Popular Fiction: What Does That Even Mean?

As a term, “popular fiction” has always bothered me. Or, perhaps it’s fairer to say that the term “literature” has always bothered me. Or, perhaps the issue at heart is that these terms are set up to suggest that the two things are in any way different. They are two terms that carry weighty value judgements and are applied as objective labels. Indeed, the distinction between the two is clear enough that it is not unusual for stores to have a “literature” section away from the general fiction. But it has always been somewhat of a mystery to me as to how this distinction is made.

My first assumption was that it was a matter of which books had stood the test of time and thus held a certain cultural relevance that perhaps called for them to be studied. Shakespeare, Chaucer, Shelley, Wordsworth, all authors that have been dead for at least a hundred years, and yet their work is still read today. That makes sense, right? Except no, that’s not the rule that seems to be used. You’ll often find much more recent and living authors under the heading of “literature.”

General cultural relevance then? Well, that seems vague. Whose culture? Who makes that decision? That would seem unquantifiable, at best.

Perhaps award-winners? Again, no. You’ll regularly find literature sections with books that have won no awards, and there are plenty of books with well-regarded awards that don’t make it into there. N. K. Jemisin won the Hugo for all three books in a trilogy, but I’ve never seen them placed under the heading of “literature.” And besides, even if that were the case, that would limit the number of books that could be classified as literature in a year to the number of awards handed out, and it would be dictated by small groups on award committees (a group who are overwhelmingly likely to be old, white, and male). That can’t be right, can it?

So it must be some literal identifiable quality of the writing that makes this distinction and elevates books to the lofty heights of “literature” and leaves “popular fiction” out in the cold.

But still, who is to say what writing is good and what writing is bad? This question turned me to the writings of Harold Bloom, an academic who clearly knew his stuff as he penned a book titled the The Western Cannon laying out which authors were of high quality, another called How to Read and Why, and also lengthy treatises on how Stephen King was a bad writer and people shouldn’t read his work, saying ““He is a man who writes what used to be called penny dreadfuls,” and “an immensely inadequate writer on a sentence-by-sentence, paragraph-by-paragraph, book-by-book basis.”^[1]Bloom on King’s receipt of the National Book Foundation’s “Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters” – … Continue reading

Sadly, in my delving into his writing, I could find no clear justification of what made writing good, or indeed what made writing bad. He only included descriptions of what writing he felt was good and what writing he felt was bad. The closest definition of the good qualities of a work I could find was an explanation that Moby Dick was great writing because it reminded him of a place where he used to live by the sea^[2]Bloom, Harold. The Daemon Knows. New York: Spiegal & Grau, 2015. [128-129] (this is not a joke, that’s literally all I could find).

Doing some comparisons between works that were definitely considered “popular fiction,” and some which were considered “literature,” I found passages in both that were particularly pleasing to read, alongside passages that seemed perfunctory or drew me out of the narrative.

And this is surely the root of the problem. Short of writing that is unintentionally incomprehensible, isn’t quality ultimately subjective?

While, yes, a story might have a large plot-hole that would make some define the work as “bad,” others might enjoy the same story for its crazy action sequences or its tense love triangle and not find that the plot-hole detracts from their enjoyment. Similarly, someone might hold up some writings as fantastic, thoughtful prose, but someone else might find it to be overwrought, pretentious, and unrelatable.

People are going to seek different things from the works they consume, and they should be free to do so without being judged unduly for it (I make obvious exceptions for content that promotes racism, homophobia, transphobia, you get the idea – you can get out of here with that stuff). But the point is that people enjoy things for a reason, and regardless of your assertion of its quality, if a work is popular, there must be a reason for that, and that popularity brings with it or indicates a certain cultural worth.

People forget that the majority of the media that we consume is in some way going to be a commentary on our culture. Whether that is because the creators set out to create something that made a particular statement or tackled a specific problem, or purely because any work produced within a society is by its very nature going to represent a reflection and a reaction to that culture. If it becomes wildly popular, then it is safe to assume that communities are seeing something depicted there and saying “yes, I recognize this problem and/or solution.”

Which brings us back to that question of what separates “popular fiction” and “literature.” As far as I can discern, that’s the wrong question. The right question becomes “who separates ‘popular fiction’ and ‘literature’.” There is little quantifiable about the works themselves and instead it is academics and critics who select some works to be held up as the epitome of a culture.

And it is those individuals that we have to thank for the fact that “popular fiction” has become a slur. Indeed, in many universities explaining that you want to write about popular works will be met with incredulity. We end up with institutions dedicated to studying our culture who refuse to study the works that the majority of our society are actually engaging with.

This is obviously a problem at that level, but it also is one that comes to affect everyone. People are told they should read “literature” but find the books unrelatable, hard to get into, or tedious, and many come to the conclusion that as they don’t enjoy reading these works that are supposed to be great, they don’t like reading. If they read popular works instead, they are shamed for liking work that is looked down on by so many.

If this all seems like blather, it’s time to remember that popular fiction has a funny habit of transmuting into literature down the line. Shakespeare was writing in dick jokes and “low-brow” humor^[3]Vox delves into a few of the ever-so-many dirty jokes from Shakespeare – https://www.vox.com/2015/4/23/8479871/shakespeare-dirty-jokes alongside adding witches to Macbeth just because he wanted to appeal to the new king^[4]Shakespeare added elements to Macbeth to appeal to King James I – https://www.historyextra.com/period/stuart/shakespeares-macbeth-and-king-jamess-witch-hunts/, and Dickens rushed A Christmas Carol out in six weeks^[5]Dickens and A Christmas Carol – https://www.biography.com/news/charles-dickens-a-christmas-carol because he needed the money and then capitalized on it with 127 paid performances^[6]Dickens and A Christmas Carol – https://www.biography.com/news/charles-dickens-a-christmas-carol Dickens’ life in his lifetime. They were the popular fiction of their day and the fact that this definition seems apt to shift over time should put this matter to rest. A notion of “superior literature” as separate to “inferior popular fiction” helps no one other than gatekeeping elitists. Let’s just call it fiction and enjoy the ones we like.

Is there a book that you love, but felt guilty for enjoying because it wasn’t “literature”? Recommend it in the comments!

Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this, let me know, and I’ll follow it up with my fun thoughts about terms like “escapist fiction” and “genre fiction.” For more on A Christmas Carol, check out this video I made for Unramblings!