genre

In previous posts chronicling my reading habits and tastes, I’ve invoked the names of authors like Dickens, Proust, Flaubert, Austen, and Shakespeare, perhaps giving the impression that I invariably spend my time with only the best that literature has to offer. Before you brand me an elitist (and ruin my chances at a future presidential bid), let me state for the record that I also have my guilty reading pleasures, and they often run right alongside my more literary pursuits. A difficult question is what makes certain fiction “popular” and other fiction “literary.” Although the best popular or genre fiction can have psychological depth, moral purpose, social insight, stylistic competence or sometimes even finesse. . .somehow you know you’re not reading Proust. One handy measure is narrative speed. With any of the authors named above, I slow down, savor passages, sometimes even do a bit of subvocalizing while I’m reading. Hearing the words play out in my head takes more time than absorbing great chunks of prose all at once, but when it comes to reading what does time matter except as a big, warm sea to splash around in? Books on a popular level are more compulsively gobbled, making them dicey choices for reading at night. On more than one occasion I’ve set down my breakneck-paced mystery just before going to bed with a sense of having stepped off a train after a long trip and still feeling the speeding motion. Inner speeding does not make for a good night’s sleep.  read more »