Yup. These arguments over the infantilization of American culture ignore a couple of observations:
a. Henry James was not a best-seller in his time. Marie Corelli and Hall Caine were, selling hundreds of thousands verses 10,000. Does this mean the English Victorians were just as shallow?
b. That there's a deep well of literature stretching back a thousand years for those who want "adult" or artistic reading.
c. That those who wish to mull over the meaning of life, the structure of culture, how market forces manipulate art to serve consumer products -- i.e., anything not covered in Harry Potter or Twilight -- find what they need in the Philosophy and Nonfiction sections of the bookstore.
d. That these might be the complaints of people who have a much easier life compared to those in Gaza, Afghanistan, sub-Saharan Africa and other parts of the world. And those outside the New York City media bubble spend most of their days working for a living. Some of them do very unpleasant, even dangerous work. They're raising families, going to church, deal with aging relatives, and contemplate their mortality. We should expect them to be adult in their reading as well? Is Henry James really going to teach them about life that they're not learning every day?
(And, yes, I read some of the Library of America books when they were published a decade ago. I even wrote a favorable review describing the experience of slowly working through his sentences. But I can't remember anything about them now, although I can vividly recall scenes from "Lolita," which I read in the LoA edition about the same time. Make of that what you will.)
Yup. These arguments over the infantilization of American culture ignore a couple of observations:
ReplyDeletea. Henry James was not a best-seller in his time. Marie Corelli and Hall Caine were, selling hundreds of thousands verses 10,000. Does this mean the English Victorians were just as shallow?
b. That there's a deep well of literature stretching back a thousand years for those who want "adult" or artistic reading.
c. That those who wish to mull over the meaning of life, the structure of culture, how market forces manipulate art to serve consumer products -- i.e., anything not covered in Harry Potter or Twilight -- find what they need in the Philosophy and Nonfiction sections of the bookstore.
d. That these might be the complaints of people who have a much easier life compared to those in Gaza, Afghanistan, sub-Saharan Africa and other parts of the world. And those outside the New York City media bubble spend most of their days working for a living. Some of them do very unpleasant, even dangerous work. They're raising families, going to church, deal with aging relatives, and contemplate their mortality. We should expect them to be adult in their reading as well? Is Henry James really going to teach them about life that they're not learning every day?
(And, yes, I read some of the Library of America books when they were published a decade ago. I even wrote a favorable review describing the experience of slowly working through his sentences. But I can't remember anything about them now, although I can vividly recall scenes from "Lolita," which I read in the LoA edition about the same time. Make of that what you will.)