From pulp to Proust

From Reading Upward by Tim Parks.

At a deeper level, there is a desire to believe in an educational process that puts the intellectual in a pastoral relationship to an ingenuous public who must be coaxed in a positive direction; that is, the notion of this pathway upward from pulp to Proust allows for the figure of the benign educator who takes the hands of blinkered readers and leads them from the stable to the stars, as the Italians say. It’s good to posit a scheme of things in which possibly obsolete skills like close reading and critical analysis in fact have an important social role.

What no one wants to accept—and no doubt there is an element of class prejudice at work here too—is that there are many ways to live a full, responsible, and even wise life that do not pass through reading literary fiction. And that consequently those of us who do pursue this habit, who feel that it enriches and illuminates us, are not in possession of an essential tool for self-realization or the key to protecting civilization from decadence and collapse. We are just a bunch of folks who for reasons of history and social conditioning have been blessed with a wonderful pursuit. Others may or may not be enticed toward it, but I seriously doubt if E.L. James is the first step toward Shakespeare. Better to start with Romeo and Juliet.

"There are many ways to live a full, responsible, and even wise life that do not pass through reading literary fiction" Amen!

I am of the school that acknowledges that the first step to careful reading and transformative reading is enthusiastic reading and that the first step towards enthusiastic reading is simply reading. I think we can do much to increase children's engagement with reading and I think that is a necessary predicate towards different, more sophisticated, or more productive reading.

However, and I think this is part of Park's point, there is no inevitability towards that progression and that is not a bad thing. There is a lot of privilege, presumption, class, status and arrogance underpinning the effort to create a hierarchy of value with regard to what a person reads. It is none of anyone's business. It would be nice to know that if you read more literary fiction, you become more empathetic; or that if you read more history, you make better decisions; or that if you read more economics, you manage your money better, or that if you read more romances, you have better relationships, or that if you read more mysteries, you sharpen your logic and inference capabilities, etc.. It would be nice, but there is no evidence that any of those statements is true. They are simply things we tell ourselves because we are seeking a post hoc justification for that which we already believe to be true.

Vocal advocacy for one type of reading over another (fiction over nonfiction, literary versus pragmatic, long form over short form, voluntary versus required, canon versus contemporary) and so on are, I think, misguided. Each genre serves a purpose and each appeals to different people with different abilities and interests at different times. In a garden of fruits and vegetables and flowers, which category of plant is the best? It depends on what your goals and values might be. It is a less than useful question without definitions.

All that said, I have long pondered what might make a book "consequential" as opposed to "best". I think it is the intersection point of five Venn diagrams. None of the categories by themselves make a book consequential. It is the relative intersection of the categories.

Intensity of appeal - Bestsellers. The most number of books sold to the largest number of people.

Breadth of appeal - The degree to which the book appeals to people across boundaries of class, income, profession, language, etc.

Duration of appeal - Over what span of time does the book engage readers?

Consequences of appeal - The degree to which by perspective or knowledge, the book changes the direction of history.

Imitative appeal - How often the book is retold in abridgment or form (movies, plays, etc.) or revision or retelling.

A few examples. For simplicities sake I will use a scale of 1-5 in each category (1 being the best) without getting bogged down in definitions and quantities.

Is Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown and illustrated by Clement Hurd a consequential book? It is a phenomenal bestseller. When most books struggle to break 5,000 copies sold, Goodnight Moon sells more than 500,000 copies a year, year in and year out. In terms of Breadth, it must be appealing across virtually all barriers given its sales numbers. It is translated into more than a dozen languages and sold in dozens of countries. It is frequently anthologized.

Duration of appeal is extensive. First published in 1947, it has never been out of print in 68 years.

Consequences of appeal. That is more challenging. Has it changed anyone's perspective or added to our collective knowledge in a way that has changed what we do? Perhaps but that seems a hard argument to make.

Imitative appeal. Also pretty well established. It is available in games, as a video, set to music. There are satires of Goodnight Moon. There are Goodnight Moon toys. etc.

Overall, I would say that in terms of Intensity of appeal, Breadth, Duration, Consequences, and Imitation, you are probably looking at something like 1, 1, 3, 5, 3 for an overall average of 2.6.

In contrast you might have something like De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres) by Nicolaus Copernicus, published in 1543. One of the most consequential shifts in knowledge and perspective in the Scientific Revolution. Its scores in terms of Intensity of appeal, Breadth, Duration, Consequences, and Imitation, might be something like 5, 5, 2, 1, 1 for an overall average of 2.8. It is not read by many people outside a couple of fields in the sciences. It has endured for nearly five hundred years. It is hugely consequential in revolutionizing our understanding of the cosmos. The moral of Copernicus as a truth teller afraid of the dogma of the time is retold in all our histories, so in a way, a lot of imitativeness. It certainly spawned new books galore both affirming and attempting to refute Copernicus's thesis.

You get the idea. You can go through the same exercise for any book such as The Fault In Our Stars by John Green, the various plays of Shakespeare, other canonical works such as To Kill a Mockingbird, etc. As you do so, the five categories create a deeper understanding. The Fault In Our Stars by John Green may be great literary fiction but it scores about a 4.0. It has intense appeal (bestseller) but it is selling primarily to female teens and middle aged women. It hasn't been around long, hasn't had any identifiable consequences, and hasn't yet been much imitated or extended into other forms (though it likely will be).

Is this an accurate system? Only roughly so but I think it does shed some useful insight into the different aspects of what we mean when we refer to something as being "best".