{"id":4457,"date":"2019-02-09T04:59:14","date_gmt":"2019-02-09T09:59:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/?p=4457"},"modified":"2019-02-13T04:41:24","modified_gmt":"2019-02-13T09:41:24","slug":"the-world-is-full-of-genre-snobs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/the-world-is-full-of-genre-snobs\/","title":{"rendered":"Literary Snobs Aren’t The Only Genre Snobs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Writing in The Guardian<\/a>, author Emily Maguire complains about literary snobs who look down on the sorts of books she likes to read, without listing any of them.\u00a0 In general, though, they’re not in “the canon,” not written by :”dead white men.”<\/p>\n

As if the canon has never changed and has never included Jane Austen, Ann Radcliffe, Mary Shelley, George Eliot, the Brontes, Elizabeth Gaskell, Emily Dickinson, Virginia Woolf, Gertrude Stein, Edith Wharton–and many others.<\/p>\n

Literary snobs may have gotten in the way of her self esteem, but genre snobs\u00a0 come in all shapes and sizes. The owner of Michigan\u2019s wonderful mystery bookstore, Aunt Agatha\u2019s, once griped on Facebook about academics in her college town dissing mysteries, and rightfully so. But mystery fans themselves aren\u2019t above genre-bashing.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been on a mystery readers\u2019 and writers\u2019 listserv for about fifteen years and way too often a predictable thread emerges. Somebody complains about being sneered at for reading mysteries by somebody else off-list who thinks they\u2019re silly, trashy, mindless \u201cescape reading.\u201d<\/p>\n

The list starts to seethe: some of the \u201cvictims\u201d quickly turn victimizer and start trashing \u201cLiterature\u201d or \u201cliterary fiction.\u201d What\u2019s that? Well, as defined by a best-selling mystery author at a conference I attended years ago: books where not very much happens to people who aren\u2019t very interesting. Wasn\u2019t he insightful? He certainly knew his audience\u2014people roared their approval. Snobbery clearly works both ways.<\/p>\n

What usually happens next on the list is that more people chime in with complaints about Proust or whoever they think is highfalutin and boring. That expands to include all Modern or Contemporary Fiction, however it\u2019s defined, which is usually whatever book that person doesn\u2019t like. Or disliked in high school. Or was told was brilliant but they hated. Or anything dubbed \u201cclassic.\u201d And the authors and their fans are of course elitist.<\/p>\n

The contempt these mystery readers sometimes feel directed at them seems to get recycled as they express disdain for books which have been written and enjoyed by people they have to denigrate. That\u2019s not an argument or even a defense: it\u2019s insecurity.<\/p>\n

Sometimes they\u2019ll point to all the crime writers on the bestseller list and sneer that literary novels only sell \u201ca few copies\u201d and are usually written \u201cfor the author\u2019s friends.\u201d Or they\u2019ll make lavish claims and say something like \u201cAnne Perry is a better writer than George Eliot.\u201d I\u2019ve had dinner with Anne Perry and I doubt she would make that claim. I\u2019ve also read Eliot\u2019s novels extensively. You can\u2019t compare the two authors.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve done radio and print book reviews since the early 90s and I\u2019ve found plenty of bad writing in every genre. If you don\u2019t like a certain kind of book, don\u2019t read it. But trashing a whole genre doesn\u2019t make you sound authoritative or thoughtful, it only makes you sound like you\u2019ve got a giant chip on your shoulder.<\/p>\n

Lev Raphael is the author of The State University of Murder<\/a> and 25 other books in genres from memoir to mystery.\u00a0 He teaches creative writing at www.writewithoutborders.com<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Writing in The Guardian, author Emily Maguire complains about literary snobs who look down on the sorts of books she likes to read, without listing any of them.\u00a0 In general, though, they’re not in “the canon,” not written by :”dead white men.” As if the canon has never changed and has never included Jane Austen, … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1696,1693,1695,767,321,1698,1691,733,1692,1697,1694,197,1689,1690,122,501],"class_list":["post-4457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-anne-perry","tag-classic-fiction","tag-contemporary-literature","tag-crime-writers","tag-fiction","tag-genre-snobs","tag-genres","tag-george-eliot","tag-literary-fiction","tag-literary-snobs","tag-modern-literature","tag-mysteries","tag-mystery-fans","tag-mystery-readers","tag-suspense","tag-thrillers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4457","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4457"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4457\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4464,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4457\/revisions\/4464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}