I am currently in a book club whose only rule for picking books each month is that it’s an easy read. Jobs, personal projects, and the general busyness of life made easy reads seem like, well, the easiest way to go. Of course, this means we read a lot of YA and genre fiction, especially romance, because they’re quick, usually standalone, and don’t take much mental effort.
The more we read, the more I’ve begun to notice a trend in mainstream romance books (and on social media among readers of said mainstream romance books) to go on short tirades detailing all the reasons it’s not wrong to like romance books, often edging into why it is wrong to like other genres and authors. Usually the arguments trend toward the feminist—sexual liberation, women are allowed to live happily ever after, etc. Often they trend toward anti-esotericism or anti-elitism—popcorn books are just as good as any other literature. (Or, more forcefully, a book you enjoy is better than one you don’t.)
Rarely do these arguments address the question of quality—should genre fiction be held on par with literary fiction?—unless it’s to proclaim a resounding yes, usually for the anti-elitist reasoning mentioned above. To my mind, literary fiction is a genre much like any other, and we should really have a collective name for books about a sad guy reflecting on his life in a depressing manner while bad things happen to him and the people he loves. I don’t hold lit fic to any specific standard, because the world doesn’t seem to either. That being said, claiming that a popular modern popcorn fiction book is on par with Steinbeck in terms of writing quality is ridiculous.
I don’t have many soapboxes, but the tallest of them has the words “writing is a craft” spray-painted red in all caps down the side. Probably with a little heart at the bottom, because that seems like something I would do. There are many reasons modern genre fiction is often mediocre and forgettable, one of which I wrote about in this article. At its most basic, though, the reason is that’s what sells.
Because all my favorite stories apparently have something to do with news media, I’m reminded of a quote from the movie Morning Glory. The main characters spend most of the movie arguing over whether it’s better to provide the public with information or entertainment, bran vs donuts, and toward the end, when Harrison Ford reports on breaking news, Rachel McAdams tells him, “That was better than a great story, that was great television. That was bran with a donut. A bran donut.”
I agree with everything these opinionated romance authors have to say. I think romance (and other genres) should not be looked down upon because it’s fun or it has a happy ending. I definitely don’t think quality should be dictated by content. To quote the oft-quoted Ursula K. Le Guin, “The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist; a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain.” What I don’t agree with is that we have to accept popular fiction as good as it is.
I enjoy the donuts of the literary world, the quick popcorn fiction that doesn’t require more than a passing acknowledgment of basic emotions. But I would enjoy a lot of genre fiction a lot more if authors and editors and publishers held genre fiction up to a standard, and that standard had to do with craft and staying power rather than immediate sales. I recently read a book for book club that was enjoyable, but the minute I set it down to do something else, I genuinely forgot I was reading anything. This isn’t a one-off experience, either. A couple months ago I listened to half an audiobook on a road trip and enjoyed it, and an hour after I got home I realized I had absolutely no desire to finish it because there was nothing about the story that stuck with me.
On the flip side of that, however, any time I try to read new literary fiction or published short stories, I more often than not find myself disenchanted, disgusted, and depressed. There seems to be nothing but narcissistic narrators, unnecessary death and disease, and an overall miserable outlook on life, usually held by a quintessential guy-in-your-MFA protagonist. Not my favorite, to put it lightly. It’s a struggle trying to find modern fiction that’s intelligent and interesting but doesn’t suck all the joy out of life.
So I’m trying to create a space for it.
If for some reason you found this blog without following me on social media, I run a website that recently opened up submissions for short fiction, with the caveat that we’re looking for well-written stories that aren’t depressing. I always try to write in this intersection, and in searching for a literary journal or magazine to publish my work, I realized they don’t exist. There is no respected platform for publishing feel-good literary fiction. (If you know of one, by all means, tell me.) The straw that broke me was coming across a story in a respected magazine that featured your typical 30-something big city man coming home to the podunk childhood neighborhood he’s tried to forget and finding not only death and disease and drugs and depression and all your typical accoutrements of those stories, but also a former childhood friend who, no joke, kills puppies to make coats. This piece of fiction literally took the story of Cruella de Vil, made it gritty, pretentious realism, and ended up published in a legitimate journal.
A friend of mine in college was in love with the phrase nec spe, nec metu, Latin that loosely translates to without hope, without fear. It meant, more or less, that if one doesn’t have hope or expectations, then it follows that one won’t have anything to fear. To put it another way, Oscar Wilde once wrote, “The basis of optimism is sheer terror.” We hope and expect that things will turn out well, because we’re terrified of the alternative.
I don’t disagree with the sentiment, but what kind of life is a life without hope? I recently wrote an article about the difference I draw between feel-good and hope-filled media. They often overlap, but a story with hope doesn’t have to shy away from life’s tragedies. It’s not an escapist fantasy. It just has to keep from reveling in and glorifying the pain. It has to admit that yeah, sometimes life sucks, but we have the potential (and often the obligation) to make it a little bit better.
In the words of Václav Havel, “Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously headed for early success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed. […] Hope is not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.”
But hope isn’t a genre. You can’t search Netflix for “hopeful” and end up with Liberal Arts and Captain Fantastic and a handful of my other favorite movies. You can’t search for “well-written feel-good books” without just finding someone blogging about their favorite books, because “well-written” has become synonymous with “I liked it.” Hope is an overarching worldview, not a plot point, and genre fiction that deals in happily-ever-afters seems to miss the forest for the trees more often than not.
Perhaps I’m simply my own brand of pedant, peddling pretentious genre fiction instead of pretentious pain, but I’m okay with that. You have to stand for something. And standing for hope and bran donuts seems as good as anything.
Stay excellent,
Kristen
For a more thorough discussion of hope and how it differs from optimism, check out this article from Aeon.
They’re not donuts, but I recently tried making these carrot cake muffins, and they were excellent, especially with an added cup of raisins. (I may or may not have been eating them for breakfast every day…)
If you’re also in the market for hope-filled media, here’s a smattering of my favorites:
(movies) Liberal Arts, Captain Fantastic
(shows) Ted Lasso, Parks and Rec, The Newsroom
(books) Cannery Row, The Wind in His Heart
Josh Radnor’s Museletters are one of the best things on the internet and were one of my main inspirations for starting my own newsletter. Check out his latest here.
This Spotify playlist called Villain Mode has very nicely encompassed my mood the past week. It’s fun.
Featured image by Brooke Lark on Unsplash
Earthbound, But Aspiring 