This is about a bunch of things, but also this: Why are popular novels so terrible? It’s not because the masses don’t appreciate quality. It’s because the novels you read are the ones in the Acceptable Triangle, which are either popular or good. So within that group, the good ones are less likely to be popular, for the same reason the handsomer men are bigger jerks. If you force yourself to read unpopular novels chosen essentially at random—I’ve been on a jury for a literary prize, so I’ve actually done this—you find that most of them, just like the popular ones, are pretty bad. When a book wins a prize, then its audience expands beyond the core group of fans already predisposed to love it. That’s what every author dreams of, but more frequently read inevitably means less universally liked.
Posted on: Thu, 05 Jun 2014 04:20:15 +0000
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