa Cather piece.
Last weekend’s second hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge also touched on a lot of this blending of genre and polarization therein, w/r/t mainly science fiction.
But again, and I may have stemmed away from my original point, a lot of the most interesting stuff to come out of the 20th century seems to me to blend everything together into one giant massive encompassing whole.
“Meyers hasn’t written any good books…” I disagree — “The Host” is a very good book.
well, that’s your opinion, but i’ll have to disagree because i hated both twilight and the host.
It goes with your tastes.
Personally, her writing is too “fluffy” for my taste. If i’m in the mood for Fluff, i go to fan fiction which is what twilight essentially is.
I swing both ways: high- OR low-brow… I’m open-minded like that.
Having said that, my reading habits do trend towards literature that most would consider high-brow. But just like I enjoy going to see a few big summer blockbuster movies at the theater, I sometimes like to read stuff that’s not necessarily a literary masterpiece (as long as it’s still well-written!).
When I got back into reading 8 years ago, I decided to predominately read “high-brow”, award winning books. However, over the years, it became painful reading so many depressing books, as many of the award winning books are often depressing and difficult to read.
Now, I switch it up, and often lead towards “low-brow” books which can be more enjoyable and engaging to read. I think that reading is always good, and it’s always enjoyable to get wrapped up in a good book, whether its fiction, non-fiction, a classic or some low-brow fun read.
I am all for uni-brow literature!
I like both, but appreciate the mid-brow and up. I just finished The lost Symbol and didn’t like it at all because the writing was so bad. I feel the same away about Twilight – it is just horrible writing and I would rather have quality books do well.
I just lost a lot of respect for John Grisham. I have enjoyed his books in the past, but that he basically knocked out hundreds of years of literature shows his idiocy.
I like both, but I have to say: there’s absolutely nothing new about this argument. It’s been raging for decades, if not centuries, but I do think it’s silly. LOL
I think Grisham was talking about REALLY high brow stuff – you know – material that is just plain hard to read…and to take in – at least without the help of a gifted teacher to help make some of that stuff understandable. I loved Beowulf, but a lot of folks around me in that class were just lost.
Saying that – I try to read the National Book Award winners as well as the Pulitzer each year – and either I am getting smarter, or the writing is better and except for Stone Diaries – all have been wonderful.
My book group argues this point a lot – which is more worth our time. The Worst Hard Time or Jan Karon – so we read both and rag on Jan Karon’ sappy stories.
And Lev Grossman’s book is just a pot boiler and I was really disappointed in it.
I’m probably more on the low-brow side, although I’m a bit confused as to what separates one from the other. I really enjoy some of the classics, but am unsure if something like “To Kill A Mockingbird” would be high or low. Really, my preference for reading is well-written fiction, wherever that may fall.
(Also, I agree with the much-stated opinion that I always think it’s good for people to read anything!)
This summer I have read at least 12 novels… a lot for me, including 4 of the Sookie Stackhouse thrills and at least one pultzer prize winner. So obviously I go both ways. But if I had to give one or the other up, it would easily be give up the low-brow. I could never say that any low-brow falls onto my best 5 reads of the last ten years, but Kavalier and Clay absolutely does. Using Grisham’s works as an example, I know I’ve read half dozen or so or his, and enjoyed at the time, but they don’t stand out over the long haul, I couldn’t even tell you which ones I really read. The only novels that stick with me over time are always high-brow…. as long as Huck Finn counts as high-brow in retrospect.
Great thread! I must say that over the years I have gotten tired of the “snobbery” that tends to exist in the book world. Such “snobbery” claims that I should read books like The Corrections (a book that in my opinion was quite terrible), but that any genre book is considered trash. I like to mix it up and read both modern low and high brow books as well as classic literature. While some books (I’m looking at you William Faulkner) are not that enjoyable to me, I always appreciate a well written story. I like books that are intellectually stimulating, but if it is long, boring, and too complicated such as As I Lay Dying, I really don’t enjoy reading it. As an engineer, life is stressful and sometimes I need a light and fluffy read. I found Twilight quite enjoyable. Was it as well written as Pride and Prejudice? No, but I was very entertained.
As long as people are reading and enjoying the books they read, I think there should not be so arguement over what makes a good book. Most “classics” these days were once popular writers of their day.
Correction: As long as people are reading and enjoying the books they read, I think there should not be so much argument over what makes a good book. Most “classics” these days were once popular writers of their day.
I also want to add that truthfully I get bored reading too much of one kind of book. It’s fun to mix it up.