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But are they any good? Women readers, formula fiction, and the sacralization of the literary canon.

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But are they any good? Women readers, formula fiction, and the sacralization of the literary canon.

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BUT ARE THEY AN Y GOOD?
W O M EN READERS, FORMULA FICTION, AN D THE
SACRALIZATION OF THE LITERARY CANON
by
Beth Rapp Young
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
ENGLISH (RHETORIC, LINGUISTICS, LITERATURE)
August 1995
Copyright 1995 Beth Rapp Young
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UMI Number: 9617008
C op yrigh t 1995 by
Young, B eth Rapp
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UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY PARK
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 90007
This dissertation, written by
Beth Rapp Young
under the direction of h?.L Dissertation
Committee, and approved by all its members,
has been presented to and accepted by The
Graduate School, in partial fulfillment of re
quirements for the degree of
Date ...A ugust. 2.? < > 1995
DISSERTATION COMMITTEE
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Dean o f Graduate Studies
Chairperst'n
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This dissertation would never have been w ritten were it not for
the unstinting support I received from colleagues, friends, and family.
At Rollins College, Heather G arrett translated articles w ritten in
French, and Gregory Mullins helped install blinds in my office so I could
work undisturbed. The expert members of Romance Readers Anonymous
(RRA-L), an electronic mailing list, helped me select a representative
romance novelist, and led me to many other enjoyable novels which I
felt perfectly justified in reading during my dissertation time (after all,
it was research). And my sister, Laura Blackwell, sacrificed many
evenings to drive me to th e airp o rt for each week’s commute from
Orlando to Atlanta, where my research materials were located.
Twila Yates Papay and Joseph L. Papay were dedicated readers of
every draft, and this work is immeasurably improved as a resu lt of
their thoughtful comments. Their advice motivated me to forge ahead,
even when I thought I would rath er leave academia than spend another
day at th e computer. And of course, were it not for Twila’s inspiring
teaching when I was an undergraduate, I would not have entered this
field at all.
My husband David Young, who cheerfully did housework, watched
television wearing headphones, and walked on tiptoe while I was
working, was a constant source of encouragem ent and moral support.
His library and editing skills came in handy, too. Margaret and Bill
Young also read early drafts with the genuine in terest a dissertation
w riter hardly dares to hope for, while helpfully pointing out
inconsistencies and opaque language.
Finally, of course, I owe thanks to my committee, W . Ross
Winterowd, Ronald Gottesman, and Amy Richlin—without their
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encouragem ent and support, I could not have undertaken this project.
Ross, in particular, helped me move past my initial w riter’s block by
promising to read even pages of "guck"; th is work took shape in
response to his insightful critique. The perceptive comments of
everyone on my committee will be invaluable as I continue to think
through these ideas.
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iv
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter
ABSTRACT.................................................................................................................. vi
I. THE W EA K READER A N D THE ENSNARING BOOK:........................................1
BIAS AGAINST POPULAR FICTION
Investigation of Bias Against Popular F iction
Investigation of Readers of Popular F iction
Concern For W om en and Working Class Readers
H ow C ultural Value Has Been Assigned to Books
Method of Investigation
Research Boundaries
Outline of Chapters
II. POWERFUL TEXT, PASSIVE READER: 29
M AKING GENRE FICTION A WEIRD CASE
The Emergence of C ultural Hierarchy
The S acralizatio n of L iteratu re and the Rise of L iterary
Professionalism
The Paperback Revolution
Canon Wars
Genre F iction as Weird Case
III. BESTSELLERS, FORMULA FICTION, A N D HIGHBROW LITERATURE 65
Analysis of Major B estseller L ists: New York Times, Wall
S tre e t Journal, Publishers Weekly, U SA Today
W hy B estseller L ists D o Not Reveal Reading Practices
H ow Formula F iction D iffers from B estsellers
H ow Formula F iction D iffers from Highbrow L iteratu re
Personal vs. Social F iction
Lim itations of Popular Culture C riticism
C riticism of Popular Romance
Popular vs. Serious Novels: Jayne Ann Krentz and Jane Smiley
compared
In fin ite Speculations: Henry James and A Thousand Acres
Reading the Other: The Act of In terp retatio n in A Thousand
Acres
In fin ite P o s s ib ilitie s : Romance Novels and the Involved Reader
IV. READERS A N D WRITERS OUT OF CONTROL .......................................119
Reading As Passive Consumption
Popular F ic tio n ’s Easy Pleasures vs. L ite ra tu re ’s Hard-Won
Rewards
Bias Against Authors of Popular Fiction
Bias Against Readers of Popular Fiction
W hy W e Read Popular F iction
W hy Reading Appears to Be Passive (and W hy I t Is Not Passive)
Types of Readers: The Ludic Reader
Types of Readers: The C om m on Reader
The W om an Reader and Pleasure in the Genre Text
Changes in the Detective Genre: W om an As Private Eye
Analyses of L iterary Formula
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V
V. READING AND REREADING:...................................................................
A HYPERTEXT M ODEL OF GENRE FICTION
Speech Act Theory
Congruences Between L iterary and N onliterary Discourse
A R hetorical D efinition of Genre
Rhetorical Genres and Horizontal Reading
The Genre of Speculative F iction
Reading in Hypertext
Formula Fiction and Hypertext
Formula Fiction and Rereading
H o w Genre F iction Can Be Evaluated
W ORKS C IT E D .................................................................................................
160
203
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ABSTRACT
Popular genre fiction (e.g., mystery, romance, speculative fiction)
has been accused by academics and non-academics alike of being
inferior in quality to literature, with predictable plots, cardboard
characters, and themes th at eith er indulge in escapism or uncritically
reinforce th e statu s quo. Even worse, reading such fiction is assumed
to have harmful side effects ranging from addiction to a dulled intellect.
Interestingly, women’s novels are often considered to be among the most
harmful. Studies demonstrate, however, th at reading is a habit
bimodally distributed among the population; either one is a reader, and
reads anything from cereal boxes to novels, or one is not, seldom
reading anything beyond the television listings. Furtherm ore,
distinctions which critics use to separate literatu re from tra sh ultimately
collapse.
Instead of reflecting neutral judgm ents of quality, therefore, bias
against popular fiction stems from the sacralization of literatu re during
the late nineteenth century. This process has privileged "vertical"
reading, which focuses attention deeply into a single book, over
"horizontal" reading, which focuses attention broadly over a class of
books. To be fully appreciated, formula texts must be read horizontally;
individual books reflect the complexities of the genre. In this way,
genres fulfill Helene Cixous’s call for women "to w rite through their
bodies," and genre texts can be a source of subversive power.
Horizontal reading is similar to the reading of hypertext, in th at
neither genre nor hypertext has fixed boundaries, fixed beginnings or
endings, or fixed viewpoints. These texts change as readers use them
according to their own purposes. Hypertexts, like genres, are infinitely
decenterable and recenterable by the reader. Horizontal reading is also
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similar to the act of rereading. Distinctions between printed text and
hypertext, and between reading and rereading, are reflected in the
distinction between vertical and horizontal reading, and in the split
between canonical and popular literature.
Ultimately, any evaluation of popular novels must take into
account th eir generic contexts, and th eir functions for specific readers;
otherwise, genre fiction will remain outside the canon, and our
understanding of literature will remain impoverished.
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1
Chapter I
The Weak Reader and the Ensnaring Book:
Bias Against Popular Fiction
The iove-tales of her favourite authors inflamed her
imagination. She dreamed and spoke of splendid
matches, till she became quite unfitted for th e m atter-of-
fact world in which h er lot was cast. . . . Her course
downward was fearfully rapid. Erelong she told a
confidant th a t she would rath er become th e m istress of a
gentleman than the wife of a tradesm an!—words, alas!
but prem onitory. A ’gentleman’ appeared as a suitor,
promised marriage, abused her credulity, kept her in
suspense, and then abandoned her. She was foresaken
of all h er friends. Misery stared her in th e face.
Golden dreams of sinful pleasure—th e creation of novel-
reading—ended in disgrace, ruin, disease, a broken
heart, and an untimely grave! She passed into eternity
without hope, in what might have been th e very bloom
of her days, leaving behind her two unhappy infants, to
perpetuate h er shame. ("T. C.," qtd. in Flint 149-50)
The dismal tale above was told by "T. C." in th e article, "Novel
Reading: A Letter to a Young Lady," published by The Christian’ s Penny
Magazine and Friend o f the People in 1859. As amusing as the old-
fashioned, overly dram atic language might seem more than a century
later, T. C.’s point—th a t people are a t risk of harming themselves when
they read certain kinds of books—has not gone out of date.
At the 1994 Conference on College Composition and Communication,
former Harlequin romance reader Susan Kimoto delivered an impassioned
speech, "Re-envisioning the Romance," which delivered much the same
warning. Reading passages from several Harlequin romance novels which
she "got from a supplier who handed them over in a paper bag," Kimoto
noted th at the depiction of life in the books was immature and
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dangerous. She spoke as one with long experience in the genre, having
read hundreds of romances in her early teens; in fact, Kimoto described
herself as having been "addicted."
During h er early teens, romance novels seemed more accurate to
Kimoto than they seem to her now: "When I was in junior high, romance
was this wild careening of emotions, this being pulled violently into
someone’s arms while I was crying. Now I know better.
"But," Kimoto warned, "not everyone who reads these books does
know better." As an example, Kimoto described a friend, a "smart 31-
year-old woman lawyer," who still believes th e tales of romance and is
waiting for someone to select her from th e crowd so they can live
happily ev er after. "I told her life isn ’t like that," Kimoto reported,
"and she said, 'But th a t’s how it is in the books!’ So you can see these
messages about romance are damaging unless you can recognize them for
th e lies they are. Not everybody can."
Kimoto pointed out th at popular romances are rapidly spreading
across th e world—th ere are plans to sell them in beauty parlors in
India, for example. And she emphasized th a t they pervade a culture
much closer to home for her audience. "You’re probably close to or
involved with somebody who reads these th in g s—it could be your sister,
wife, or significant other," she warned us. "I can’t end on a happy
note here, because these [Harlequin romances] are still selling out. W e
need to ad d ress these problems in our classrooms."
Particularly striking about Kimoto’s presentation was the
audience’s enthusiastic reaction to it. Passages from th e books
provoked laughter, as did the notion of buying a book in a beauty
parlor. And th e spirited comments at the end of the speech showed
th a t most listeners were concerned about the spread of these insidious
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3
books. One person noted th at used bookstores were "a good barometer"
of the grip these books have on the public—"they are filled with
romance novels." Another commented th at these books were turning up
in perhaps unlikely subcultures: "even gay men have their own version
of Harlequin romances, called Gay wick." And a th ird told the story of a
student who had been raped, and who blamed th e incident on the
Harlequin romances she had read, which encouraged dangerous beliefs
about romance and women’s role in society.
This conference session illustrates several common beliefs about
books: 1) Good books will be sold only in worthy locations, such as
dedicated booksellers, as opposed to locations where the main focus is
unrelated to literature, such as beauty parlors. 2) Good books can be
understood only by trained, discerning people, whose responsibility it is
to enlighten th eir more ignorant acquaintances. 3) Good books will be
"realistic," not sentimental; they will shun any "wild careening of
emotions." 4) Ju st as good books bestow special benefits on their
readers, their antithesis, trash y novels, spread cultural poison.
All of these beliefs are based upon an abiding faith in the
extraordinary power of the w ritten word. More than a pleasurable
pastime or means of communication, reading affects our souls and minds,
and changes th e course of our lives. As a result, books must be
treated with serious respect. Furtherm ore, those who persist in reading
"immature and dangerous" novels must be inferior to those who do
appreciate literatu re’s power, and they must be protected from the harm
they will surely bring upon themselves through their own unwise
reading practices.
By adopting these beliefs, Kimoto does not "re-envision the
romance." Instead, she echoes a long-established scholarly tradition of
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4
warning against romance novels and other popular reading. Her speech
bears marked similarities to the nineteenth-century testimony of
Charlotte Elizabeth Brown, who, Richard Altick notes in The English
Common Reader,
was seven years old when she innocently came across a
copy of The Merchant o f Venice. "I drank a cup of
intoxication under which my brain reeled for many a year,"
she averred in her reminiscences. "Reality became insipid,
almost hateful to me; conversation, except th at of literary
men, . . . a burden; I imbibed a thorough contempt for
women, children, and household affairs, entrenching myself
behind invisible b arriers th at few, very few, could pass.
Oh, how many wasted hours, how much of unprofitable
labour, what wrong to my fellow -creatures, must I refer to
this ensnaring book! My mind became unnerved, my
judgm ent perverted, my estimate of people and things
wholly falsified, and my soul enwrapped in the vain solace
of unsubstantial enjoyments during years of after
sorrow. . . . My mind was so abundantly stored with the
glittering tinsel of unsanctified genius, as it shone forth in
the pages of my beloved poets, th a t no room was left for a
craving after better studies." (112-13)
That by "better studies," this daughter of a Norwich clergyman meant
"Bible study" is obvious from the context. Worthwhile literature,
however, has become "identified" (in Kenneth Burke’s sense of the term)
with holy text, and much of the passion dedicated to "better studies" by
Charlotte Elizabeth Brown is echoed in the passion of modern society for
literature.
Investigation of Bias Against Popular Fiction
Which leads to th e first research question of th is dissertation:
How did literatu re become identified with the sacred? Or, to put it
another way, how did our society come to define "literature" in such a
way th at certain classes of books failed to merit serious, or
approbatory, attention?
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5
Certainly, popular reading does not "count" for most literary
critics. How else could Robert Alter write about "The Disappearance of
Reading," or Alvin Kernan about The Death o f Literature, a t a time when
more books a re sold than ever before? Popular books seem foredoomed
to the modern literary critic’s disdain.1 Alter, a critic who values the
complexity of literary language, claims th a t popular prose "goes through
the motions of figuration and significant cadence of literary style while
constantly succumbing to the obvious, th e undifferentiating image or
term or phrase" (109). This "bad writing," he believes, "works—and
sells—through the effortless ease of access it affords readers by
adhering to familiar formulas," while good writing "revels in difficulties"
(109).
Tania Modleski, one of the "ideological critics" whom Alter argues
against, on th e other hand, finds th at popular romances accomplish
something v ery difficult—they "neutralize women’s anger and . . . make
masculine hostility bearable. . . . [They] attem pt to adapt what for
women are utopian ideals to existing circum stances" (58). Modleski
criticizes th ese books not because of their "effortless ease of access"
but because th e enormous effort th at women throw into reading these
books would be b etter spent changing th e real situations of their lives.
In making th is argum ent, Modleski takes issue with Marxist critics
of the F ran k fu rt school, who believe th at mass a r t colonizes the people,
making them accept the statu s quo, while high a rt is the last preserve
of the autonomous, critical sp irit (26). Yet not long ago, critics
The examples which follow gradually narrow from "popular novels"
to "popular romance novels"; this occurs because popular romance is
very often the particular example in negative discussions of popular
books. I ’ll talk about some of the reasons for the low statu s of the
romance later in th is dissertation.
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condemned love romances because they made the facts of everyday life
seem unacceptable. John Ruskin, for example, wrote in 1865 th at the
romance "becomes dangerous, if, by its excitement, it ren d ers the
ordinary course of life uninteresting, and increases th e morbid th irst
for useless acquaintance with scenes in which we shall never be called
upon to act" (qtd. in Flint 74).
In all of these situations, popular a rt comes out on th e bottom.
The reasons for its position in our cultural hierarchy change, but its
position never changes. Given this constant inferiority, th e defensive
nature of many scholarly books on popular reading is not surprising.
See, for example, the final chapter of Jane Tompkins’s Sensational
Designs, the title of which ("But Are They Any Good?") inspired the title
of this dissertation. Tompkins opens this chapter by noting common
questions asked about her stu d y of nineteenth-century bestsellers, such
as: "but are th ese works really any good7 , or, what about th e literary
value of Uncle Tom’ s Cabin? or, do you really want to defend Warner’s
language'?" (186-87). These questions are not simple req u ests for
information; Tompkins characterizes them as objections phrased in the
form of questions, and she states th at they invoke notions of good
literature which are "precisely what we are arguing about" (187, my
emphasis). Throughout the chapter, Tompkins continues to use language
such as "struggle," "conflict," "argument," "competition," and "power."
The fact th a t Tompkins, an established and w ell-respected scholar,
finds it necessary to use such strong language su g g ests th at the study
of popular literatu re is not a simple academic pursuit; it is, she
concludes, "a stru g g le among contending factions for the rig h t to be
represented in th e picture America draws for itself" (201). Such
sweeping language would seem ludicrous if we did not believe literature
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to be an im portant and powerful force in our society. And Tompkins
would not need to emphasize the revolutionary n atu re of her study if
popular texts were typically included in our conception of literature.
The bias against popular novels is equally pervasive outside
academic circles. Reviews of best-selling books typically contain
comments such as the following remark by a Time review er about William
Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist, "Pretentious, tasteless, abominably written,
redundant pastiche of superficial theology, comic book psychology, Grade
C movie dialogue and Grade Z scatology. In short, [it] will be a best
seller . . . " (qtd. in Bear 115). The same attitu d e prompted the
following disclaimer, sent by an e-mail discussion list about romance
novels to all its members:
RRA-L . . . is NOT a tw elve-step program intended to
break you of the romance habit. The listow ners called it
Romance Readers Anonymous knowing th a t fans of this
genre sometimes have trouble adm itting th eir preference
for a good love story. W e know, we are th a t way too.
(Romance Readers Anonymous)
Discussions about how to stop reading romance novels, the listowners
insist, must take place off the list.
Even one of the stro n g est proponents of teaching popular
literature, Ray B. Browne, doesn’t claim any intrinsic merit for popular
novels. His essay, "Popular Culture: Medicine for Illiteracy and
Associated Educational Ills" points out th a t "Popular culture is the
everyday lifeblood of the experiences and thinking of all of u s[—]the
whole society we live in[—]virtually our whole world" (11). Because of
this, and because the most successful education begins with the "known
and proceeds to th e unknown," Browne suggests th at we use popular
culture to teach literacy skills. It "can be a kind of textbook for
beginners in all fields of instruction," 3rowne proposes—but even he
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does not su g g est th at popular novels are on a par with "good
literature."
The belief th at popular novels are "bad" literature, however th at
term is defined (simplistic, escapist, immoral), is so familiar and so
pervasive we may be tempted to think of it as only natural. Harriet
Hawkins, for example, states,
[V]ery like the statu s of an athlete, the comparative
ranking of an individual a rtis t or work of a rt in th e
hierarchy of admiration is determined by the kind of
people who most enjoy watching or performing in or
practising or reading about the same kind of thing—
w hether th at thing be sport, or jazz, or dramatic
literature. (109)
Setting up a hierarchy seems in th is statem ent to be intrinsic to
aesthetic enjoyment. But, as Roland Barthes warns in Mythologies,
effects which seem natural are v ery often determined by history and
ideology, both of which Hawkins ignores.
When Hawkins disingenuously says she doesn’t see any need to
quibble about "standards" because stan d ard s are always set by the
people who love th at so rt of thing, her casual reliance on "people who
love th at so rt of thing" begs all so rts of questions. For one, who are
those people? She herself points out, quite rightly, th at while some
circles may care th at one knows who C hristopher Marlowe was,
in differing social and institutional circles—e.g., among
certain students in certain high schools—th ere is a stigma
attached to any w riters or works th a t you might be, or
might once have been, required to read in a course. AH of
them are presumed to be equally boring and irrelevant.
Therefore not to know, and above aU defiantly not to care,
and certainly not to want to know who Christopher Marlowe
was, would be a mark of statu s, a source of pride. (12)
Hawkins does not attem pt to explain why those who love other texts
than those by Christopher Marlowe are not allowed to set th e stan d ard s
for what makes Marlowe a good author. And if standards for deciding
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9
what is good can only be set by those who love th a t thing in
particular—for example, if only Marlowe fans can set standards for
Marlowe’s work, while only fans of Stephen King can set standards for
King’s work—the resu lt is th at every book which someone likes must be
judged equally as good as any other. Books can be grouped in ways
other than by author, but however we might classify them, the problem
of how to evaluate them in comparison to each other remains.
Another issue th a t Hawkins fails to ad d ress is how the standards
are measured. An ath lete’s excellence is measured by speed, in some
sports, or how many points she scores, in o th e rs—both objective,
quantifiable measures which have no co u n terp art in literature.
Qualitative measures, as Tompkins, Cathy N. Davidson, and many others
have pointed out, a re dependent upon historical circumstance.
Such stan d ard s cannot even be inferred from the existing division
of texts into popular and g reat literature. As Lawrence W . Levine notes,
such terms are often employed aesthetically, ra th e r than literally:
[T]he adjective "popular" has been utilized to describe not
only those creations of expressive culture th at actually had
a large audience . . . but also, and often primarily, those
th at had questionable artistic merit. Thus, a banal play or
a poorly w ritten romantic novel has been categorized as
popular culture, even if it had a tiny audience, while the
recognized artistic attrib u tes of a Shakespearean play have
prevented it from being included in popular culture,
regardless of its high degree of popularity. (31)
This imprecision is responsible, Levine believes, for obscuring much of
the dynamic complexity of American culture in th e nineteenth century.
It also in terferes with our understanding of popular reading today.
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10
Investigation of Readers of Popular Fiction
This eliding of term s—where a book is considered bad simply
because it is popular, and conversely is considered popular simply
because it is bad—is especially hard to understand when the read ers of
one type of literatu re cannot be distinguished from read ers of another.
Research continually shows th at p referred reading material cannot be
connected to variables such as gender, race, income, education, or
occupation, though women are slightly more likely to read for pleasure
(Kling, Nell, M . Cecil Smith). In fact, as Victor Nell has pointed out,
people who enjoy reading often will read anything available, from g reat
books to tra sh y novels to cereal boxes, while people who do not enjoy
reading simply do not read much beyond the occasional newspaper, if
that. The assumption th at we can educate people to read only "great"
works of literatu re to the exclusion of "trash" is not supported by
empirical research.
Neither is such an assumption supported by history. Nina Baym,
for example, rep o rts in Novels, Readers and Reviewers th a t American
reviewers of the m id-nineteenth century
assumed th a t without the seal of popular approval a novel
could not be put forward as a great work of art. And
they also held that, though popularity was by no means in
itself the te st of artistic merit, one could never assume the
opposite: th at popularity implied poor art. (45)
It wasn’t until 1901, according to th e Oxford English Dictionary, th a t the
word "popular" was applied to literatu re in a derogatory fashion (in
Chesterton’s Defendant "the coarse and thin texture of mere c u rren t
popular romance"). Furtherm ore, th e firs t citation in the OED where the
word "trash" referred to popular fiction was from 1967, when G. Steiner
complained in Language and Silencer. "The serious novel has had to
choose topics formerly exploited by tra sh fiction." Even such a
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11
canonized author as Shakespeare was p art of the common culture of all
classes in America almost to the tw entieth century, as Levine cogently
dem onstrates.
This leads to the second research question of this dissertation: If
people can be divided only into readers and non-readers, as opposed to
"those who read only good books" and "those who read only trash,"
why would readers choose to read the same books th at they condemn?
What might readers find pleasurable in "trashy" books?
Concern For Women and Working Class Readers
These questions must be asked in the context of specific readers
and specific books, or they will not be answerable. After all, concern
over who reads what is not spread evenly over all readers. As the
examples given earlier in this chapter show, women read ers have
received a disproportionate share of cultural anxiety since they have
been able to read. Kate Flint, in The Woman Reader: 1837-1914, traces
how women’s reading has been controlled, at times even forbidden,
throughout history, since well before the years upon which her study
focuses. This is due in part to the belief th at literature belonged to
the domestic sphere, "affecting an individual’s private and moral life
rath er than his or her public concerns" (Flint 47); women, of course,
were likewise felt to belong only to the domestic sphere.
Women were also supposed to be more vulnerable to the effects of
literature, Flint explains. Because women bear children, and were
therefore "naturally" suited to childbearing, it was felt th at women
possessed stronger emotions and a more sensitive intuition than men.
These greater sensitivities could easily cause women to become
overwhelmed by the power of fiction, leading to bad character, hysteria,
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12
even insanity. Such assumptions about women were made a t least as
early as th e sixteenth century, when Juan Luis Vives warned th at "a
woman should beware of all th ese books, like as of serp en ts or snakes"
(qtd. in Flint 22). And such assum ptions were only strengthened as
Darwin’s theories of evolution became popular; women were instructed to
behave only in ways which would benefit their race.
Later, as th e women’s suffrage movement gained force, women
admonished each other to behave in ways which would benefit th eir sex.
As the reasons for constraining a women’s choice of reading material
changed, however, the kind of books they were told to shun remained
the same. Women were still expected to refuse to read popular novels,
especially those romances and sensation novels which supposedly most
appealed to them.
Quite possibly, the association of women (readers with a low
cultural status) with these ty p es of stories—whether due to an actual
womanly preference for them, or to a supposedly feminine subject
m atter—is what led to the lower statu s of these books. Certainly, the
Harlequin romance novel is almost always used to exemplify the lowest of
the low types of fiction. Harlequins are marketed towards women, and
concern topics traditionally seen as feminine, such as romance, marriage,
and gossip. Furtherm ore, they are sold in locations frequented by
women, such as beauty parlors, grocery stores, and laundries. And, like
all mass market paperbacks, they are marketed in such a way th at
women are expected to buy many of them.
Techniques for marketing paperbacks will be discussed fu rth er in
Chapter III, but it should be mentioned here th a t shopping itself is
often considered to be a feminine pursuit. In fact, as Hilary Radner
contends in Shopping Around: Feminine Culture and the P ursuit o f
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13
Pleasure, femininity has increasingly become a consumer product; those
who are able to afford th e clothing, makeup, jewelry, manicure,
hairstyling, health club membership, plastic su rg ery , etc. needed to
co n stru ct a beautiful image are able to purchase femininity, no matter
what else they may do with th eir lives. Furtherm ore, as fashions
change frequently, this need to shop for femininity never ends. The
ways in which popular fiction is marketed, therefore, may have
strengthened its association with the feminine, th ereb y lowering its
status.
The statu s of books is also connected to the social class of those
who read them. Flint describes how reading by women servants was
singled out for particular attention: employers were advised to
investigate serv an ts’ reading habits and provide wholesome reading
material for them, while serv an ts were admonished not to borrow their
employers’ books or read the other "bad books" which might be brought
in the back door. Otherwise, commentators warned, servants might
become "discontented" with th eir positions (112-17). Of course, the new
technologies which made literatu re ever cheaper were rapidly putting
books within the reach of working class readers, as both Flint and
Altick have pointed out.
James B. Twitchell, in his book, Carnival Culture: The Trashing o f
Taste in America, explicitly connects technological changes, and the
consequent expansion of readership, to a fall in literary standards in
the United States. The development of su p er-fast printing presses
during the 1950s through the 1970s, Twitchell notes, is but one more
step in a "revolution" brought about
first by literacy, then by steam -driven presses, by lending
libraries, by ever-cheaper paper and nonrunning ink, by
binding technology, by shifts in disposable income, by
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14
pocket-sized books, by new p attern s of distribution, by
electronic tran sfer devices, and, most recently, by the
enfolding of family-held businesses into vertically
integrated, bottom-line obsessed, entertainm ent
conglomerates. This shift from p rivate to public taste,
from editor approval to audience demand . . . rep resen ts a
profound veering in cultural aesthetics of which publishing
constitutes only one site. (68)
These changes in cultural aesthetics, Twitchell declares, created a
society in which "Visigoths" have escaped th eir exile and returned "not
only to plague us, but to dominate" (37). "The battle for Astor Place is
over," he continues, "and those in th e bleachers have won. The very
part of th e population th at sought to improve taste now finds itself"
asking questions such as, "Why is it th at I don’t recognize most of the
best-selling books anymore" (37-38).
These quotes suggest the tenor of Twitchell’s argument, which is
outraged and extremely defensive. While he admits occasionally th a t the
conflict between "democratic ideals and marketplace realities" is a
difficult one, Twitchell is clearly motivated by a fear of, and dislike for,
the mob (the term itself a slang version of mobile vulgus, "the rabble
on the move" (27)). Significantly, his text is filled with the vocabulary
of class struggle, and the events he uses to describe his "revolution"
are those which released literatu re from the control of th e "gentleman
class": literacy, lending libraries, ever-cheaper paper, shifts in
disposable income, etc. Twitchell’s "us vs. them" rhetoric delineates a
world in which popular culture and high a rt cannot coexist; one must
ultimately annihilate the other. And Twitchell leaves no doubt about
which kind of literature he hopes will survive.
While Twitchell does not appear to have read many texts in the
field of histoire du livre, his thesis is similar to th at of Rolf Engelsing.
Engelsing has also posited th at the social and technological changes in
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the nineteenth century transform ed the n ature of reading, though he
describes th e phenomenon in terms of inevitable societal change, rath er
than class warfare. In an earlier, more restricted print world,
Engelsing suggests, people usually read "intensively," rereading the
same few books and incorporating those books into their most intimate
and im portant activities (for example, recording births, christenings,
marriages, deaths, etc. in the family Bible). By contrast, today’s mass
production encourages people to read "extensively," rapidly consuming
more and more books while the significance of any one particular book
decreases. As Davidson puts it, "More is definitely less; books, in
postindustrial society, dwindle to commodities; formerly engaged readers
become passive consumers" (16).
Several problems are apparent with this theory, as both Twitchell
and Engelsing present it. It romanticizes the preindustrial world, for
one thing, assuming th at an ideal society once existed where only
worthwhile a rt was cherished while the vulgar was kept outside. The
many extant texts uncovered by histoire du livre scholarship suggest
the opposite; th ere were a multitude of warnings to avoid certain books,
for example, which would have been unnecessary in Twitchell’s ideal
society.
Furtherm ore, as Davidson and others have pointed out, th ere is no
evidence th at, in preindustrial times, people valued th eir books less the
more books they owned. Wealthy people went to a great deal of trouble
to collect libraries of books, not all of which were vulgarity-free.
2
Engelsing writes only in German, and so far has not been
translated into English. My account of his theories is based on Cathy
N. Davidson’s discussion of his Analphabetentum und Lektiire. Zur
Sozialgeschichte des Lesens in Deutschland zwischen feudaler und
industrieller Gesellschaft (S tuttgart, 1973) in the introduction to her
Reading in America: Literature and Social History.
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16
Furtherm ore, certain very popular books were read "intensively"—
Susanna Rowson’s Charlotte Temple, Susan Warner’s The Wide, Wide
World, and H arriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’ s Cabin being only a few
examples. These activities (collecting books, rereading favorite books)
are equally common today, as Nell’s study of avid readers shows.
How Cultural Value Has Been Assigned to Books
Actually, it is more likely th a t th e tru th is the exact opposite of
Engelsing’s theory. Books were not considered as sacred before they
became widely available as they were afterw ards; social developments
(such as changes in the university system) encouraged the sacralization
of certain texts in the late nineteenth and early tw entieth centuries.
The more books in existence, the more sacred a few of them became.
In the process, what was valorized was not so much a kind of
book, however, but a kind of reading. "Intensive" reading has been
much more valued than "extensive" reading, and books which lend
themselves to intensive study are the ones which have been considered
by th e academic establishm ent (along with the re st of mainstream
culture) as g reat works. Those texts which typically are read
extensively—in popular genres such as m ystery, romance, speculative
fiction—have been ignored or denigrated as a result.
Theorists, such as Twitchell and Engelsing, who assume th at
readers are powerless against the influence of the texts, or powerless
against the influence of social changes, have overlooked this distinction
between texts and the way texts are read. While readers are certainly
affected by such influences, they still choose which books they will
read, and how they will read them. As with any widespread cultural
practice, many variables are at play, and considering how those engaged
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17
in the practice conceive of what they a re doing is crucial to
understanding th at activity.
Women’s love of shopping, for example, is often assumed to be
nothing more than a symptom of women’s victimization by capitalist
social p ressu res. Women supposedly a re coerced by advertising and by
th e demands of a culturally determined femininity into shopping simply
for the sake of shopping. By this means, women supposedly are
prevented from making any real changes in society. But as Radner
points out, women perceive shopping as much more than that. Feminine
culture displaces
the political from its position as p art of a metacritical
discourse onto the minute decisions of a contingent day-to-
day practice in which absolute categories cannot be
maintained from moment to moment. Feminine culture
emphasizes a process of investm ent and return, of
negotiation, in which th e value of a given articulation of
pleasure is always measured against its costs. . . . (178)
In short, Radner explains, shopping is a conflicted arena, which does
not trivialize women’s need to purchase a feminine image, and recognizes
th at doing so is an important form of self-assertion and a means of
bonding with other women.
Method of Investigation
Any investigation of reading, a practice which is a t least as
complex as th a t of shopping, must therefore focus on readers as actors,
not as passive puppets of social forces. It must emphasize the goals
and strateg ies of readers, rath e r than th e textual artifacts being read.
This rhetorical approach is suggested by Kenneth Burke’s essay,
"Equipment for Living," in which he posits th at literature provides
strategies for dealing with real-life situations.
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18
Using proverbs as an example, Burke shows how seeming
opposition between texts can be resolved when they are viewed in terms
of the function they serve: reassurance, revenge, instruction, etc. For
example, the proverb, "Repentance comes too late," seems to contradict
th e proverb, "Never too late to mend." But this apparent conflict is
resolved when the purpose of quoting each proverb is considered. The
first, Burke notes, is admonitory, saying, "You’d b etter look out, or
you’ll get yourself too far into this business." The second is
consolatory, saying, "Buck up, old man, you can still pull out of this"
(297). Rather than put proverbs in categories th at "place" them once
and for all, Burke prefers to categorize them according to th eir "active
nature," i.e., according to what they accomplish.
Heretofore, many literary critics have attem pted to "place" literary
texts permanently in value-m arked categories. This study will instead
examine their "active natures," showing how their values change
depending on how they are to be used (and conversely, how privileging
of certain kinds of use has affected the texts’ valuation).
Focusing on the goals and strategies does not necessarily make an
investigation "merely subjective," or "abandoned to the whims of the
mob," as recent calls to re-establish standards might suggest. Barbara
Hernnstein Smith explains, in Contingencies o f Value, how eschewing
hierarchical categories, or "constancies of value," does not leave us in a
marsh of subjectivity, and how an examination of variables lies at the
heart of scholastic inquiry:
The botanist who observed th at the growth rate of the
plant he was studying varied under different conditions
would not murmur De g u stibus and end his research at
th at point but, on th e contrary, begin it. If we recognize
th at literary value is "relative" in the sense of contingent
(that is, changing function of multiple variables) rath er
than subjective (that is, personally whimsical, locked into
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19
the consciousness of individual subjects an d /o r without
in terest of value for other people), then we may begin to
investigate the dynamics of th at relativity. (11-12)
Such an investigation, Smith argues, would reveal that these variables
"occur within ranges and . . . exhibit p atterns and principles," and th at
in a sense, they can serve as "constancies" of literary value (11-12).
Smith’s belief th at when scholars make value judgm ents of literary
works they are really "(a) articulating an estimate of how well th at work
will serve certain implicitly defined functions (b) for a specific implicitly
defined audience, (c) who a re conceived of as experiencing the work
under certain implicitly defined conditions" matches Burke’s conception
of active, rath er than passive categories (13). It is worth noting here
th at the words "artifact," and "artificial," stem from the same Latin root,
ars, "art," plus a form of th e verb facere, "to make." Aesthetic theories
which view and evaluate texts as artifacts rath e r than actions do tend
to be artificial.
Research Boundaries
The areas of investigation described above are, of course, far too
broad to be discussed adequately here. One dissertation cannot analyze
all attitudes toward reading throughout history, or all evaluations of all
books throughout history. Because of this, I focus on th e contemporary
United States, although analysis of the present is set in the context of
changes in reading practices which occurred during the past two
centuries.
Though it is vital for such a study to address the practices of
actual readers, a quantitative poll of reader attitudes has not been
included in this work. One reason for this decision is th at the
questions to be investigated are not likely to be answerable by specific
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readers. Readers can talk about what they find pleasurable about
specific books, but often their rationale is influenced by cultural
assum ptions about such texts. The average reader cannot be expected
to know the degree to which his or her individual opinions are
influenced by widespread societal assum ptions, or how cu rren ts of
opinion, such as the sacralization of literature, have come about.
Constructing an empirical study which isolates individual reading
practices, furtherm ore, is notoriously difficult. Self-reporting is not
reliable, since culture tends to valorize certain kinds of reading. Not
only that, it is difficult to identify where th e practice of reading sta rts
and stops. Do we count reading newspapers, for example? Cereal
boxes? Instruction manuals? S treet signs? Words displayed on
television? Nell, Martin Kling and others have described such
difficulties at length. Ultimately, in order to be meaningful, a study
designed to answer broad questions about reading must be undertaken
on a huge scale, as was A. Szalai’s 1972 study, The Use o f Time,
involving some 27,000 subjects in eleven countries and th ree continents,
or A. T. Sharon’s 1974 study, "What do adults read?" involving 5,067
•1
Americans. Not only were the time and funds necessary for such an
effort unavailable, b u t as hundreds of other research ers have
investigated reading on a smaller scale, th ere would have been little
point in duplicating th eir efforts.
Instead, this stu d y uses previous research of readership, along
with production and marketing information, book reviews, and literary
criticism, to piece together a description of how read ers approach
popular texts. The aim is not to compile a definitive list of all the
O
Nell discusses both these studies, as well as many smaller ones.
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21
strateg ies readers use on such texts, nor to outline which read ers use
which strategies, but rath er to sketch a broad picture of how certain
kinds of texts tend to be read, and why these methods have led to
cultural disapproval.
Ju st as all reading behaviors are not investigated, all literatu re is
not investigated either. Even popular novels comprise far too broad an
area for a thorough discussion in less than several volumes;
accordingly, no attem pt has been made to encompass all of it here. Nor
does this study attem pt to define precisely what "popular" literatu re is.
Critics have spent years debating the definition of "high" literature,
with little success, and th ere is no reason to believe th at this sh o rter
work would accomplish the task any better.
Instead I focus on popular genre fiction, also known as "category"
fiction or "formula" fiction, such as romance, m ystery, and speculative
fiction novels. These books have been chosen because they highlight
th e difference between literary reading and light reading; they are
generally produced and read more quickly, and in higher numbers, than
other books. Fans of these genres, in other words, read by genre, as
opposed to by book; this method of reading will be discussed more
thoroughly in subsequent chapters.
The terms used to describe these texts are slippery. "Genre" is
th e term for several types of literary classifications besides popular
fiction; we refer to genres of form (novel, poem, short story), as well as
to genres of mode (tragedy, comedy). "Category" is more a publisher’s
term than a literary term (although scholars might speak of the
"category romance" as opposed to the "classical romance") and re fers to
a marketing strategy. Books are categorized to help buyers find them.
"Formula" is perhaps the most derogatory term for this kind of
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22
literature, and it is somewhat inaccurate when applied to actual texts.
Speculative fiction, for example, is not based on a formula, and it can be
argued th a t no genre is entirely constrained by formula; furtherm ore,
readers perceive and use formulas in sophisticated ways.
Though their connotations differ, th e term s will be used
interchangeably here, and not simply for the sake of variety. Each
term illuminates a different aspect of th e texts under study, and the
slippages between these words hint th at popular novels are more
complex than is commonly supposed.
For the sake of clarity, I was also forced to choose labels in
opposition to these terms for popular novels. Consequently, "literary
fiction," "canonical literature," and "literature," term s which are equally
problematic, label those novels which fall outside the ru b ric of popular
fiction as delineated above. All these categories a re permeable, but
stable—even though artificially fixed—handholds proved necessary to an
exploration of pleasure reading.
The particular genres chosen for examination—romance, mystery,
speculative fiction, but not adventure, w estern, tru e crime, etc.—deserve
explanation. Because the low opinion of these genres is in p art the
resu lt of the traditionally low status of women in the United States,
women’s reading is one focus of this study. Within each of the
categories chosen for investigation, women authors have been
reappropriating traditional formulas for feminist purposes. These
developments have been much remarked upon, and have sparked a
renewal of in tere st in the genres of romance, m ystery, and speculative
fiction by women readers. As the ways in which women reclaim these
genres for themselves suggest how all popular novels might be reclaimed
by all readers, such generic transform ations are integral to this
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23
discussion. It is possible th a t a feminist transform ation is also
underway in genres not discussed here, but in the interests of keeping
this stu d y manageable, only th ree of th e many popular genres have
been addressed in detail.
R epresentative authors have been chosen from each genre, each of
whom is considered to be a feminist author, and each of whom enjoys a
high volume of sales. From the romance genre, Jayne Ann Krentz has
w ritten many types of romance novels, including contemporaries,
historicals, futuristics, and detective romances, and she has received
numerous aw ards for her efforts, including the Romance Writers of
America In d u stry Award, and Career Achievement aw ards from the fan
magazine, Romantic Times. While romance novelists have traditionally
been women, th e content of such books recently has been transformed
by the elimination of rape scenes, and by the creation of heroines with
professional careers and interests th at reach beyond the desire for
romance. Krentz is one of the novelists credited with effecting th at
transform ation.
Krentz’s work is contrasted with th at of Jane Smiley, who is not a
genre author but a mainstream literary author. Smiley has written in a
number of different formal literary genres (short story, novella, etc.),
and she teaches at Iowa State University. Her best-know n and perhaps
best-selling work, A Thousand Acres, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, as
well as th e National Book Critics Circle Award. While it is not a genre
book, the novel is based on a well-known literary formula; it is a
contem porary—and feminist—retelling of King Lear.
Sue Grafton is one of the better-know n woman m ystery writers;
her novels appear on bestseller lists as fast as she can write them.
Grafton, a former screenw riter, is a member of S isters in Crime, a
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24
networking and watchdog organization whose aim is "to fu rth e r the
careers of women in the m ystery field and to correct imbalances in the
treatm ent of women" (Herbert 31). All her recent books set Grafton’s
female sleuth, Kinsey Millhone, in the classic, and traditionally male,
environment of th e private-eye novel, and many of them have garnered
top honors in the m ystery field. "A" Is fo r Alibi won the Mysterious
Stranger Award, "B" Is fo r Burglar won th e Shamus Award and the
Anthony Award, and "C" Is fo r Corpse also won an Anthony Award.
Sheri S. Tepper w rites u n d er various pen names in several
genres, including m ystery (in which she has established two series) and
horror. Under h er own name, however, she writes h er best-known
work, in feminist speculative fiction. While her novels have not
appeared in any of th e major bestseller lists, they receive consistently
favorable reviews, and in 1990, fans awarded her an Edgar nomination
(for her m ystery Dead in th e Scrub), and a Hugo nomination (for the
speculative fiction novel Grass). Tepper’s novels, especially Grass, are
frequently referred to as classics, the accolade meaning "[not] only the
classics of science fiction . . . [but also] one of the greats of human
literature" (Easton 163).
Obviously no discussion of a single author can completely account
for th e many kinds of works within a popular genre. Still, cultural bias
against genres cannot be investigated without detailed references to
specific texts. To broaden the focus of the discussion, analyses of the
representative novels will be supplemented when possible with other
textual references. Furtherm ore, those works examined in detail will be
explained in term s of how they fit their generic contexts.
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25
Outline of Chapters
Chapter II, "Powerful Text, Passive Reader: Making Genre Fiction a
Weird Case," provides historical background to explain how the
emergence of cultural hierarchy in th e United States affected the
reception of popular literature. Key moments in cultural history, such
as the paperback revolution, the founding of the Book-of-the-Month
Club, th e establishm ent of univ ersity English departm ents, and the
c u rren t debate over the literary canon, are examined, and explained in
relation to th e sacralization of literatu re. In short, whenever the needs
of readers are considered pre-em inent, books may be changed without
censure, but when the p u rity of th e text is emphasized, with books
being granted the power to uplift or damage souls, the authority
allotted to readers diminishes. Because our cu rren t conception of
literatu re privileges the text over the reader, genre fiction is doomed to
remain forever outside the canon.
Chapter III, "What W e Read: Bestsellers, Formula Fiction, and
Highbrow L iterature Compared," focuses on th e assumption th at popular
fiction is of necessity bad literature. An analysis of the four major
bestseller lists finds th at not only are such lists not a reliable record
of American reading practices, they do not include the genre novels
which are generally assumed to be th e lowest of popular trash.
Category fiction, in fact, is not characterized by its sales volume; yet it
is assumed from the s ta rt to be inferior to highbrow literature, due to
its popularity.
Closer analysis reveals th at most academic criticism, along with
most literary reviews, reproduces these a priori assum ptions about the
inferior quality of popular literature. Even the most recent in-depth
studies of the popular romance, which all attem pt to incorporate reader
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26
actions, fall into this trap . Yet when th e writing of romance novelist
Jayne Ann Krentz is compared to th e writing of literary novelist Jane
Smiley, th eir positive qualities and areas of concern are surprisingly
similar, and th eir similarities increase when the effects of "horizontal"
and "vertical" readings are factored in.
Chapter IV, "Readers and Writers Out of Control," examines the
belief th at people who participate in popular culture are passive. Not
only do metaphors of pleasure reading presume a passive reader (e.g.,
books as food, books as narcotic drug), critics frequently suspect
readers of being unable to distinguish quality from trash , and w riters
of being unable to imitate, much less create, a successful literary style.
Of course, if readers and w riters are out of control, we cannot account
for why some popular texts consistently sell, while others are failures.
Of the standard explanations, including the forces of capitalism and the
potency of myth, the desire for "cheap thrills" may come closest to the
tru th , because it recognizes the power of language.
Because reading, like language, is ultimately a human construct, it
requires a g reat deal of activity, examined in this chapter from the
standpoint of reader-response, psychoanalytic, rhetorical and linguistic
theories. Those theories which leave no room for reader activity
inevitably trivialize popular reading, and therefore cannot account for
or overcome the bias against it. Interestingly, most pleasure readers
are women, which helps account for some of the bias against them.
Since genre novels correspond to B arthes’s "text of pleasure," and also
fulfill Helene Cixous’s call for women "to write through their bodies,"
the marginalization of women and th eir texts can also be a source of
subversive power. Debates about whether transform ed formulas (such
as the feminist version of the hard-boiled detective) tru ly reclaim a
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27
genre show th at readers don’t see such books as being "more of the
same."
Chapter V, "Reading and Rereading: A Hypertext Model of Genre
Fiction," presents a model for horizontal reading consistent with
rhetorical theory, which is ideally suited to such an endeavor because it
allows for reader intentions. Speech act theory, Mary Louise P ra tt’s
comparison of "ordinary" language to literary language, and Carolyn R.
Miller’s account of genre as a social act are all incorporated into a
description of reading by genre. This type of reading model is
particularly appropriate to speculative fiction, which is not formula-
based, and which accommodates an extraordinarily broad range of texts.
Horizontal reading is very similar to the reading of hypertext, in
th at neither genre nor hypertext has fixed boundaries, fixed beginnings
or endings, or fixed points of view. These texts change as readers use
them according to their own purposes. Hypertexts, like genres, are
infinitely decenterable and recenterable by the reader. Horizontal
reading is also similar to the act of rereading. As Matei Calinescu
w rites in Rereading, rereadability is one means by which we recognize a
classic. Distinctions between printed text and hypertext, and between
reading and rereading, are reflected in the distinction between vertical
and horizontal reading, and in the consequent split between canonical
and popular literature.
Finally, the discussion retu rn s to the question of the title: "But
are they [popular genre novels] any good?" The questions proposed in
Susan K. H arris’s article by th is name, which discusses methods of
evaluating women’s fiction, a re adapted to genre fiction. Any evaluation
of popular novels must take into account their generic contexts, and
their functions for specific readers; otherwise, genre fiction by
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definition will remain outside th e canon, and our understanding of
canonical literatu re will also remain impoverished.
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Chapter II
Powerful Text, Passive Reader: Making Genre Fiction a Weird Case
Congressman Rees: What I want to know is, do you approve
of that book for reading?
Mr. O’ Connor: I can’t answer the question, th at question,
"yes" or "no," because th at is a question . . .
Rees: Do you think it is a good book for the public to read?
O’ Connor: I do; yes.
Rees: And you approve of th at sort of stuff?
O’ Connor: May I expand my answer?
Rees: Well, I ju st asked you if you said th at is good; th at is
the end of it. It is either good or bad.
(United States. Cong. House. Report o f the Select
Committee on Current Pornographic Materials 98-99)
For the congressional representatives investigating paperbacks in
the early fifties, judging literatu re was a simple m atter--either a book
was good or it was not. But a serious history of the novel shows th at
evaluation is much more complicated; books don’t simply travel up and
down a static hierarchy of value. Any literary assessm ent is affected
by who does the assessing and what their presuppositions are. This
does not mean th at we are thrown back into personal debates such as
those between Congressman Rees and Mr. O’Connor (a publisher), but
rather th at literary value is, as Barbara Hernnstein Smith put it,
"contingent (that is, a changing function of multiple variables) rath er
than subjective (that is, personally whimsical, locked into the
consciousness of individual subjects an d /o r without interest or value for
other people)" (11). One of those variables is how much respect we
give to readers.
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As the past 150 years demonstrate, whenever read ers’ needs are
privileged, the book’s value fades. When people read for their own
entertainm ent, for example, they are free to tinker with the text, change
the ending, reduce the length, or otherw ise "improve" it for their
purposes. When the worth of th e book is emphasized, and when books
are credited with the power to uplift taste or damage souls, then the
control allowed to readers diminishes. Rather than changing the text to
fit their needs, readers are expected to adapt to the requirem ents of
the text. Works of a rt are approached with reverence, and dangerous
or immoral texts are shunned, because reading is deemed a passive
process in which an untrained audience mindlessly consumes whatever is
set before it.
This unbalanced conception has caused a critical myopia where
popular reading—especially in genres such as mystery, speculative
fiction, romance, etc.—is concerned. I use the word "critical" in both
senses of the term. One sense, of course, is th at of literary criticism,
which all too often overlooks the reading that millions of people
(including many academics) find pleasurable. In fact, in many of the
studies which venture outside of popular culture circles, an apologia for
taking such material seriously is de rigueur.
The other sense of "critical," meaning "of, or pertaining to, a
crisis," also fits the cu rren t state of our profession. Much has been
w ritten in recent years about English professors laboriously penning
impenetrable theses on obscure topics in which no one is interested. At
the same time, we have all met stu d en ts who tell us they decided to
study English because they liked to read, only to have the delight
beaten out of their pastime by the required reading lists. If we all
were to suddenly forswear Herman Melville for Danielle Steel, the public
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(especially those who want us to preserve "traditional values") would
undoubtedly look askance. Still, we don’t help our profession by acting
as though enormously popular books don’t exist. And by investigating
why such books are popular, we might gain insight into the more
traditional literary canon. Unfortunately, as long as our understanding
of literatu re assumes a powerful text and submissive reader, genre
fiction will remain a "weird case" (a legal term defined later in this
chapter), by definition inaccessible to literary scrutiny.
For my purposes here, it is perhaps easiest to think of the novel’s
history as an oscillation between the poles of powerful reader/pow erful
text. The term "oscillation," borrowed from Carey Kaplan and Ellen
Cronan Rose, has much to recommend it. Unlike dialectic, which implies
"at least tem porary closure," oscillation "implies a process ceaseless as
respiration." Furtherm ore, as Kaplan and Rose point out, "dialectic" is
teleological where oscillation is "goalless" and "does not endorse the
myth of progress"; oscillation is cyclic where dialectic is linear. The
common reader of the early nineteenth century was not "synthesized
into some new being" fifty years later (11).
However, "oscillation" as Kaplan and Rose use the term implies a
certain unity of effect, a unity which does not exist. During the
eighteenth century, when Samuel Johnson "rejoiced to concur with the
common reader" (642), he and other w riters (including Oliver Goldsmith,
Henry Fielding, and James Ralph) were working hard to establish "a
canon of legitimate, proper professionals," because the fewer w riters,
the easier it was to make a living (Zionkowski). And even when New
Criticism was indeed new, Kenneth Burke and others pointed out that
critics ought to pay attention to the uses readers made of a text as well
as the text itself.
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To fu rth er complicate matters, the forces upon which value is
contingent are not always diametrically opposed. N ineteenth-century
evangelicals opposed reading unless it brought the reader closer to God;
indulgence of sensual pleasure would only interfere with salvation.
Utilitarians of the same period opposed reading unless it bespoke a high
seriousness of purpose; readers were not to flit aimlessly from one topic
to another, reading for the sake of reading, but to apply their efforts
strictly toward self-improvement. Thus these groups both worked to
stamp out the novels which were popular with recreational readers.
As Richard Altick points out, the Sunday evangelical was often the
weekday Utilitarian, so separating different influences is also to some
extent an oversimplification (132). And even when texts were approved
for one reason, they may actually have been read for a different
purpose; the obvious example is the Bible, which was intended to teach
the reader about God, but may have been read more for its entertaining
stories than for its moral lessons.
Furtherm ore, attem pts to reclaim the novel for one purpose often
interfere with its use for another purpose. For example, when Paul
Lauter insists th at "much work in linguistics, cultural and social
history" is required to engage the works of African-American, Asian-
American, and Chicano w riters (87), he does include hitherto
marginalized people in the higher reaches of literary culture. However,
his statem ent also re stric ts the literatu re’s accessibility to those who
have access to the specialized training or the research libraries
necessary for such work. In defending the worth of minority texts,
Lauter implies that those same marginalized people (who are frequently
u nder-represented in the academy) do not have the ability to fully
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appreciate their own literatu re—in effect, the opposite of what he seems
to intend.
Rather than attem pting to trace all of these complexities, I will
highlight only a few of the significant moments in the novel’s history.
A more complete account would resemble Julia Kristeva’s image of the
text as textile. According to Kristeva, a text is "a disposition of
threads, interwoven, in a perpetual state of flux as different readers
intervene, as th eir knowledge deepens, and as history moves on" (qtd.
in Gerhart 21); history is woven in much the same way. I follow only a
few threads through the fabric of history; both extreme views and the
range of variations between them were certainly p art of the discussion
at all times.
The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy
The stratification of literature into high, middle, and lowbrow texts
in America did not occur in isolation; rath er it reflects a widespread
change in American culture. Earlier in the nineteenth century, artifacts
which we would today consider "high" culture—Shakespearean theater,
opera, classical music, etc.--w ere enjoyed by all classes of people in
many different situations. High culture objects were freely mingled with
popular culture ones, they were freely altered according to the dictates
of the audience, and their widespread popularity was attributed to their
greatness. By th e tu rn of the twentieth century, however, high culture
had been separated from popular culture. Perform ers and audiences
were expected to approach the highbrow with reverence, without
altering it in any detail. Care was taken not to "contaminate" it with
too-close proximity to lesser works. Furtherm ore, the ways in which an
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audience was permitted to express appreciation were sharply curtailed
from those of the beginning of the century.
Lawrence W . Levine’s Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence of
Cultural Hierarchy in America outlines these changes as they affected
theater, opera, concert music, museums, libraries, and parks. Levine’s
most detailed example is that of Shakespeare, whose changing reputation
in this country illustrates the powerful reader/pow erful text dichotomy.
The Bard has a long history in the United States; both before and after
the Revolution, Shakespeare was the country’s most popular and most
widely performed dramatist. During the nineteenth century,
Shakespeare’s popularity, if anything, increased, as demonstrated in
p a rt by the large number of parodies of his works which appeared in
popular novels (such as Huckleberry Finn), burlesque houses, and
minstrel shows.
Almost the entire Shakespearean corpus was regularly performed
for audiences of the 1800s, including tragedies and comedies. However,
these plays were not necessarily performed in their entirety; theaters
altered them to suit the needs of the audience. In the South, for
example, Othello and Desdemona sang together, "Dey say dat in the dark
all cullers am de same." Nor were Shakespearean productions isolated
from other forms of entertainm ent. A typical playbill advertised th at a
performance of As You Like It would be accompanied by "a most
magnificent display of position in the Science of Gymnastics," "Mr.
Quayle (by Desire)" singing "The Swiss Drover Boy" and "The Haunted
Spring," La Petite Celeste dancing "a New Grand Pas Seul," Miss Lee
dancing "La Cuchaca," Mr. Bowman telling a "Yankee Story," and a
concluding performance of Ella Rosenberg starring Mrs. Hield (Levine
2 2).
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Not only were the plays performed amidst other types of popular
entertainm ent, they were performed in front of audiences drawn from all
walks of life. Walt Whitman fondly remembered the Bowery Theatre
around 1840, where he could look into the boxes and see "the faces of
leading authors, poets, editors, of those times," while he sat in the pit
surrounded by the "slang, wit, occasional sh irt sleeves, and a
picturesque freedom of looks and manners, with a rude, good-nature and
restless movement" of cartmen, butchers, firemen, and mechanics (Levine
25).
Whitman’s quote suggests th at the demeanor of the working class
audience was not the quiet, respectful, demeanor of today’s
Shakespearian audiences. Levine characterizes theaters of the early
nineteenth century as being more like today’s sports arenas, in which
spectators are "similarly heterogenous," and "more than an audience;
they are participants who can en ter into the action on th e field, who
feel a sense of immediacy and at times even of control, who articulate
their opinions and feelings vocally and unmistakably" (26). Audiences of
the period felt free to hiss, cheer, smoke, eat, sing, shout instructions
to the actors and pelt the stage with vegetables. At one 1832
performance of Richard III, where the audience was so large th at 300
people overflowed onto the stage, the New York Mirror reported that
[the audience] examined Richard’s royal regalia with interest,
hefted his sword, and tried on his crown; they moved up to
get a close look at the ghosts of King Henry, Lady Anne,
and the children when th ese characters appeared on stage;
they mingled with th e soldiers during the battle of Bosworth
Field and responded to the roll of drums and blast of
trum pets by racing across the stage. When Richard and
Richmond began their fight, the audience "made a ring round
the combatants to see fair play, and kept them at it for
nearly a quarter of an hour. ..." When Dan Rice came on
to dance his famous Jim Crow, the on-stage audience made
him repeat it some twenty times, "and in the afterpiece,
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where a supper-table [was] spread, some among the most
hungry very leisurely helped themselves to the viands."
(Levine 29)
While this is perhaps an extreme example of audience participation, it
was not at all unusual for audience members to talk to th e characters,
even offering medical or financial assistance, or protection from villains.
Dismay over the more violent scenes of audience participation (such
as an 1849 riot in New York which killed 22 people) was the catalyst for
the building of "legitimate" theaters where audiences could watch
performances of the Bard’s plays undisturbed by unruly elements. By
1910, a Boston committee, disturbed th at the new Shubert Theatre
followed two weeks of Shakespeare with a "commonplace" musical,
recommended that th eaters create a more homogeneous social atmosphere,
so th at the Shubert would show only "first-class serious attractions,"
the Majestic musical comedies, and the Globe "farces and other light
performances" (Levine 71). And in 1915, Walter Prichard Eaton was
unable to attra c t a wide audience to his New England theater even after
he slashed ticket prices, because it was "on the ’fashionable’ side of
town," and considered by the 6000 local mill workers as "something th at
belonged to the other class—they would not go near it" (Levine 77).*
The Bard’s earlier popularity with working class audiences was no
longer attributed to his greatness but to the spectacle he offered; it
seemed obvious to later critics th at the subtleties of Shakespeare’s
works would have passed unnoticed by the uneducated. By 1926, it did
Audiences did flock that year to see D.W . G riffith’s newly released
Birth o f a Nation. As Griffith’s influence gradually "legitimized" movie
theaters, however, th at new a rt form met with the same fate as theater.
In fact, film historian Kevin Brownlow writes th at Griffith’s name
"appears with deadening regularity in film history books, inducing the
sort of anathema some students of literatu re feel for the suffocating
genius of Shakespeare" (78).
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not seem outrageous for Poet Laureate Robert Bridges to blame the more
sensational elements of the plays (the murder of Macduff’s child, the
blinding of Gloucester) on the demands of "the most vulgar stratum of
his audience, . . . those wretched beings who can never be forgiven
their share in preventing th e greatest poet and dram atist of the world
from being the best artist" (Levine 35). Nothing th at appealed on such
a broad level, apparently, could be considered g reat art. Today,
Shakespeare’s language is thought to be so difficult, his plots so
abstruse, that many people approach his plays expecting to be confused
and bored.
The rise of Shakespeare from popular en tertain er to highbrow
artist parallels similar transform ations in other arts. Over the same
period, concerts ceased to feature popular songs on the same program
as symphonies. Operas no longer satisfied audience desires to have a
favorite aria repeated, or a disliked one replaced with "Home Sweet
Home." And museums which formerly displayed everything from live
rattlesnakes and real guillotines to plaster copies of famous sculptures
began to specialize, devoting their galleries only to natural history, or
(original) fine art.
Changes in performance were matched by changes in audience
behavior. Ju st as theaters took steps to subdue their audiences,
concertm asters and museum directors tamed th eir patrons. No longer
could people talk, smoke, eat, or sing during a performance they
disliked. Even such a mild faux pas as arriving at a concert late or
leaving early provoked public humiliation of the tran sg resso r, often at
the hands of the conductor himself. And museums restricted their open
hours, frisked attendees, posted signs prohibiting inappropriate
behaviors (eating, talking, spitting, bringing pets), and unhesitatingly
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refused access to people who didn’t conform. One plumber was turned
away from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1897 for arriving in his
work overalls. Though th is incident provoked a strong outcry, the
museum management refused to change their policies; either the public
arrived appropriately dressed, or the public would not be perm itted to
view fine art.
As a result of these developments, American audiences became
increasingly accustomed to defer to authority on cultural m atters, rather
than exercising their own beliefs about how a rt fit into their lives.
Though admission to museums was inexpensive or even free, and tickets
to concerts, opera, and th eater were readily available, still, as Levine
notes, "these cultural products had to be accepted on the term s
proffered by those who controlled the cultural institutions. In that
sense, while th ere was never a total monopoly of access, th ere was a
tight control over the terms of access" (231). Experts decided which
works were to be performed or displayed, while audiences merely sat
back and respectfully observed, with little hope of expressing any
critical response to what was paraded before them. Unfortunately,
many classrooms are home to similar scenes, where in place of
interaction, stu d en ts expect memorization, and an all-too-frequent critical
response is a yawn.
The Sacralization of Literature and the Rise of Literary Professionalism
The very forces which swept literature out of the hands of the
common reader and into the hands of the English professor at the same
time brought a new respect for the discipline. Ironically, the
condescension th at led libraries and museums to concentrate on
shielding a rt from th e populace also made it possible for later scholars
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to investigate popular reading. At the beginning of the nineteenth
century, reading materials, scarce to begin with, were literally read to
pieces; very few were thought worth saving. But as literature became
the purview of specialists, texts were preserved for their use, and many
such books and periodicals are still available for study.
Aside from a two-page discussion of the Chicago Public Library
(which "curtailed its hours, closed decentralized delivery stations,
placed new emphasis on reference collections, and no longer . . . avidly
consulted the desires of disparate groups" at the end of the nineteenth
century in o rd er to "act on its visitors as a stimulus to the higher life"
(159)), Levine does not discuss how the changing view of culture
affected the reception of literature. However, it is clear that literatu re
followed the same path as other a rts, travelling from shared ownership
among all classes to the sacralization of "great" art. One result of
professionalization was th at the educated classes claimed intellectual
ownership of literature, though they did magnanimously work to educate
2
the re st of society about it.
In order for this to happen, of course, reading materials needed to
become widely available. Not until 1828 did new technologies produce
enough texts at low prices to create a large public readership
(Neuburg). Knickerbocker magazine commented in February 1836 th at
"the press is at this ju n ctu re so prolific in novels, romances, e t id
genus omne, th at to give each the time it deserves for a perusal, would
not only consume the entire day, but take largely from the hours
usually devoted to sleep" (Baym 26). Though a few reviewers
2
See Richard Brodhead and Joan D. Hedrick for accounts of how the
emerging cultural hierarchy affected the careers of specific American
authors.
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complained th at the novel had lowered the level of public taste, Nina
Baym reports that most reviewers thought the novel had "originated as
the chosen reading of the newly literate masses, and [that] its dominant
position represented less a change of taste in an existing audience than
a change in the makeup of the audience for the w ritten word" (29).
The "information overload" during this period continued after the Civil
War with a threefold increase in the number of books published (Rubin
786).
While by 1850, "the vocabulary available for writing about novels
[at least in magazines] was extensive, flexible, and sophisticated, a sign
that the novel had entered the world of intellectual discourse," literary
discussions were not a part of American university life. University
curricula focused exclusively on the Classics; there was a
tacit assumption th at the meanings of literatu re [once the language
was mastered] were self-explanatory and thus in need of no
elaborate explication. English literatu re was felt to be too easy to
qualify as a college study, not a fit subject for examination.
(Graff, Professing 28)
Instead, literary societies thrived in the extracurriculum , and "debating
societies, student literary magazines, undergraduate prize competitions,
and frequent public lectures and readings constituted an informal
literary education of impressive proportions" (Graff, Professing 20).
Gerald Graff compares the extracurricular reading of a student in the
1840s to th at covered in a modern literature survey course, and notes
that these societies helped break down contemporary opposition to
secular literatu re (Professing 44). For example, Oberlin students
supposedly "dropped their belief in the wickedness of novels" after
discussing Uncle Tom’ s Cabin, and Emerson and Whitman were invited to
speak to students a t a time when both w riters were "considered suspect
by authorities" (Graff, Professing 45). Through such literary
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discussions, college students were able to define for themselves a social
context in which to ground their academic studies.
During the same period, women became an im portant part of
popular literary culture. By m id-century, 90 percent of white Americans
were literate, and the rate of women’s literacy equalled th at of the men
(Damon-Moore and Kaestle 247). Women’s reading groups flourished
throughout the century alongside men’s debating societies (Long), and
at their meetings, the "sensuous and social aspects of the reading
sessions" were an im portant p art of the experience for a t least some
readers (Sicherman).
In her article, "Parlor Literature: Harriet Beecher Stowe and the
Question of ’Great Woman A rtists’," Joan D. Hedrick credits this intimate
atmosphere of parlor literary societies with creating the American novel.
As the ease of railroad travel encouraged families to move farth er apart,
the parlor was the place where letters (both those received and those
about to be sent) were shared. In place of absent relatives, literary
clubs began to fill parlors; the reading of short tales grew naturally out
of the practice of reading letters, and such gatherings provided much-
needed entertainm ent and sociability. Thus, Hedrick notes, "the
production of literature was . . . an integral p a rt of polite society and
domestic culture. ’Becoming an au th o r’ was not a d istant and
mysterious process, but an everyday event continuous with polite forms
of social behavior such as writing letters" (283). The candid narrative
voice of women novelists is an extension of the voice of a letter w riter.
Of course, as the mobility of American society increased, the parlor was
subsumed by a national publishing industry, and newly professionalized
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authors (such as Henry James) began to criticize the lack of objectivity
3
displayed by earlier w riters.
Women readers and authors were so great in number in the mid-
1800s, they may have delayed the professionalization of American letters.
Most male authors of the period, Baym notes, "assumed an audience of
men as a matter of course, and reacted with d istress and dismay as
they discovered th at to make a living by writing they would have to
please female readers" (13), as Hawthorne’s infamous complaint about
"scribbling women" makes clear. As the history of theater and music
shows, by the end of the century, anything admired by the masses was
already suspect. Feminine influences exacerbated that effect. As a
result, literatu re made "earlier headway in the female academies th at
proliferated in the middle decades of the century" than in the male
universities (Graff, Professing 37).
Because the appreciation of literatu re was considered to be merely
a social (womanly) accomplishment, literary instruction in male
universities initially didn’t concern itself with understanding themes or
characters. Instead literatu re was tau g h t as the classics were taught,
with the emphasis on (manly) philology. Francis A. March, for example,
in 1879 published an English literatu re text titled Method o f Philological
S tu d y o f the English Language, which had one or two lines from Julius
Caesar, Paradise Lost, and other classics, "festooned with an enormous
battery of questions entirely on philological points: for example, "On is
the sign of a combination between what words? Lighted + on place is
3
See Robyn R. Warhol for a discussion of how gender relates to
narrative technique in Victorian novels. Also, Josephine Donovan
addresses women’s linkage to the early novel in feminist materialist
terms, showing how early women’s novels are closely related to non-
literary forms such as the personal letter.
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what kind of combination? Does on place complete or extend the
predicate?" (qtd. in Graff, Professing 39).
Literary texts were tau g h t more holistically in rhetoric courses;
however, they still were not studied for themselves, but as examples of
other principles. For example, Hugh Blair’s Lectures on Rhetoric and
Belles Lettres, an enormously popular handbook in America prior to the
Civil War (it went through 130 editions in England and America since it
was published in 1783, the last appearing in 1911 (Berlin 25)) was
intended as a practical guide to the principles of taste. Literary texts
were presented as models for student writing and oratory, not only
because they displayed excellent writing technique, but also because
familiarity with them reflected well on the speaker/w riter. In short,
though literatu re was an important p art of Blair’s educational method, he
did not expect his students to revere it but rath er to use it as a tool
for their own self-improvement.
After the Civil War, this situation would change. Ju st as experts
in music and drama claimed exclusive authority over these arts, growing
numbers of literary scholars took control over literature as professors
began to specialize. In 1850, th ere were only eight graduate students
in the country in all subjects; by 1908 th ere would be nearly 8000.
Much of this transform ation resulted from the founding in 1876 of Johns
Hopkins U niversity according to the German philological model. This
model, soon to be copied by other institutions across the country
including Harvard and the U niversity of Chicago, relied on the
"secularized educational professional," who facilitated the advancement of
knowledge "wherever it might lead" (Graff, Professing 60). Soon
afterw ard, the Modern Language Association was founded in 1883, and
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English professors became the acknowledged experts on the American
literary scene.
As literary expertise was increasingly vested in PhDs from that
"tiny, elite portion of the population of the United States which, around
the tu rn of the century, could go to college" (Lauter 28), literatu re lost
its appeal to much of the population. One professor, Fred Lewis Pattee,
joked th at students in his classes would demand, "Lissun, Prof, ho»v is
th is dope going to help a guy get a job and pull down a good salary?
See?" Still he admitted, "Deep down inside of me it hurts" that the
field was considered unim portant by those outside the rarified
atm osphere of the academy (Graff, Professing 107).
This is not to say th at all reading ceased. As college graduates
increased from a half-million to a million between 1920 and 1930 (Rubin
788), many more people had been taught th at reading was an
intrinsically worthwhile activity (provided, of course, th at the rig h t
books were read). But the reading matter available to them, like the
music, drama, and a rt available to them, became separated into
categories which were perceived hierarchically. "Classics" and "Great
Literature" belonged to the ethereal stra ta of both highly educated and
upper class men (these two groups would have overlapped even more at
the tu rn of the century than they do today). Good books belonged to
th e educated middle class, and "trash" belonged to the lower classes.
These hierarchies are most strikingly evidenced in the practices of
the Book of the Month Club (BOMC), founded in 1926, which has always
sought to recommend good books to its readers, avoiding both books
which are "too serious [boring]" or "cold" and books which are too
"trashy," with prose too "lush" (Radway, "Book-of-the-Month Club"). An
im portant feature of the club is that experts, famous w riters and critics
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(known as the Selecting Committee or Board of Judges) choose not only
the featured selection, but the alternate selection and every other book
offered in th e BOMC News. This reliance on experts was highlighted by
early advertising which played to consumer insecurities ("Think over
the last few years. How often have outstanding books appeared, widely
discussed and widely recommended . . . but which nevertheless you
missed! Why is it you disappoint yourself so frequently in this way?")
(Rubin 783).
To be fair, the c u rren t BOM C was and is focused on serving
readers. Members of the club are offered many choices; they are not
required to purchase the "book of the month." Furtherm ore, today’s
Board of Editors frequently ju stify selections "by noting th at people
have different tastes and th at those tastes ought to be satisfied without
making judgm ents about them" (Radway, "Book-of-the-Month Club" 524).
Still, the fact remains that BOM C editors consciously make judgm ents
about books on behalf of readers whom they believe are less
knowledgeable than the editors are, and they admit that their goal is to
find "intelligent" novels th at will "stretch" their readers (Radway,
"Book-of-the-Month Club" 528). This note of condescension marks the
difference between local literary clubs of friends who met face-to-face,
and a national "club" in which important decisions are made by
anonymous, distant professionals.
As the BOMC’s experts professionalized the amateur literary society.
New Criticism fu rth e r professionalized the academy. Taking its cue from
English critic F. R. Leavis, who considered English to be " the supremely
civilizing pursuit" (Eagleton 31), and I. A. Richards, who asserted th at
poetry "is capable of saving us; it is a perfectly possible means of
overcoming chaos" (qtd. in Eagleton 45), New Critics sought to establish
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46
literatu re as a closed system, one which had no connection to any
mundane context (though it did p resen t "adjectival" tru th ). As W . K .
Wimsatt and Monroe C. Beardsley declared in "The Affective Fallacy,"
"though centuries have changed and will change, poems remain and
explain" (Lentricchia and McLaughlin 33).
These quasi-religious tones indicate th at literature no longer
belonged to the everyday world of the common reader. It had become
an object of reverence, answ erable to no ordinary tests of tru th . As
sacred object, literature would w ithstand the test of time, and therefore
was not to be tailored to fit the local, temporal audience. Readers were
irrelevant; they had nothing to "teach" the literature, which could not
be improved upon or interpreted from outside itself. "The poem, if it
be a tru e poem is a simulacrum of reality," wrote Cleanth Brooks, "by
being an experience rath er than any mere statem ent about experience or
any mere abstraction from experience" (Belsey 17). Given this reverence
for the text as a thing in itself, it is not surprising th at Brooks entitled
his essay, "The Heresy of Paraphrase."
The sacralization of literatu re was accompanied by a decline in the
number of authors deemed worthy of scholarly attention. Jane Tompkins
notes th at between the time that Pattee chose selections for C entury
Readings for a Course in American Literature (1919) and the time that
P erry Miller chose selections for Major Writers in America (1962), the
number of w riters deemed to be im portant declined dramatically.
P attee’s single volume contained h u ndreds of w riters, while Miller’s two-
volume compilation contained only 28. In the following year, a Norton
anthology reduced the number to eight (Tompkins 188). In addition, the
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number of periods, genres, and modes of classification also declined over
the same period:
Between 1919 and 1962, more than a dozen authors have
dropped away in th e Colonial period alone, while in the
Revolutionary period, only one out of seven makes it
through; the Revolutionary songs and ballads a re missing
entirely. The Federalist period disappears altogether and so
does most of the firs t half of the nineteenth century. Gone
are the fin-de-siecle poets . . . and with them th e lyricists
of the early century. . . . None of the songw riters
survive. . . . The historians of the mid-nineteenth
century . . . vanish, as do the southern w riters . . . and the
antislavery w riters. . . . Gone are Abraham Lincoln and all
the songs and ballads of the Civil War. Out of six western
humorists, only Twain survives. (Tompkins 189-90)
Tompkins goes on to recount that n ature w riters, critics, "transition
poets," "feminine novelists of the tw entieth century" (including Willa
Cather and Edith Wharton) and all of th e tw entieth-century poets except
Frost disappear from view in these anthologies. Alan C. Golding, in his
article, "A History of American Poetry Anthologies," details a similar
reduction of authors included in American poetry anthologies and
examines the explicit and implicit rationales behind the reduction.
Golding finds th at even when anthologies are consciously altered to
include more voices, the voices which are added (often radical voices
which attack mainstream culture) are usually diluted to fit into the
"deeper homogeneity" of ideas (301). When The Norton Anthology of
Poetry was updated in 1975, for example, it included four new black
poets and twice as many women poets as before. Some of the newly
included authors have w ritten poetry "sharply critical of American
culture," Golding points out, but "reading the Norton no one would know
it" (301-02).
The narrowing of the literary canon is consistent with the sacred
associations high culture had taken on. If authors were divinely
inspired, then it makes sense that critics could identify only a few
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48
"true" poets/prophets. And if texts were sacred, only an extraordinary
person could have the ability, and the authority, to in terp ret them to
the laity. New Criticism restored this authority to "men of letters."
Allen Tate described the duty of the man of letters as follows:
His task is to preserve the integrity, the purity, and the
reality of language w herever and for whatever purpose it
may be used. . . . The tru e province of the man of letters
is nothing less (as it is nothing more) than culture
itself. . . . It is the duty of the man of letters to supervise
the culture of language, to which the re st of culture is
subordinate, and to warn us when our language is ceasing to
forward the ends proper to man. The end of social man is
communion in time through love, which is beyond time.
(Lauter 35)
In this quote, the elevation of culture above the level of the common
man is clear. Also striking is th e religious-sounding language Tate
uses: "to preserve . . . integrity and . . . purity," is also a religious
duty, and "communion in time through love" is one of the ends of
religious man as well as social man. The "man of letters" apparently
has the same responsibilities to his flock as a "man of the cloth."
Of course, as Terry Eagleton and others have noted, this critical
stance evolved through the years when literary studies were struggling
for acceptance in this country. Many of the moves toward
professionalization, such as Wimsatt and Beardsley’s insistence th at "the
poem is subject to the same scrutiny as any statem ent in linguistics or
in the general science of psychology" (Belsey 16), were designed to win
the respect of a society which placed far greater importance on the
sciences than on the humanities. So while it is possible to accuse
critics in the 1930s and 1940s of lifting literature out of the reach of
the ordinary reader, one can also make the claim th at they were
redeeming literature in the eyes of a society which didn’t respect it.
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49
Also tru e, however, is th a t what New Critics usually meant by
"literature" was poetry, which has the advantage of being more clearly
divorced from ordinary life, and more easily taught in the classroom,
than a novel. As a result, w hatever respect the New Critics did win
was gained for a few specialized texts at the expense of more popular
reading—perhaps not surp risin g from a school of criticism which
considers attention to readers a "fallacy."
The Paperback Revolution
These same dichotomies, in which redeeming the worth of some
literatu re damns the rest, and in which efforts designed to be
educational can have the opposite effect of inhibiting intellectual growth,
are foregrounded in the public debate surrounding the "paperback
revolution" in the middle of the twentieth century. Though the
paperback is a common format for both scholarly and popular books,
when paperbacks first appeared they were associated more with comic
books and pornography than with literature. Their opponents charged
th at paperbacks were destroying the moral fabric of society, while the
paperback’s supporters maintained th at paperbacks were, on the
contrary, improving society by making great works of literature
available to all. Both sides took for granted the notion th at readers
(especially those not fortified by a rigorous education, such as children,
th e working class, etc.) would indiscriminately soak up whatever
messages the text might deliver.
Actually, when Robert de Graff initially proposed startin g Pocket
Books in 1939, he had trouble convincing publishers (from whom he
hoped to purchase rep rin t rig h ts) th at his business would succeed. Not
only did many in the industry believe th at "the American masses were
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not readers," others pointed to the numerous failed paperback attem pts
that littered the history of American publishing. Production and
distribution difficulties had led to a society in which book sales were
"roughly parallel to the sales of such luxury items as jewelry, cut
flowers, and automobiles" (Davis 16). A landmark 1931 survey
commissioned by the National Association of Book Publishers revealed
th at the entire country offered only about 4,000 places where books
could be purchased. Most of these locations were gift shops and
stationery stores which carried only a few of th e most popular novels;
only 500 were dedicated bookstores which received regular visits from
publishers’ representatives. Of the 500, most catered to "an elite
clientele in the nation’s twelve largest cities." In fact, tw o-thirds of
America’s counties had no bookstores at all (though the Book-of-the-
Month Club undoubtedly served some of these areas). Not surprisingly,
new books didn’t sell very many copies; only half of the titles produced
ever sold more than 2,500 copies (Davis 16). The belief th at Americans
were too uneducated to appreciate literatu re was apparently a self-
fulfilling prophecy for tu rn -o f-th e-cen tu ry publishers, despite the
explosion of popular reading material in the late nineteenth century
which might have signalled otherwise.
That de Graff was aware of publishing history is indicated by th e
fact th a t his expectations initially were modest—he only printed 1,000
copies of each title in the introductory Pocket Book line—but he started
from an entirely different philosophy than th e skeptics. His press
release announcing Pocket Books stated:
Several experiments in this direction have been tried, but
they have never concentrated on issuing literally the best
books. In the past, it has been assumed th at Americans will
not buy paperbound books the way Europeans have been
doing for years. It has also been assumed th at cheap
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51
books—for th e 2 cent market—must be of a low common
denominator—the so rt th at will compete with the "pulp" and
"trash" market and magazines of vast circulation. I venture
to question those traditional beliefs, and am prepared to
make this conscientious and thorough-going experiment to
prove my faith in the pent-up American demand for
genuinely good and enduring books at irresistibly low
prices, with almost universal distribution. (Davis 39)
De Graff’s characterization of the belief th at Americans have no facility
to appreciate good literature as "traditional," and his reference to the
"low common denominator" of American society, shows how completely
"high" culture had been separated from the general public.
His promise to publish "literally th e best books" (also described as
"genuinely good and enduring books") did not, however, reflect the
stratification of high, middle, and lowbrow culture th at had developed in
the previous century. The initial list of Pocket Books included a wide
range of texts, only a few of which would be considered the "best" by
the literary establishment:
Lost Horizon by James Hilton, a hardcover bestseller in 1935
Wake Up and Live by Dorothea Brande, a 1936 bestseller on
self-improvement
Five Great Tragedies b y Shakespeare, a 476-page volume th at
included Macbeth, King Lear, Hamlet, Julius Caesar, and
Romeo and Juliet
Topper by Thorne Smith, a 1926 title th at eventually sold a
million hardcover copies and was th e basis for a film and
a television series
The Murder o f Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie
Enough Rope by Dorothy Parker, including poems from the
Algonquin Club
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, set to coincide with
th e film release
The Way o f All Flesh by Samuel Butler
Bridge o f San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder, winner of the
Pulitzer Prize for fiction and best-selling novel of 1928
Bambi by Felix Salten, already a classic even before Disney’s
version (Davis 13)
This mix is not surprising, considering th a t de Graff combed the
bestseller lists for rep rin t candidates. Bestseller lists are strikingly
heterogenous to this day.
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52
In the coming years, Pocket Books would continue to offer this
eclectic selection, in which Pride and Prejudice would sell alongside
Appointment in Samarra. By 1941, only two years after its inception,
Pocket Books had sold nearly 8.5 million volumes (Davis 43). At the end
of World War II, the most popular titles sold well over 1 million copies
apiece (Davis 79). By 1950, when more than 200 million paperbacks sold
in a single year, Pocket Books had inspired many imitators, including
some who abandoned the competition for rep rin t rig h ts and began
producing original paperback titles (Davis 147, 153). De Graff’s faith in
the pent-up American demand for books had been fulfilled.
The transform ation of the American book-buying landscape was not
accomplished without discord, however. Many observers worried about
the effects of paperbacks. Their concerns revealed an abiding belief in
the power of books to uplift or debase th e American populace. In 1951,
Henry Swados outlined this dilemma in the Nation:
Last year, the stupefying total of 214,000,000 paper-bound
books was published in this country, as compared with
3,000,000 in 1939. Most of them were sold and the
probability is th at a larger proportion of them was read than
of hard-cover books, many of which are bought as unwanted
gifts or as book-club prestige items for th e coffee table.
Whether this revolution in th e reading habits of the
American public means th at we are being inundated by a
flood of trash which will debase farth er th e popular taste, or
th at we shall now have available cheap editions of an ev er-
increasing list of classics, is a question of basic importance
to our social and cultural development. (Davis 146)
Many of the assumptions which Swados and other commentators held—
th at th e average person cannot appreciate and does not desire enduring
(hard-cover) literature, th at popular taste is debased, th at reading the
rig h t books can affect the country’s social and cultural development—
are th e same ones th at underlie today’s belief th at popular books are
more likely to be "trash."
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53
This view contrasts strikingly with the opinions of review ers a
century earlier, who "assumed th at without the seal of popular approval
a novel could not be put forward as a great work of art," and who
"also held that, though popularity was by no means in itself th e te st of
artistic merit, one could never assume the opposite: th at popularity
implied poor art." The automatic correlation of popularity with
inferiority reveals a cynicism about the populace th a t was not present
among American reviewers during the 1840s and 1850s (Baym, Novels 45).
Defenders of the paperback often championed the earlier views
which Baym describes. New York Times Book Review editor David
Dempsey, in the January 1953 Atlantic Monthly, pointed to the "highly
competitive melange of serious literature and trash , of self-help and
pseudo-science, of sex and inspiration" th a t paperback publishers made
available, calling it "a nicely homogenized product, with the cream of
letters so palatably disseminated in the total output." Paperback
publishers not only offer a wide range of titles, Dempsey noted, they
have made hitherto unavailable titles, such as Faulkner’s The Wild Palms,
"available, if not necessarily comprehensible, to a million rank-and-file
buyers." If such publishers have done nothing else, he declared, "they
have taken the classics away from the protective custody of the
pedants" (Davis 178). While Dempsey’s comments reflect a certain
cynicism about the literary capacities of "rank-and-file buyers," they
also show a desire for culture to become once again the shared property
of all Americans.
Others were not as charitable as Dempsey, however. T ranscripts of
the June 1952 congressional investigation of paperback publishing show
ju st how wide the split had become between early nineteenth century
faith in, and the mid-twentieth century d istru st of, "the masses." The
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54
assertion of Ralph Daigh (editor of Fawcett’s Gold Medal Books) th at
"when the public buys a product in multimillion lots . . . it does connote
th at it is a good book" provoked outrage from the committee, which
peaked when Daigh compared the themes of murder, lust, and adultery
in Gold Medal Books to similar themes in Shakespeare. Carroll D. Kearns
(R-Pennsylvania) exclaimed in disbelief:
Isn ’t th at a terrifically weak defense to state and mention
those classics of Shakespeare to leave the door open to a
book and try to place this publication in any sense of th e
word in the same category and with the same comparison
with Shakespeare? (Hearings 14)
Daigh’s reply th at comparison to Shakespeare wasn’t really the issue,
that the point was th at both were entitled to publication, provoked
another scathing response from the committee chair, E. C. Gathings (D-
Kansas): "And the book sells for a quarter?" (Hearings 14).
Clearly these congressmen believed th at Shakespeare was not to be
soiled by comparison to modern paperbacks. Their comments also show
they believed high quality to be marked by high prices, an assumption
which worked against their attrib u tin g any worth to "the low-cost,
paper-bound publications known as ’pocket-size books’" (Report 2),
despite Daigh’s protest th a t "If a book is a good book, it is a good book
whether it is given away, sold for 25 cents, 35 cents, or 10 dollars"
(Hearings 29). The majority rep o rt of the committee, not surprisingly,
damns the "so-called pocket-sized books" as being "media for the
dissemination of artfu l appeals to sensuality, immorality, filth,
perversion, and degeneracy" (Report 3). Though none of the
committee’s recommendations became law, publishers obediently toned
down th eir lists (and their book covers) as local groups redoubled their
efforts a t censorship. Today’s censorship debates often featu re these
same argum ents—comparing "objectionable" material to similar material in
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55
classic works, and worrying about how to protect society from the
influence of "trash." Such argum ents assume th at readers are helpless
to resist the power of unsavory books.
Canon Wars
As the "canon wars" of the past decade have shown, we are still
privileging th e text over the reader. Arguments for preserving
"traditional values" and argum ents for embracing hitherto "marginalized"
texts both reveal our ongoing faith in th e power of literature to
influence society, in both cases, "for our own good," which always
implies, "perhaps against our will." Many consider the virulence of the
debate to be a sign th a t reading doesn’t matter anymore in "the real
world"; after all, if people were reading extensively outside the
classroom, would we care so much which books were required within it?
But people do read extensively outside of class, despite what scholarly
papers on "The Death of Literature" or "The Decline of Reading" would
suggest. The problem is th at we do not notice the texts which are
published in increasing numbers every year, unless, of course, we need
a book to read on the plane.
As Jan Gorak and others have shown, argum ents about how to
define a literary canon are p art of a lengthy historical discussion.
Educators and critics have faced the dilemma of needing to select and
teach im portant texts and the relationships between them, but disliking
the tendency of such a canon to freeze response and to exclude other
texts from consideration. Many recent argum ents are framed by Allan
Bloom, E. D. Hirsch, and William Bennett on one side, with Richard
Ohmann, Lauter, and Tompkins on the other. (Though Hirsch has
explicitly stated he does not propose a particular canon, he does believe
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56
th at "a" canon would be of benefit. I have included him with Bloom and
Bennett because his method of cultural preservation matches theirs,
even though his canon would be more flexible and more democratic in
origin.)
Statem ents on both sides have been strikingly vehement and
defensive. The "traditionalists" seem to feel threatened by the growing
acceptance of Marxist, feminist, an ti-racist and other "political"
criticisms, which have urged a radical transform ation of th e ways
literatu re is interpreted and taught. Those who embrace the "non-
traditional" criticism s appear defensive about attacks directed against
them in the popular media, and about the surp risin g popularity of
Bloom’s The Closing o f the American Mind and Hirsch’s Cultural Literacy:
What E very American Needs to Know, both of which were bestsellers. So
we have Bennett accusing professors in the 1960s and 1970s of a
"collective failure of faith and nerve" which "was undeniably destructive
of the curriculum ," and Bloom charging today’s "closed minded"
educators with indoctrinating students into a false, amoral relativism
which th reaten s th e "fundamental principles or the moral virtues" which
hold American society together. At the same time, critics such as
Lauter, Ohmann, and Kaplan and Rose insist th at behind the desire to
preserve a traditional canon is a quest to maintain power.
None of these critics has subverted one fundamental assumption of
these debates: the power of the text over the reader. Either readers
are disempowered by not reading classics, or they are disempowered by
not reading minority literature. In either case, readers rely on the
assistance of literary critics who will make su re th at the correct texts
are taught in the correct fashion, so th at readers will receive the
maximum possible benefit of literatu re’s uplifting power. To a great
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extent, as Ohmann shows in his essays, "A Case Study in Canon
Formation Reviewers, Critics, and The Catcher in the Rye" (with Carol
Ohmann) and "The Shaping of a Canon, 1960-1975," literatu re professors
and other members of the professional-m anagerial class do play a large
role in constraining what Americans are able to read by influencing
which books will be w ritten, published, and widely distributed.
However, it does not necessarily follow th at th e average American is
helpless, any more than the average American literatu re professor is
helpless, to select from what is available and to resist unwanted
influences.
By now, more than a decade after Hirsch’s essay "Cultural
Literacy" appeared in The American Scholar, and nearly a decade after
Bloom’s The Closing o f the American Mind swept the bestseller charts
with only 10,000 copies in print, much of the "canon fire" has become
more sophisticated than what H arriett Hawkins termed "flinging charges
of elitism back and forth at each other" (109). The more well-known
argum ents, such as those set forth by Lauter, Charles Altieri, and
Patricia Bizzell, though they reach widely differing conclusions, all
stipulate a number of key points. First, they agree th at canons have
arisen through historically determined circum stances; they do not exist
in a special place entirely outside human experience. Second, they
agree th at critical approaches to literatu re are likewise historically and
culturally determined. Therefore, no canon can possibly be proposed
th at will escape th e constraints of the society in which it was
constructed. Finally, they agree th at though some of us might prefer
not to have a canon at all, we cannot work without one, as literary
study is presently conceived. (The agreem ent on these points lends
support to L auter’s observation th at potentially dangerous political
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58
debates are rendered harmless when they are siphoned off from the
general public into academia, where they are reduced to debates over
form (157).)
Here, however, critics p art company. For Altieri and Bizzell, these
stipulations lead inevitably back to reliance on a canon, though not
necessarily to the statu s quo. Altieri states th a t only th e shared
cultural "grammar" which the canon provides is what enables us speak
to each other, and by "grammar" he means cultural values as well as
literary form. Because of this, and because it is impossible to step
outside of our situation to evaluate our position, he maintains th a t we
have no choice but to rely on our canon, evaluating every possible
addition according to the values within it. Furtherm ore, Altieri states,
the canon performs several vital functions. It is curatorial, showing
what can be done within the literary medium, both in terms of craft and
in terms of wisdom; and it train s us "to search for ways the two
connect" (51). In addition, the canon is normative, not through simple
dogmatism, but through serving as a "dialectical resource" for our
society (51). Institutions are also "constitutions," Altieri points out, and
it is through experimenting with and reevaluating the realities we have
constituted th at we can transform our society. In short, "[c]anons
themselves may form the very society they lead us to dream of, and as
we dream, to see ourselves in our limits and our possibilities" (59).
Bizzell, though she doesn’t explicitly call for critics to embrace our
present canon, agrees with Altieri’s dismissal of what he calls the
"hermeneutics of suspicion," and what she calls "anti-foundationalism."
She doubts th at we have a shared canon, or cultural literacy, but would
like to see us create one, even though it would req u ire "arguing about
what we should read and write, arguing about what canon we want to
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59
endorse instead of pretending we can will away th e power of canons"
("Beyond Anti-Foundationalism" 674). Like Altieri, Bizzell focuses on
what a canon can make available, rath er than what unsavory
dependencies it might display; "I’m ju s t not willing to concede y et th at
th e smirk of skepticism is all we academics, or we Americans can achieve
in the face of th e present crisis in our communal life," she insists
("Beyond Anti-Foundationalism" 674). If we can’t create a perfect canon,
a t least the effort to create one will have positive consequences.
Lauter s ta rts from th e same philosophical position, with the same
goal of suggesting positive solutions (as opposed to merely suspiciously
deconstructing and analyzing problems with other proposals). But
rath er than turning back to the traditional canon with a heightened
resolve to make it work, Lauter calls on academics to "abolish" canons
altogether. W e would accomplish this not in fact (which would be
impossible; we must teach something, and once we choose to teach it, we
in effect create a canon) but in technique, through the practice of
"rereading canonical texts as much for what they do not say as for
what they make explicit" (159). For example, we might read Hobbes and
Locke from a gendered perspective. Lauter concedes Altieri’s point th at
we cannot position ourselves completely outside of our own perspective;
we cannot even be su re th at such strategies will make any difference in
society at all (Altieri, in fact, believes th at no intellectual critique makes
an effective vehicle for social change). Still, like Bizzell, Lauter insists
th a t we try , rath er than succumbing to the "political paralysis" th at
plays into "reactionary idealogies th at . . . deny any value to radical
change" (160). The materials for our struggle lie as close as the
nearest marginalized text. By reading traditional works through th e
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lens of non-traditional works, we can gain the new perspectives needed
to abolish the canon.
On th e surface, Lauter would seem to be advocating exactly the
opposite of what Altieri and Bizzell propose. But on the deeper level of
how literatu re is to be used, he agrees with them. Ideologically, there
is no difference between a close reading of a hitherto lost or abandoned
work, and a close reading of a canonical text. The technique of close
reading still requires specialized training; it still relies on th e belief
th at a text leads a submissive reader to new realizations. No matter
how Altieri, Bizzell, and Lauter frame th eir solutions, all th re e rely on
the rig h t combination of texts to bring enlightenment.
This faith in close reading stems from our definition of literature.
Often, Mary Poovey explains, we forget th at concepts such as literature
are th e origins rath er than the effects of representations and
institutional practices. AIDS, for example, is often conceptualized as a
sexual disease, and as a result "now seems to be bound to the moralistic
equation of the 1980s: sex=sin=death; those who practice illicit sex
deserve to get sick and die" (621). Rather than following the
"humanist" approach to understanding the disease, which would try to
compare such a representation of the disease to the original "unmarked"
(in a linguistic sense) version, Poovey stresses that critics must realize
th at "what counts as AIDS at any given moment is partly a function of
representations" (621). This understanding cannot change the ways in
which AIDS is transm itted (of which sexual contact is one), but it can
change "the ways in which individuals experience the disease and the
social resources devoted to treatm ent, prevention, and cure" (621).
Similarly, when we rep resen t literature according to "a set of
institutional practices which includes a system of schooling, the
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61
disciplinary division of knowledge, and the departm ental division of
labor," the ways in which we can experience literature are constrained
by th at representation. Our cu rre n t representation emphasizes the
individual work, "ignoring the differences among various editions of the
work, not to mention the difference between, for example, the textual
version of a play and its various performances" (Poovey 621). In so
doing, it downplays the connections between texts and th e processes of
creating and interpreting such texts. In order to transform our canon,
we need to transform our conception/representation of literature.
Genre Fiction as Weird Case
Susan Sage Heinzelman’s article, "Hard Cases, Easy Cases and Weird
Cases: Canon Formation in Law and Literature" provides a model for
understanding how our definition of literature, and consequently our
canon, perpetuates itself, even when texts from "outside" are brought to
bear on canonized texts. The terms "hard," "easy," and "weird" come
from an article by "Fred Schauer of the Michigan School of
Law . . . and are familiar to scholars and practitioners of the law."
"Easy" cases are those in which "a clearly applicable rule
noncontroversially generates an answer to the question at hand," and in
which th a t answ er is consistent with th e purpose of th e rule and the
social climate in which it is applied. A "hard" case is one in which the
applicable rule is ambiguous, or in which two or more conflicting rules
might apply. Hard cases establish legal precedent which affects
subsequent decisions. And "weird" cases operate completely outside the
realm of law. Not only are they "wildly counterfactual," but
hypothetical events can always be suggested th a t will confuse any
attem pt to in terp ret them. Weird cases, therefore, "are excluded from
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62
the legal canon and th u s have no predictive or normative value; they
say nothing" (60). In order for weird cases to be resolved at all, they
must be reformulated as hard cases.
Heinzelman gives several examples of weird cases, the most recent
being the Baby M case. The weird issues in th at case concern "the
power of a woman to own or disown her own body, to contract her womb
in order to bear a child who will be raised by its father and another
woman" (62). To resolve the case, Judge Harvey Sorkow shifted the
question from these issues to issues of contract law (which is relatively
straightforw ard, unlike adoption law, which was another possible avenue
of interpretation). In so doing, he neutralized the issues of power and
gender th at were a significant p art of the dilemma.
The literary canon, Heinzelman argues, is perpetuated in much the
same way as th e legal canon. "Easy" cases (e.g., The Scarlet Letter* )
clearly fit, and thereby perpetuate, our definition of literature. "Hard"
cases (e.g., Emily Dickinson’s letters) can become literatu re without
rew riting th at basic definition (by saying, for example, th at Dickinson’s
letters display a self-consciously poetic form), and once they are
admitted, this opens the door to similar texts. Weird cases never make
it into the canon at all unless they are rew ritten as hard cases.
Dorothy Wordsworth had no voice in Romantic literatu re anthologies until
she was brought into the canon "under the protective and patriarchal
gaze of her brother" (64). Though she is now read instead of silenced,
she is read and evaluated in relation to her brother, according to the
interpretive strategies by which the academy reads Romantic literature.
Her presence is acknowledged "at the cost of suppressing those very
^I have added the examples from American literatu re to illustrate
Heinzelman’s explanation of these legal concepts.
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63
values th a t distinguish her as a w riter and woman: th e articulation and
practice of a domesticity th at opened up the space for writing rath er
than excluded it" (64). The very act of bringing hitherto unrecognized
texts into th e canon as hard cases deprives them of their power to
influence it. Therefore, we should not expect the mere admission of
such texts to transform our canon—or our understanding of reading—
for us.
This description of how canons are formed and perpetuated
explains why genre fiction has been consistently overlooked when critics
call for an expansion of the canon. Genre, or category, fiction is a
weird case. L iterature as historically conceived in academia, is made up
of individual texts, which, though they may allude to, or be influenced
by, other texts, ultimately rely only on themselves for power. Within
their covers, they offer formal and ethical complexities which will
support an infinite amount of close reading and literary analysis.
Though th eir features may be similar to those of other texts, they are
in the last analysis unique creations; when read according to standard
literary practice, th eir differences are far more important than their
similarities. In fact, as Mary Gerhart points out in h er book. Genre
Choices, Gender Questions, traditional literary study is predicated on the
assumption th a t "literary and artistic in terest maximizes differences
between one object and another" (105). Accordingly, C. S. Lewis, in An
Experiment in Criticism, defined "good" literatu re as being so unique
and so powerful th at "the first reading . . . is often, to the literary, an
experience so momentous th at only experiences of love, religion, or
bereavement can furnish a standard of comparison" (3).
Genre fiction, by contrast, is enjoyed most by people who read
hundreds of other texts in th at genre. Because the individual text in a
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64
genre is perceived to be form ula-driven, simplistic, and relatively no
more im portant than most other mysteries, w esterns, etc., genre fiction
constitutes a weird case. Individual texts will only be present when
they are rew ritten as hard cases; when, for example, we say, "Yes,
Ursula LeGuin may w rite science fiction, but The L eft Hand o f Darkness
is so provocative and complex th at we will tre a t it as regular
literature," or when we lump all romance novels into one "master text"
and analyze th at composite.
By defining category fiction as a weird case, I do not mean to
imply th at it is never form ula-driven, simplistic, or unimportant. Nor do
I believe th a t we should abandon practices such as close reading in
order to devise a new method which can deal with genre fiction without
depriving it of its weirdness. My purpose in this dissertation is simply
to show how our definition of literatu re affects our understanding of
popular genres and th eir readership. Furtherm ore, I hope to
dem onstrate how a broader conception of literatu re can allow us to
examine the appeal of genre fiction without denying its essential
weirdness.
Many scholars have begun to refuse the powerful text/passive
reader assumption. Reader-response critics, for example, focus on the
strategies by which readers understand and use texts. Book historians
investigate reading practices of, and th eir relation to, contemporary
cultural developments. And reading research examines "active" reading
and proposes ways in which such reading can be taught. The growing
in terest in these areas suggests that our conception of literature might
be shifting back to an earlier stage of oscillation, closer to the mid
nineteenth century faith in the power and the license of readers to
actively adapt texts to their own purposes.
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Chapter III
Bestsellers, Formula Fiction, and Highbrow Literature
I will not adopt th at ungenerous and impolitic custom so
common with novel-w riters, of degrading by their
contemptuous censure the very performances, to the
number of which they are them selves adding . . . and
scarcely ever permitting them to be read by their own
heroine, who, if she accidentally take up a novel, is su re
to tu rn over its insipid pages with disgust. . . . "And
what are you reading, Miss ?" "Oh! It is only a
novel!" replies the young lady, while she lays down her
book with affected indifference, or momentary shame. . . .
[It is] only some work in which th e greatest powers of the
mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge
of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties,
the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to
the world in the best language. (Austen 41-42)
Jane Austen’s fierce defense of novels in Northanger Abbey has
done no good, at least as far as popular fiction is concerned. W e still
read such novels, true, but like the young heroine Austen describes, we
still are likely to lay them aside upon discovery with affected
indifference or shame. If, that is, we read them at all; Linda Barlow
and Jayne Ann Krentz are not the firs t people to remark on "how much
courage it takes for a woman to open a romance novel on an airplane"
(Barlow and Krentz 1). As "popular" has gradually come to mean "poor
quality," bestsellers are commonly assumed to be the worst novels in
print. But th e concept of bestseller is far less monolithic than many
literary pundits realize. Many bestseller lists exist, the most im portant
(published by the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Publishers
Weekly, and USA Today) all calculate book sales differently, and all
display methodological limitations. Not only is no bestseller list a
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66
tran sp aren t record of American mass reading practices, the books which
are believed to be typical examples of "popular" taste, such as romance
novels, rarely appear on such lists.
Despite this fact, discussions of "the" bestseller list tend to take
the approach of Anthony Lane’s "The Top Ten," a survey of the New
York Times list, which begins with a long apologia for taking popular
books seriously enough to write about them. Reminding us th a t even
the eminent Gore Vidal wrote about bestsellers, Lane insists th at there
are "sound reasons for musing on this stuff," because bestseller lists
"represent the lowest common denominator of the print culture." As
such, they are a "proper corrective to our historical arrogance" which
foolishly believes that the best w ritings of our time will "both outlive us
and outlast us in centuries to come" (80). To the contrary, our culture
has never and will never properly appreciate its own classics: "The
editors of the Times Book Review would like to believe th at they bring
readers together beneath an umbrella of civilized discourse: but outside
it is raining Danielle Steel, and th e re st of the country is drinking it
in" (79-80). Rather than struggling futilely to identify and read only
the best literature, Lane advises us th at "the ideal literary diet consists
of tra sh and classics: all that has survived, and all that has no reason
to survive—books you can read without thinking, and books you have
to read if you want to think at all" (80). So justified, he goes on to
review the New York Times’ s top ten bestsellers of May 15, 1994.
Despite the fact th at Lane insists we need to read bestselling
fiction, he obviously is biased against it. He terms it "lowest common
denominator" fiction, and even his praise is condescending, as when he
discovers th at author Sue Grafton can craft a good sentence ("This
brought me up short; it is a ra th er beautiful sentence . . . and it’s not
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67
a freak" (90)), or when he unexpectedly enjoys Judith K rantz’s Lovers,
but attrib u tes his enjoyment to the author’s ability to "celebrate an
impossible way of life in prose th at never fails to be radiantly,
exultantly bad" (84). The week’s number one book, The Celestine
Prophecy, Lane finds to be "an insult to the novel" (92). That and The
Bridges o f Madison County, he declares, are something far more sinister
than novels made to be movies—they are "surrogate non-fiction. . . .
[gjuides to life, how-to manuals with a little sq u irt of plot piped around
the edge. It is the very w orst fate th at could have befallen literature;
even Tolstoy, the unrepentant didact, would not have wanted it to end
like this" (92).
Analysis of Major Bestseller Lists:
Mew York Times, Wall S treet Journal, Pubh'shers Weekly, USA Today
Many assum ptions can be unpacked from Lane’s article, chief
among them th e belief th at th e bestseller list is a tran sp aren t record of
our cu ltu re’s reading tastes. For one thing, multiple bestseller lists
appear in magazines, new spapers, bookstores, and libraries, and each
list is calculated differently. None gives enough information from which
the nation’s reading can be confidently and specifically identified. The
New York Times list, for example, is not determined through total sales
figures, but through rep o rts from managers of 3,000 carefully selected,
"representative" bookstores about which books are popular. This
information is weighted to approximate the buying habits of the nation.
The reporting bookstores and the weighting formula are closely guarded
secrets, a precaution which is meant to preserve the sanctity of the
influential list.
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68
Still, as Richard Ohmann and Richard Kostelanetz have noted, the
method of calculation is strongly influenced by reviews in "elite"
publications such as the New York Review o f Books, which in tu rn may
unduly reflect financial considerations (such as the sale of advertising
space to publishers), or even personal considerations. The New York
Review o f Books, for example, was founded by a Random House executive
and co-edited by his wife; not surprisingly, it "deployed [its intellectual
stren g th ] in ways consistent with the financial in terest of Random
House" (Ohmann 75). Whatever the c u rren t power of such intellectually
"impure" influences (Ohmann’s and Kostelanetz’s compelling accounts of
them being more than 25 years old), the complex formulation of the list
has, on occasion, led to such oddities as Allan Bloom’s The Closing o f
the American Mind making the list with only 10,000 copies in print, a
mere 7,000 of which had been shipped to bookstores (Goldstein).
Furtherm ore, the New York Times list (along with many of its
counterparts) does not count paperbacks, which sell far more copies
than hardbacks, and therefore presumably are purchased by more
people (Baker, See). In 1991 (the most recent data I have been able to
locate), th e th re e top-selling hardbacks (Alexandra Ripley’s Scarlett, Tom
Clancy’s The Sum o f AH Fears, Stephen King’s Needful Things) sold
between one and two million copies (actually, Ripley’s book nudged past
the upper boundary, with 2,148,225 reported sales). By contrast, the
top three mass market paperbacks (Scott Turow’s Presumed Innocent,
Thomas H arris’s Silence o f the Lambs, and Danielle Steel’s Daddy) sold
between four and seven million copies.
The Wall Street Journal, the latest periodical to jump on the
"bestseller bandwagon," su ffers from similar problems. To its credit, it
does offer a feature which the Times does not—an index which compares
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69
the sales rates of all books on the list, fiction and nonfiction. On the
initial, F ebruary 23, 1994 list, for example, Danielle Steel’s Accident was
the top selling fiction hardcover, and was assigned the index number of
100. Embraced by the Light, the top-selling nonfiction title, had an
index of 75, meaning th at it "sold 75% as many copies in the prior week
as Accident" (Baker 11). This feature can help observers analyze the
relative popularity of individual titles—from the Times list it is
impossible to determine whether the top-seller is far and above the most
popular book on the list, or whether it ju s t barely edges out its
competitors.
But the Journal is no better than th e Times at offering a complete
picture of sales—it reflects only sales as reported by the nation’s top
chains (Walden/Borders, Barnes & Noble, Crown, and Books-A-Million),
excluding independent bookstores. And unlike the Times list, the
Journal list is created anew each week. Any readers wishing to
investigate the long-term success of popular titles must laboriously
collect each week’s list themselves.
The Publishers Weekly list offers a broader picture of sales than
either the Times or the Journal, by basing its list on copies "shipped
and billed" by publishers rath er than copies sold by retailers. For at
least the past 15 years, Publishers Weekly has provided yearly lists of
sales figures for all types of books—hardback, trad e paperback, mass
market paperback, both fiction and nonfiction, both adult and children’s
literature, both reference and religious literature, along with in-depth
analyses of why certain items sold well and others did not, despite
publishers’ best efforts. The view brings to light "megasellers," such
as James Michener’s Caribbean and Spencer Johnson and Kenneth
Blanchard’s The One Minute Manager, which never made it to the top ten
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70
on the Times list because they did not sell enough copies per week
(Bear 194), though the two lists "generally have in common four out of
the top five titles" (Atlas 198).
Even Publishers Weekly figures are not final; they do not take
into account all the copies returned unsold to the publishers.
Furtherm ore, some publishers refuse to release actual figures, providing
only enough information for ranking the top 15 bestsellers. Finally,
th ere is no comparative ranking across categories—the "big picture"
Publishers Weekly provides is too detailed for easy understanding.
Perhaps th is is why the magazine has quietly scaled back its rep o rt in
the last few years, in 1994 listing only how many best-sellers by each
publisher made the list for how many weeks, and how many weeks a few
of the top-selling titles remained on the list. Longevity is more easily
determined on the newer Publishers Weekly list, but quantity of sales—
this list’s most interesting featu re—is now entirely omitted.
If Lane wanted more support for his claims about American
reading habits, he should have turned to USA Today. Of the major
lists, the new USA Today list draws the most useful picture of American
book-buying habits (for the interested observer th a t is, if not for the
salesperson), because it combines both hardbacks and paperbacks,
fiction and nonfiction, and new titles and backlist titles together, into
one long list, along with the previous week’s standing on the list, a
brief description, publisher information, and price. Though USA Today
calculates its list in much the same way as the New York Times
(analyzing reported sales at "3,000 large-inventory diverse content
bookstores"), it supplies a more integrated picture than the tiny lists
offered by the Times. USA Today calculates the top 250 bestsellers,
printing only the top 50 but referring to the others in accompanying
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71
articles. (Interested readers can obtain a list of the top 150 books by
fax, if they do not mind paying a three dollar fee.) The accompanying
articles identify and explain tren d s which are barely noticeable on
briefer lists. "Hemingway’s Rise Purely Academic," for example, points
out th at large summer sales of classic novels are due to schools’ common
practice of buying textbooks for the coming year "to use up their
budgets" before the fiscal year ends (Donahue 4D).
Still, the USA Today list, like all the other lists, has its blind
spots. Christian bookstores, for example, are not counted, which has led
to charges that bigoted secular humanists are using the lists to fight
Christianity. In the January 1993 Saturday Evening Post, Franky
Schaeffer called this practice "The Bestseller Book Scandal Cover-Up":
If the bestseller lists were really what they claim to be,
books by Christians would show up with startling
frequency; their sales figures would put them at the top of
these lists regularly. And this would impress the general
public th at Christians might actually have something to say
and would make it necessary for those in the media to take
Christianity seriously.
This, however, is what organization^] such as the New
York Times . . . want to avoid like the plague. They
deliberately promote the idea of a despiritualized, secular
world, while at the same time continuing to claim the
bestseller lists are completely accurate." (qtd. in Bear
159)
Publishers Weekly rep o rts that the top ten religious books in 1991
(Bibles excluded) sold 100,000 to 400,000 copies, enough to put at least a
few of them on the standard, "secular humanist" list. However, as
Schaeffer points out, when titles appear on mainstream lists, the
increased visibility almost invariably increases sales, especially in the
case of the New York Times list, which many bookstores and libraries
use to advise their book purchases. It is possible that the same would
happen to preacher Benny Hinn’s Good Morning, Holy Spirit, though
Publishers Weekly credits his sales to the built-in narrow constituencies
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72
of his 7,000 member church and his thrice daily cable show, ra th e r than
to general appeal. Whether or not Hinn’s book would have rivaled
Scarlett in the bookbuyers’ affections, given the same visibility, is
certainly debatable.
Why Bestseller Lists Do Not Reveal Reading Practices
Even if someone could construct the perfect national bestseller
list, linking all the bookstores, airp o rt newsstands, used bookstores,
grocery stores, garage sales, etc. in the country to calculate which
books were changing hands and in what amounts (and this is not an
entirely unrealistic concept in these days of computerized databases), it
still would not provide a complete picture of what Americans were
reading, for the very simple reason that buying is not reading. David
Blum called intellectual bestsellers, such as Bloom’s The Closing o f the
American Mind and Stephen W . Hawking’s A Brief History o f Time, "the
Great Unread Books of Our Time," referrin g to anecdotal evidence and a
survey taken by Michael Kinsley:
A colleague inserted slips of paper three q u arters of the
way through 70 books in Washington stores, offering $5 to
anyone who called to say he’d reached that point. . . .
Five months later, he hadn’t gotten a single call. Kinsley
concluded, "These books don’t exist to be read. They exist
to be gazed at, browsed through, talked about. They
exist, above all, to be reviewed." Meaning that these
books go directly from bag to shelf with no interm ediate
stops. (36)
Combine this possibility with the fact that many bestsellers, such as Bill
Cosby’s Fatherhood, are chiefly bought as gifts (which may never be
read) and the impossibility of judging popular taste based on bestseller
lists becomes clear.
Ju st as letters to the editor columns operate in their own
universe, periodically spawning heated debates on subjects which have
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73
very little to do with anything in the news (e.g., "If w aiters serve
glasses of water which are wet on the outside, do they deserve a tip?"
a burning question which absorbed Los Angeles Times readers for days
in mid-August of 1980), bestseller lists are a phenomenon unto
themselves. They grab some books almost without warning, even without
large sales, and hoist them into the public eye, where their "bestseller"
statu s inspires the public to a whirlwind of buying (though not
necessarily reading). It is a truism in the publishing business th at no
amount of advertising can make a book a bestseller, but once it becomes
a "hit," carefully managed publicity can raise its sales to unheard-of
heights (Curtis). This has been the case since the birth of the mass
reading public in the nineteenth century (see especially Susan Geary’s
"The Domestic Novel As a Commercial Commodity: Making a Best Seller in
the 1850s").
Omission from the lists is therefore a serious matter for authors
as well as for academic researchers. William Peter Biatty filed a $6
million lawsuit against the Mew York Times when it failed to include
Legion on its bestseller list, despite the fact th at sales were brisk.
Biatty claimed intentional negligence on the p art of the paper, asking
bitterly, "I want to know how they compile th at list. . . . What is so
scientific about the way they put their numbers together?" (qtd. in
Atlas 198). The suit was dismissed, but the fact that Biatty would file
charges at all indicates the financial importance of such lists, which
"can influence the sale of movie rig h ts and the floor price of paperback
editions, and . . . [help] books move out of the stores . . . " (Atlas 198).
Though the chief value of a bestseller list may be its ability to
sell books, the plethora of lists shows how much we hunger for
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74
information about what others are reading--and it is still one of the
only means we have of estimating that information.
Even when taken at face value, however, the bestseller
phenomenon is more than mere pandering to the "lowest common
denominator of the print culture," as Lane puts it. The lists have
always included a staggering range of texts, from classics to how-to
books to softcore porn novels. Though columnists such as Henry Allen
and P. J. O’Rourke have called the large number of difficult, intellectual
volumes to be something "quite new," ("Probable Overloading" 89) and
blamed their sales on baby-boomer neuroses, serious academic works
such as Arnold Toynbee’s A S tudy o f History have been appearing on
the New York Times list since its inception in the 1940s (Bear 20). The
literary quality of books on bestseller lists, however you choose to
define "quality," is likewise heterogeneous.
This corresponds to empirical research findings th a t people draw
pleasure from many different kinds of reading (Nell 60-61). The Frugal
Gourmet, a cookbook by Jeff Smith, for example, may be read idly as
enjoyment as often as it is used to prepare meals. Readers are likely to
have purchased both Michael Korda’s novel, The Immortals, and the more
"serious" Case Closed by Gerald Posner more because of intense
fascination with the Kennedys than concern for literary quality or
historic accuracy. And David McCullough’s Truman may satisfy the same
pru rien t curiosity about celebrities as the instant biographies of 0. J.
Simpson published during his murder trial.
After all, Patricia Meyer Spacks has pointed out that all literature
is closely connected to gossip; it concentrates attention on the minutiae
of daily life, especially other people’s daily lives, and helps satisfy our
(usually healthy, Spacks believes) curiosity about why people do the
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75
things they do. By focusing on the private, ra th er than the public
sphere, Spacks writes, "We extend our control over the recalcitrant
world by strengthening our intellectual and psychological grasp. . . .
L iterature and gossip alike amuse, amend, and in stru ct" (23).
(Incidentally, Spacks makes her case with the likes of James Boswell,
Charlotte Bronte, and Henry James—imagine what she might have
accomplished with Patti Davis’s The Way I See It, a loosely
autobiographical account of life as Reagan’s daughter.) This connection
to gossip, Spacks argues, accounts in large p art for the novel’s
historically shady reputation. It may also account for the popularity of
many bestsellers.
How Formula Fiction Differs from Bestsellers
Surprisingly, though category novels, such as romances,
mysteries, and speculative fiction, are often maligned for being "popular
trash," they rarely show up on bestseller lists. This is because such
novels are consumed differently than non-genre novels; genre fans read
many titles throughout the genre, referrin g to them according to type
("I love reading mysteries") rath er than title ("I ju s t finished The
Bridges o f Madison County"). Genre novels are also sold differently—
most are released in paperback format, which is not counted by many
bestseller lists. Paperbacks also are rarely reviewed; author and
literary agent Richard Curtis calls this
the single most important difference between hardcover
and paperback publication. . . . But not, as most people
think, because it satisfies author vanity or helps to sell
books. As I see it, the tru e importance of reviews is that
they legitimize books. A reviewed book, for most of us, is
a "real" book, and th a t’s why hardcover books are
considered more "real" than paperbacks. (54)
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76
Furtherm ore paperbacks are usually distributed by the same
d istributors who also carry magazines, which means th at new titles are
released monthly, rath er than seasonally. Obviously, it would be
impractical for paperback publishers to launch monthly advertising
campaigns on the same scale as their hardcover counterparts, though
Curtis notes "paperback publishers do consult with sales staff and
distributors on a monthly basis far more extensively than hardcover
publishers do" (139). Publishers of series romances, by the way, get
around this problem by advertising the series, not the titles.
The lack of highly visible reviews and advertisem ents does not
h u rt the sale of most genre books, however; Curtis notes that a great
many "routine" paperbacks will sell well with little or no help from their
publishers. The reason is that "there is a hard-core audience for
romance, science fiction, western, horror, and other genres. These
readers will buy ju s t about any book in their favorite category whether
it is good, bad, or indifferent" (145). The cost of stimulating sales
beyond the minimum of this hard-core audience, Curtis points out, "may
not be balanced by the profits" (145). A "hard-core" audience which
buys many titles, as opposed to a wide audience which buys only a few
titles, will not provide the foundation for a bestseller.
The frequency of paperback releases makes it difficult for readers
to find specific books; the titles do not stay in p rin t very long due to
restru ctu red federal taxes on publisher inventories, among other factors.
Series romances, for example, are in print only for a month. Plus,
although the cheaper cost of paperbacks makes it easier for genre fans
to purchase many titles ("whether good, bad, or indifferent"), the books
are still expensive enough to provide a heavy incentive to read used
books, especially for readers who read as many as 60 volumes a month.
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77
Many genres boast active fan cultures, which also encourage trading
and lending of books.
The only time genre novels regularly appear on bestseller lists is
when their authors become celebrities, famous enough to appeal to
readers besides hard-core genre fans. Michael Crichton, Judith Krantz,
Stephen King, and Danielle Steel can expect to see their newest novels
on the list; in fact, Curtis says, "people are often more interested in the
[bestselling] authors than in the books themselves" (147). This is not
to say that readers do not care about the authors of less-popular
books. Janice A. Radway observed th at all of the respondents in her
study of romance readers
can be said to read authors rath er than books. . . . For
them, romances are neither identical nor interchangeable,
as traditional mass culture theory would have it, but exist
rath er as the identifiable products of unique women who
are differentiated by their special styles and by their
individualized approach to the genre. (Romance 22)
Her phrase, "for them," indicates that Radway herself does not share
this view of reading. Later, she comments, "Of course, those
connections . . . are initiated by and maintained through a book
and . . . reading continues to be a private and individual activity."
Though romance w riters, she admits, are conscious of the need to create
a "women’s community," she considers the community of romance readers
and w riters to be only ("at least") "the semblance of one" (Romance 22).
Radway’s skepticism is unw arranted. The intentional fallacy
notwithstanding, most readers are fascinated by famous authors, whether
the author be Charles Dickens, Emily Dickinson, James Joyce, or Jayne
Ann Krentz. Literary anthologies are generally arranged by authors,
not texts; the same goes for critical books such as Jane Tompkins’s
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78
Sensational Designs. The cult of the author is certainly not limited to
bestsellers or formula fiction.
How Formula Fiction Differs from Highbrow Literature
Though the quantity of p er-title genre sales is not perhaps as
remarkable as some critics assume (in 1989, Curtis estimated the average
p er-title sale as 25,000), the vast quantities of popular titles released
(2,243 mass market titles in 1989) are often blamed for the supposed
poor quality of such books. As noted in Chapter II, our present culture
believes th at good books are isolated works of genius, which require
specialized training, intense labor, and often divine inspiration. Given
this definition, highbrow literature could be anything but common,
created on demand as a carpenter might build a house. Both the public
at large and many people in the trade, Curtis notes (along with many
academic critics), believe that "the quality of literature rises in direct
proportion to the time required to produce it" (60). This assumption
can be fatal to careers, as publishers assume prolific w riters are
"rushing," and treating their subjects superficially.
This is not necessarily the case, Curtis assures us; authors can
and frequently do write quickly and masterfully. How? Professional
w riters are highly skilled, they have access to word processing
technology, and perhaps most important, they must write quickly if they
are to make a living. Many serious authors, Curtis charges, seem to
believe th at "legitimacy may be purchased only through w riter’s block,"
despite the record of "Dickenses, Balzacs, Dostoyevskis, and Jameses
who wrote as if possessed . . . yet turned out a body of sublime
classics. And they did it in longhand, by the way" (62). As a teacher
familiar with composition research, I would not want to claim th at all
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w riters can tu rn out perfect prose as easily as turning on a faucet.
Still, the fact that a "serious" novelist like Jane Smiley has w ritten five
novels in 15 years (along with novellas, short stories, essays and book
reviews), while romance w riter Krentz has written 78 novels, may have
much to do with the fact that Smiley earns a living as an Iowa State
U niversity English professor, while Krentz earns a living simply as a
w riter. "Being fast has been useful to me because I can make swift
adjustm ents to the changing market," Krentz told Publishers Weekly
(Spano 34). Smiley, as a w riter of "serious" fiction who also has a day
job, is not as dependent on market appeal.
It may be true, as John G. Cawelti believes, th at adopting a
literary formula makes it easier for authors to write quickly, because
the skeleton of the book is already determined. Still, this is not
necessarily an indicator of quality. Formalistic qualities (prose style,
characterization, plotting) can still vary widely from book to book.
Furtherm ore, what counts as a plot "skeleton" is a subjective
determination. Why, for example, would a mystery novel such as
Elisabeth Bower’s Ladies Night, which su bverts even the traditional
convention of revealing the solution at the end of the book, be
considered more reliant on a preformed plot than what the English
Journal calls "transform ation novels" (i.e., novels which base their plot
on classics, as Smiley’s A Thousand Acres is based on King Lear)1
Of course, the fact that individual authors who care about their
work (and not surprisingly for an agent, Curtis believes th at most
authors care about their work) can produce quality m anuscripts quickly
does not mean th at all formula fiction is of the highest quality. Reader
complaints noted by Radway and Carol Thurston indicate that it is not.
Thurston discovered th at most of these complaints focused on
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redundancy, especially in series romances, about which readers said,
"Quality has gone down as quantity increased" (188). One editor
explained th at the overwhelming early success of series romances was
responsible; "[WJhen you’re on a treadmill you don’t have time to reject
manuscripts or ask for rew rites. [But] if women read six mediocre
novels in a row, they will hesitate to pick up a seventh" (qtd. in
Thurston 188). The editor’s comments suggest that publishers who want
success will try to keep mediocre books out of their lines. And the fact
th at readers complain when they do not suggests th at error-filled,
redundant books are not the desired norm; the potential for quality
literature must exist for readers to be able to expect an d /o r demand it.
Personal vs. Social Fiction
The fact is, most criticism of formula fiction assumes from the
outset th at the formula novels are distinct from literature, and therefore
by definition, such novels are believed not to possess seriousness,
uniqueness, etc. Peter Mann sets forth a typical dichotomy between
these "two major types" of fiction. Mann is quoted here at some length
because he presents a remarkably complete description of commonly held
assumptions, though it is by no means rigid; Mann admits that it clearly
"oversimplif[ies] what is in reality a continuum," and he uses the
dichotomy as a springboard for some insightful conclusions about
readership. Still, a theory which is stru n g between two opposite poles
of fiction has, in the hands of less skilled critics, resulted in some
misleading and condescending assumptions about popular literature.
Mann calls these poles "social" and "personal" fiction (labels which
resonate with Nina Baym’s and other feminist critics’ investigations into
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public and private spheres, though Mann does not mention this work).
As Mann defines it,
Social fiction is in the area of what is known as the
literary novel . . . because it has so many social
implications. [I]t . . . forms the basis for the study of
English literature in schools and colleges. It may be
analyzed and dissected as well as . . . simply being read.
It . . . is often w ritten with a very serious purpose by the
author to try to get the readers to question social
relationships and, perhaps, even the whole stru ctu re of
society. . . . It would probably be too grand to suggest
th at such novels actually change people’s lives since there
is no hard evidence for this, but certainly people may
think a bit differently after reading them. It is because
of the seriousness of their purpose that such books are
carefully reviewed. . . . (10)
By contrast, Mann writes, the popular novel, which one automatically
thinks of as a paperback, is "personal fiction,"
the sort of fiction which is read wholly for pleasure and is
therefore a p art of one’s leisure activity. . . . The light
novel is not a challenge to society and is much more likely
to be reassuring rath er than challenging. This is not to
say that all light fiction is morally pure . . . but the book
itself does not challenge the social framework of society
and suggest that the moral codes themselves may be
wrong. . . . [LJight fiction usually has a clear beginning,
middle and end and at the end the story comes to a
definite, usually happy conclusion. (10)
These two definitions are clearly influenced by the trend towards
sacralizing literature. "Social fiction" belongs to a special realm outside
of ordinary experience. It forms the basis for devoted study (as
opposed to being merely used for leisure). It serves the "very serious
purpose" of questioning, even challenging, the fabric of our society.
And it can change people’s lives, or at least their thinking. All of these
descriptions could equally apply to any more explicitly "sacred" text,
such as the Bible. Personal fiction, on the other hand, while it is good
for relaxation, is fairly powerless. It does not challenge the framework
of society, and does not contain any of the formal complexities which
might make it worthy of scholarly attention. Its effects are local effects
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on the person reading it, and even those are minor: possibly some light
reassurance, perhaps some cheer at the end, with exposure to impure
morals the worst possibility. Both definitions locate any power in the
text itself, not in the reader’s use of the text.
Once critics accept the notion th at novels fall into one of these
two camps, they are free to ignore popular fiction’s literary qualities.
After all, light fiction has but a few clearly defined stru ctu ral elements;
it is serious literature which, in Robert Alter’s words,
is remarkable for its densely layered communication, its
capacity to open up multifarious connections and multiple
interpretations to the recipient of the communication, and
for the pleasure it produces in making the instrum ent of
communication a satisfying aesthetic object—or more
precisely, the pleasure it gives us as we experience the
nice interplay between the verbal aesthetic form and the
complex meanings conveyed. (28)
If popular fiction lies at the opposite end of the spectrum from this,
there is no need to look for dense layers of communication. Thus we
find critical studies which, in the tradition of Vladimir Propp’s "Fairy
Tale Transformations," treat genre texts as one mega-story, ignoring
differences between the novels in order to identify the underlying
formula. Then these same critics frequently turn around and denigrate
the works for being ju s t "more of the same" and unhealthily addictive
besides (otherwise readers would not choose the "same thing" over and
over).
Limitations of Popular Culture Criticism
Most popular culture criticism reproduces these a priori
assumptions. Cawelti, in his book, A dventure, M ystery, and Romance:
Formula Stories As Art and Popular Culture, separates such criticism
into three basic types: "(1) impact or effect theories; (2) determ inistic
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83
theories; and (3) symbolic or reflective theories" (22). Impact theories
"assume that literary forms and/or contents have some direct influence
on human behavior" (22). Such theories look to see which texts have
good effects and which have bad effects, in order to promote the good
ones and abolish the bad. (Susan Kimoto’s speech, quoted in chapter
one, is an example of this kind of criticism, as are many "canon-
busting" argum ents.) As Cawelti points out, these theories tend to
"treat literary or artistic experience like any other kind of experience,"
as though readers could not tell the difference between fiction and real
life. (Thus we find Juliette Woodruff, for example, stating that reading
for escapism is allowable—"certainly better than not reading at
all . . . as long as the reader recognizes it as such" (31, Woodruff’s
emphasis).) Actually, emotions generated by literature, though they may
be as strong as or even stronger than those generated by real-life
experiences, are still distinguishable from emotions generated by an
actual event, Cawelti notes.
This is tru e even when soap opera fans "treat characters in a
soap opera as if they were real people," though Cawelti believes
otherwise. He admits that some of this behavior "is probably an
unsophisticated way of expressing one’s great pleasure and interest in a
story," but he also insists that it "may well indicate that a person does
not make our ordinary differentiation between imagination and reality"
(23). Those who would attem pt to interact with fictional characters
Cawelti accordingly lumps together with younger children and
"unsophisticated or disturbed people" (23). Such behavior, however,
has much in common with the behavior of audiences of the early
nineteenth century, which were accustomed to talk back to characters in
a play, for example, even to the extent of hopping on stage, to offer
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84
them advice and even loan them money. Contemporary readers
responded similarly to novels such as Susanna Rowson’s Charlotte
Temple.
Americans had even created, in Trinity Churchyard in New
York City, a "grave" for Charlotte Temple. Until well into
the twentieth century, this real grave of a fictional
character received far more visitors than the neighboring
graves of Alexander Hamilton or Robert Fulton. Despite
repeated allegations by historians th at the tomb was not
authentic, tens of thousands of visitors continued to make
a pilgrimage to it for a hundred years. (Davidson 168)
Sending a birthday present to a character in a daytime drama is more
likely to indicate a different kind of response to a rt than th at of a
disturbed personality, one in which a rt is treated more as a social
practice than a sacred object.
Many critics have embraced the converse of impact criticism, what
Cawelti calls "deterministic" criticism, which assumes th at a rt is
essentially a "dependent form of behavior that is generated and shaped
by some underlying social or psychological dynamic," in effect, "a kind
of stratagem to cope with the needs of a social group or psyche" (24).
Tania Modleski’s Loving with a Vengeance, Leslie W . Rabine’s "Romance
in the Age of Electronics," Madonne M . Miner’s Insatiable Appetites, and
other Marxist and Freudian critics have embraced this kind of criticism.
Cawelti identifies two fundamental weaknesses of these theories. First,
because they depend on "the a priori assumption th at a particular social
or psychological dynamic is the basic cause of human behavior," (25)
they tend to be circular. If, for example, Miner claims that unresolved
childhood dynamics, such as "a bisexual triangle, with enormous tension
flowing between mother and daughter" (8), govern most adult behavior,
then to say that we read romance novels because of unresolved
childhood dynamics does not tell us anything new. Such assumptions
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might yield a new way of interpreting these stories, but the only reason
for interpreting them in such a way is the original assumption. "Even
then," Cawelti points out, "there remains the problem of showing that
the experience of literature is the same as other kinds of human
activity" (25).
The second weakness of determ inistic criticism is its tendency to
"reduce literary experience to other forms of behavior," as when critics
liken reading to dreaming, or to eating. Though such analogies can be
illuminating (see, for example, discussions by Victor Nell, Miner), they
also can be restricting. Such analogies are especially suspect when put
forth without supporting evidence; even if Freud’s analysis of dreams is
correct, Cawelti states, Freudian analysis is not necessarily the
appropriate way to in terp ret reading.
The third type of criticism, "symbolic or reflective" criticism,
avoids some of these problems by "granting a special kind of autonomy
to artistic expression" (27). Here, a rt becomes a "complex of symbols or
myths th at are imaginative orderings of experience" (27). Such symbols
are the means by which a culture expresses certain feelings, values, and
ideas, and those who participate in the culture in turn find their
perceptions and motivations shaped by these symbols. This does not
mean th at literature isolates itself from the world. According to
Northrop Frye (whose vision of literatu re as myth has inspired George
N. Dove, Gary C. Hoppenstand, Ingrid Shafer, and many romance
novelists; see Krentz, Dangerous), "L iterature does not reflect life, but
it doesn’t escape or withdraw from life either, it swallows it. And the
imagination won’t stop until it’s swallowed everything" (qtd. in Graff,
Literature 182). Frye asserts th at th ere are two orders of reality, the
first, "that of nature or things as they are, dead, neutral, inhuman, and
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86
unavoidable," the second, "the order of things as they should be," the
mythic order of a rt (Graff, Literature 182).
This approach, Cawelti points out, suffers from what Bruce
Kucklick has termed "crude Cartesianism." Myths and symbols are
assumed to exist in a kind of collective mind which must be separated
from external reality in order for critics to determine which images are
real and which are value-laden (or fantastic or distorted). But once
symbolic reality and external reality are stipulated to be on different
planes, it becomes theoretically impossible to bring them into any
meaningful relationship, because we have no standard by which to
compare them. Kucklick admits,
A world of suprapersonal ideas which we all share and
which we may use to order our experiences is a reasonable
supposition under the circum stances. But this position,
although by no means absurd, is not one to which we wish
to be driven if we are setting out a straightforw ard theory
to explain past American behavior, (qtd. in Cawelti 27-28)
Kucklick recommends that theorists use symbols or myths as "simply a
generalizing concept for summarising certain recu rren t p atterns in
writing and other forms of expression" (28-29). Cawelti accordingly
decides to replace "the inevitably vague and ambiguous notion of myth
with a conception of literary stru c tu re s that can be more precisely
defined and are consequently less dependent on" such notions as a
collective unconsciousness.
It is easy to see how all th ree kinds of criticism rely on beliefs
about the sacredness of literature. Juliette Woodruff, for example, is
free to enjoy romance novels only when she makes it clear that she sees
them as total fantasy; fiction, not literature. "For all my rediscovered
love of romantic fiction, though" she writes, "I would emendate the
genre if I could" (32). Rabine warns th at the profit-seeking business
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87
practices of Harlequin E nterprises have "exploited [women’s desires] by
turning them into marketable formulas"; such practices ultimately imperil
"the creative freedom which has traditionally been the cornerstone of
literatu re in Western culture" (54). Ingrid Shafer joins T. S. Eliot in
her worry th at "it is unfortunately precisely what we read for pleasure
th at ’affects our moral and religious existence,’" because books have the
power to "shape our values, our action, our selves" (6, Shafer’s
emphasis). These statem ents all depend on the notion of passive
readers, at the mercy of a powerful text, ultimately needing experts to
help them improve, appreciate, and escape from the clutches of popular
fiction.
Cawelti’s strategy of focusing on the conventional story formula,
without insisting on its ability to shape th e consciousness of the reader,
does sidestep this problem. However, though his method may "attend to
th e whole of a story rath er than to any given element that is arb itrarily
selected," it does not, as he claims, "call our attention to the whole
experience of the story" (30-31). Cawelti’s formalist, stru ctu ralist
approach is illuminating, crucial to understanding literature that
previously had received little serious attention. But by collapsing many
stories into one, it denies the actual experience of reading many books
in a genre. Like impact and determ inistic criticism, therefore, Cawelti’s
analysis in some respects oversimplifies the complex relationships
between the literature and the reader.
Genre categories are perceived by readers, w riters, and editors
not as simple constructs, in which one text may be interchanged with
another, but as complicated groupings containing many different types.
Betty Rosenberg, in her reference work, Genreflecting: A Guide to
Reading In terests in Genre Fiction, advises librarians that patrons who
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like romances choose among "several quite distinctive subgenres,
differentiated for appeal to disparate audiences by setting, types of
characters, and handling of sexual relations" (144). Rosenberg goes on
to identify 18 different types of romance, not including the series
romances (Harlequin Temptations, Silhouette Intimate Moments, etc.)
Russell Galen breaks these categories down even fu rth er, reminding
w riters that they need to be aware of not only which "subcategories,"
but which "micro-categories," are currently in vogue. That people who
participate in the genre see difference where most critics see sameness
implies that something im portant is missing from the analysis.
What is missing is action. How do genre fans read texts? And
how does the act of reading affect the way those texts are experienced,
and ultimately, their meanings? As Radway notes, though no reader
theorist "would go so far as to maintain that literary texts themselves
exert no force at all on the meaning that is produced in a given
reading," most argue that literary meaning results from "a complex,
temporally-evolving interaction" between text and reader ("Eating" 12).
By focusing on the objects, rath e r than the acts, of genre reading,
genre critics m isinterpret the reasons for its appeal, even when the
critics are "fans" of such genres themselves.
Criticism of Popular Romance
These weaknesses of popular culture criticism occur even in the
area of the category romance, where all of the recent in-depth studies
have attempted to incorporate the activities of the reader into their
analyses. Most of these studies still ultimately condescend to those
"average" or "ordinary" people who apparently do not recognize the
poverty of their leisure reading. Rad way believes this happens because
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most theorists "have tacitly assumed th at ordinary readers read as
trained readers do . . ("Eating" 12). Clearly, these conceptions of
reading have been unnecessarily restricted. If we define reading as
paying special, focused attention to extraordinary objects (vertical
reading), then we are not likely to notice a different kind of reading,
one which relies on knowledge of hundreds of texts, and which does not
treat any single book as a self-contained system (horizontal reading).
Thomas J. Roberts has termed these activities, which I am calling
"vertical" and "horizontal" readings, "study" reading and "thick"
reading. Roberts also discusses a third kind of reading, "thin" reading,
in which readers are "only dimly aware of the words themselves, as
though they [are] affected only by the stories they [see] through those
words" (205). Roberts’s categories, though intriguing, are
unsatisfactory. For one thing, he insists that study reading and thick
reading are "bookscape-specific," implying th at it would be impossible
for anyone to study, say, Barbara Wilson’s Murder in the Collective as
closely as Smiley’s A Thousand Acres. As the numerous academic
articles on Wilson’s books indicate, this is simply not tru e .1
In addition, Roberts states that while some people read only
thinly, "people who come to the paperbacks from a learned bookscape"
are incapable of doing so. Comments like this are scattered through the
book, and display Roberts’s belief th at "serious readers" and
"paperback readers" are entirely different classes of people, a belief
th at available research fails to support. Though Roberts refrains from
openly denigrating paperback readers, he does not manage to avoid the
negative connotations of this assumption. Since it is more likely th at
^ a lly R. Munt’s Murder by the Book? is only one of the most
recent of such studies.
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any habitual reader will be able to choose to read thickly or thinly, the
terms "vertical" and "horizontal," which lack such negative connotations,
seemed more appropriate.
The term s "vertical" and "horizontal" also are superficially similar
to Rolf Engelsing’s "intensive" and "extensive" reading. Engelsing,
however, believes these types of reading to be historically determined
practices. As a result, Engelsing’s theory cannot account for the
different kinds of reading being undertaken rig h t now, or the fact that
readers freely choose between them.
Other categories of reading frequently cannot account for the
aesthetic pleasures of horizontal reading. Louise Rosenblatt, for
example, in her book, The Reader, the Text, the Poem: The Transactional
Theory o f the Literary Work, posits two categories: "aesthetic" reading,
which involves experiencing a text fully and imaginatively, and
"efferent" reading, which involves taking useful information from the
text (22-47). Both of these are vertical reading strategies. (The
process of reading in a genre will be discussed more fully in Chapter
V.)
Whether critics base their conclusions on only a handful of books,
or whether they read hundreds of books and tre at them like a single
story, they are privileging vertical reading over horizontal. As a
result, they cannot satisfactorily explain the appeal of these texts.
Thus Lillian Robinson can insist that "A fully feminist reading of
women’s books must look at women as well as books, and try to
understand how this literature actually functions in society," while at
the same time saying th at "it is precisely because novels w ritten for
women are less aesthetically compelling than serious fiction" that
questions about how readers use the books arise (205). More recent
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analyses reach the same conclusions, though they do not state them so
baldly.
When Modleski declares, for example, that "the complexity of
women’s responses to romances has not been sufficiently acknowledged"
(37), she does not mean th at the romances themselves are complex.
Instead, they rely on a "rigid formula" (38) into which all the texts
Modleski examines neatly fit. The only formal complexity stems from the
th ird-person n arrative voice, which establishes "hardly any critical
distance . . . between reader and protagonist" (55). But when the
protagonist’s appearance is noted, the th ird person forces a
schizophrenic consciousness on the reader, who knows more than the
protagonist with whom she is identifying (e.g., when the text says, "she
had no idea how lovely she looked"). Other than this, the only
complexity Modleski finds relates to discontinuities between the
(monolithic) formula and the (equally monolithic) conception of life in a
patriarchy. Readers’ attem pts to resolve these discontinuities, "to adapt
what for women are utopian ideals to existing circum stances" (58), resu lt
in their becoming hooked on the fantasy resolution offered by the
books. Rigid formula, utopian fantasy, narcotic d ru g —none of these
approach the standard belief th at literatu re is "densely layered
communication," open to "multiple interpretations."
Radway finds Modleski’s and o th ers’ conception of romance readers
as passive, receptive consumers to have a "certain validity" (Romance
6). Yet she points out th at "this belief in the irreducible givenness of
the literary text and the coercive power of its features" is what allows
critics to think they can "account for why people read romances by
reading those romances themselves" (Romance 7). And if critics also
believe th a t readers become addicted to romance novels "specifically
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because they need to recover the tex t’s meaning as . . . the critics
explicate it," then there is no need for critics to seek out actual
readers to determine how the texts are read (Romance 7). Rather than
relying, as Modleski does, on Wolfgang Ise r’s notion of the implied
reader, Radway takes a different tack; she locates a group of romance
readers, investigating their "discrimination and selection processes"
(Romance 13) and incorporating th eir understanding of their reading
processes into her analysis.
Radway’s strategy, however, yields conclusions which are very
similar to Modleski’s:
1. Romance offers its readers ’a space of their own’ ap art
from domestic responsibilities of housework and child
care.
2. Familiarity with the generic codes gives the reader a
sense of competence and assurance of her ability to read
relationships in the text and in her own life.
3. Romance validates female values of love and personal
interaction against male-aggression and competitiveness.
4. The objectification of male characters in romantic fiction
is an implicit recognition and representation of female
desire.
5. Romance voices, even if obliquely, the difficulties with
the female role in a male-ordered society.
6. The romance ending is a utopian projection that may be
enabling rath er than merely escapist, (summarized in
Radford 12)
All these conclusions, with the exception of number four, were also
drawn by Modleski, though Radway is slightly more optimistic about the
issue of ju st how romances are enabling and what they might enable
readers to do. (And Modleski might agree with number four; she ju st
does not discuss female desire in her chapter on Harlequin romances.)
Furtherm ore, despite her encouraging references to "discrimination
and selection processes," Radway’s opinion of the literary quality of
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romance novels is ju st as low as Modleski’s. This is tru e even though
she examined mainstream romances rath er than ju s t Harlequins and
gothics (whose popularity has fallen since 1982). Radway characterized
romances as being "dominated by cliche, simple vocabulary, standard
syntax, and the most common techniques associated with the nineteenth-
century realist novel" (Romance 189), crammed with masses of
"superfluous detail" which "reveals little about character or mood"
(Romance 193-4), and distinguished by "marked redundancy and
intertextual repetition" (Romance 195).
Only Thurston (whose PhD is, interestingly, not in English but
mass communication) approaches romance novels—as well as their
authors, editors, publishers and readers—as entities with important
differences among them. She identifies and describes novels which push
the boundaries of the genre along with those which rev ert to outdated
formulas or suffer from bad writing. She interview s favorite authors,
noting their tradem arks and describing the development of their artistic
careers. And she examines how the genre, along with its production
and reception, has evolved over time, pointing out that if any form of
popular culture "cannot or does not change with time it eventually dies"
(209). Perhaps because of her approach, Thurston’s conclusions about
romance fiction are more positive than those of Radway or Modleski; she
has no doubt that the genre both reflected, encouraged, and helped to
legitimize feminist social change (6-7).
Thurston does not specifically compare the literary quality of
romance novels to other books. Still, her mention of reader complaints—
and her own complaints—about the poor quality of some romances
indicates th at not all romances are bad. Clearly, romance readers expect
quality writing. At the same time, the comments of critics often show
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that they expect romances to be of poor quality, and poor quality is
what they find.
Many reasons could account for this difference of opinion between
readers and critics. One possibility is th at romance readers could be
simply incapable of judging quality. This theory exhibits a certain
circularity; it takes as given the premise th at the books are of shoddy
quality and moves from th ere to determine the taste of readers.
Readers of popular novels will be discussed more completely in the next
chapter, but it should be noted here that many readers of popular
fiction, even of romances, also appreciate serious fiction. Noting this
phenomenon, Roberts w rites, "We know th at they have good taste, for we
can see th at if they are taking deep and lasting satisfaction from junk
fiction they are also taking deep and lasting satisfaction from canonical
and serious fiction. These readers have earned th e rig h t to be treated
seriously" (5). Of course, these same readers often call popular
literature "junk" even as they take deep and lasting satisfaction in it.
So perhaps readers have different expectations for popular literature
than they have for serious literature, and different definitions of what
is satisfying.
If the meaning of a text is determined, not by the text acting
upon a passive reader, but through an interaction between text and
reader, as reader response theories suggest, then it stands to reason
that our readerly expectations will affect our perception of, and
evaluation of, the text. Iser described this phenomenon as follows:
[T hroughout th e reading process there is a continual
interplay between modified expectations and transform ed
memories. However, the text itself does not formulate
expectations or their modification. . . . This is the
province of th e reader himself. . . . ( Ill)
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So the question becomes, what expectations do readers have of serious
and popular fiction, and how might these expectations differ?
Popular vs. Serious Novels: Jayne Ann Krentz and Jane Smiley compared
One way of determining expectations is to examine book reviews,
which are designed to evaluate new books and recommend the best ones
to readers. When reviews of fiction by Krentz are compared to reviews
of literatu re by Smiley their positions at opposite ends of the literary
spectrum are obvious. Krentz writes the supposedly "trashy," "quantity
not quality," "formulaic," "pulp" fiction th at readers find "reassuring,"
while Smiley creates the serious, complex, im portant literatu re which
provides material for academic study and "challenges the framework of
society" but takes a long time to create.
To briefly characterize these authors: Krentz is well-known to
fans of the romance; under various pseudonyms (Jayne Bentley, Jayne
Castle, Jayne Taylor, Stephanie James, Amanda Quick) as well as her own
name, she has w ritten more than 78 novels in the genre since her first
book was published in 1979. (Actually, she published six novels that
year.) These include series romances for Candlelight Ecstasy, Desire,
Silhouette special editions, and Harlequin Temptations; in these, Krentz
is credited with being "among the first romance authors to create
professional heroines who were as comfortable in the boardroom as in
the ballroom" (McCord 43), and "one of the first w riters to let her
readers peek into the bedroom to see and feel the sensual and the
sexual" (Tw entieth-C entury Romance 379). Krentz has also written
historical romance, fu tu ristic romance, romantic suspense, and created
two series, one featuring private investigator Guinevere Jones, another
featuring lovers Verity Ames and Jonas Quarrel.
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Her efforts have twelve times placed h er on the New York Times
bestseller list, five times in 1993 alone; this success led her to join the
select group of romance novelists who publish in hardcover as well as
paperback formats. She has also been honored with Affaire De Coeur’s
"Silver Pen" award and "Favorite Author" award; "Career Achievement"
awards in both historical and contemporary romance from Romantic
Times-, the Romance Writers of America (RW A) "Industry Award," and
numerous annual awards from fanzines and bookstores. Her prolific pen
and versatility are representative of many successful w riters in this
genre, while her outspokenness is representative of women w riters in all
genres. Krentz has repeatedly "defended the honor" of her chosen
genre; recently, because she "was sick and tired of seeing romance
novels critiqued by the media without any real understanding," she also
edited a volume of essays by romance w riters for the University of
Pennsylvania Press, Dangerous Men and Adventurous Women. Krentz’s
BA in history (U niversity of California at Santa Cruz) has presumably
helped her create her historical romances (published under th e name of
Amanda Quick); she also has an M A in librarianship (San Jose State
University), and worked as a librarian before supporting herself
through writing.
Smiley, by contrast, has far more "serious" and academic
credentials. After earning her BA from Vassar, Smiley went on to earn
an M A , MFA, and PhD (in Old Norse literature) from the University of
Iowa. She became an assistant professor of English at Iowa State
U niversity in 198.1, and still teaches English and creative writing there.
Smiley is not as prolific as Krentz, having published only eight books
(five novels, one nonfiction book about artisan s in the Catskill
mountains, and two collections of sh o rt fiction) in about the same period
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of time as Krentz’s 78 books. Smiley’s longest book, the 500+ pages of
her historical novel, The Greenlanders, took about five years to research
and w rite (Contemporary Authors 410); though most of her books took
less time to produce (one to three years) she can hardly "make swift
adjustm ents to the changing market," as Krentz does.
Smiley is ju s t as versatile as Krentz, however; in addition to her
books, which embrace several traditional fictional forms (novel, novella,
short story), she has published numerous sh o rt stories, essays, and
book reviews in periodicals such as the New York Times Magazine,
Redbook, and Atlantic. Some of these pieces have been included in The
Pushcart Anthology, Best American Short Stories, and Best o f the
Eighties collections. Smiley’s literary efforts have regularly been
rewarded; she has received a Fulbright fellowship, two g ran ts from the
National Endowment for the Arts, the Friends of American Writers Prize
(for the novel, At Paradise Gate), and several 0. Henry Awards. The
Age o f Grief, a collection of short stories, was nominated for the National
Book Critics Circle Award; five years later, the novel A Thousand Acres
won th at award, and a Pulitzer Prize for fiction, events which propelled
it to the New York Times bestseller list. Smiley may be a bestselling
author, but her books, reviews, credentials, and awards clearly mark
her as an author of literature rath er than popular fiction.
Comparing the reviews of these two authors turned out to be more
difficult than anticipated, mainly because Krentz’s books are reviewed
far less frequently than Smiley’s. A database search revealed, for
example, th at while Smiley’s A Thousand Acres was reviewed 16 times in
"mainstream" publications (i.e., not including journals such as the
Suwannee Review), the book receiving the least amount of reviews was
her first sh o rt sto ry collection, The Age o f Grief, with three reviews.
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These reviews were often lengthy pieces appearing in periodicals
ranging from the important New York Times Book Review, to mainstream
magazines such as People Weekly and Glamour, to th e more unusual
Parenting Magazine and Successful Farming. Krentz, on the other hand,
received only one or two reviews per book. Furtherm ore, K rentz’s
books were reviewed for the most p art only in Publishers Weekly and
Library Journal, industry periodicals which conscientiously cover
category fiction, though usually they can devote only a few paragraphs
to each book, most of them plot summary. I also located reviews in
"fanzines" such as Romantic Times, and Waldenbooks’ Romantic Reader
(these, like the industry reviews, were very brief), but as such
publications are generally not included in databases and not carried by
libraries, this search could not be systematic.
Judging by their comments, reviewers looked for surprisingly
similar qualities from both authors, despite the fact th at their books
occupy separate literary strata. Smiley’s review ers praised her "taut"
or perfectly balanced narrative, lifelike and compelling characters,
"graceful, plain style," "mesmerizing" plot, particulars set down "like a
minutely detailed tapestry," "achingly vivid" emotions. Similarly, Krentz
is praised for her "spare" prose, the way she ties in details "with
marvelous economy," "complex" plots, and delightful endings that
"should not be given away" (380). Both authors write stories which are
described as "hard to put down."
In addition, review ers apparently expect both authors to be
realistic. But in the romance genre, realism is not mentioned in reviews
unless a book fails to provide it. Krentz’s fiction presumably passes
the realism test. Though her reviews do not accuse her of creating
"cardboard characters" or "hackneyed plots" the way reviews of some
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99
other romance novelists do, they do not specifically comment on the
realism of h er books.
Realism is much more im portant in literary reviews than category
reviews. Almost every review of Smiley’s work evaluates how realistic
the story and characters are, with comments such as, "The leisurely
unfolding of the narrative . . . provides a grave, heart-w renching
credibility" (Steinberg, "Ordinary Love" 76) and "One comes to believe
th at if Gunnar Asgeirsson’s slowly compiled m anuscript had survived, it
would tell something very like this absorbing tale of survival at the
forgotten edge of the world" (Phoebe Adams 94). Criticisms also tend to
address the realism, or lack thereof, of Smiley’s work; saying, for
example, "It’s doubtful . . . th a t such an unconscious, smug n arrato r
would provide the details, as this one does, th at allow us to chart his
egotism" (Stone 284), or "At times, however, villagers tend to come off
like historical caricatures; their dialogue consists of exchanged
aphorisms rath er than plain talk. . . . Sometimes I felt th at each
conversation was a crisis, or provoked one, that each utterance would
sink under its own menace, or wisdom" (Norman 11).
The emphasis on realism is rem iniscent of nineteenth century
reviews, which made statem ents such as, "He is the best novelist who
describes men with perfect fidelity" (Baym 152). Baym points out th at
this criterion, which was derived from criticism of paintings, places
emphasis on the static, spatial, descriptive aspects of the novel, as
opposed to the "dynamic, emotional, immediate involvement that story
creates in readers" (152). Nineteenth century readers felt th at novels
that were purely story were inferior to those which supplied a realistic
picture of nature (see, for example, the extended comparison between a
novelist and a painter in Henry James’s "The Art of Fiction"). No
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100
matter how well done, such novels were not seen as "striving for the
highest reaches of novelistic art," but rather, "childish, frivolous, and—
above all—lacking in moral weight" (152). Because this distinction
downplays plot, which contemporary readers saw as the fundamental
formal feature of th e novel, Baym notes, review ers who emphasized
realism in effect co-opted "the popular form for less popular uses"
(152).
This same distinction—where plot is downplayed in favor of
realism—is in effect today, but only for more literary works, not
popular ones. Reviews of K rentz’s romance novels all emphasize the
appeal of th e plot. "M istress . . . is all th at we expect from this
intrepid storyteller. Sit back and simply enjoy a delectable . . . dessert
of a tale," they urge (Robin 44); "Krentz (Gift of Gold) concocts a
breezy, funny tale of love conquering all" (Kaganoff 412). The large
share of such reviews which is devoted to plot summary implies th at
readers choose books more according to the story than anything else.
While Smiley is also expected to tell a good tale, and is frequently
praised for doing so, she is also expected to go beyond plot. Reviewers
of all her major works go to great lengths to emphasize th at Smiley’s
work is not simply a good story. "This could be the setup of a Stephen
King story," one review er writes of "Good Will";
indeed, a sense of creepiness gradually invades the narrative,
looming over Bob Miller’s self-created Eden. Something’s going
bad, very bad. Something’s sneaking up on Bob, and he
doesn’t see it coming. (Humphreys 45)
However, this review er cannot let linger the impression that this serious
novella has much in common with a popular novel from a "pulp" genre.
She continues, "But [!] Jane Smiley’s stories are shaped with a constant,
overseeing intelligence, with full sympathy for hum anity’s tendency to
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destroy its own best visions. The protagonists are reflective, in spite
of their blind spots" (45). In short, the story is about something more
than mere suspense, mere story:
You could read the paired novellas in ’Ordinary Love and
Good Will’ as the myth of the family, told by two
principals: an Eve and an Adam. . . . Both novellas end
with a chastened, richly incomplete consciousness of how
we live and what we want. (Humphreys 45)
The same text, Wendy Brandmark writes, "is particularly interesting for
what it says about American society, how it demands conformity while at
the same time extolling the individual, the rebel, the entrepreneur"
(456).
Another Smiley novel, The Greenlanders, Sybil Steinberg writes,
delineates "the behavior of individuals confined within a group" (50). A
Thousand Acres not only makes "the perils of family and property and
being a daughter real and personal and new and honest and h urtful all
over again," it is "a book about farming in America, the loss of family
farms, the force of the family itself" (Carlson 12). In other words, it is
not enough for Smiley to write a moving story with compelling
characters—she also must make a broader statem ent about society as a
whole.
These concepts of "only story" and "more than story" are
sometimes identified as the most significant difference between literatu re
and trash . Gerald Graff, for example, has charged genre texts—"dime
novels, detective stories, Jacqueline Susann novels, comic books, and so
on"—with being meaningless simply because he assumes they contain
nothing besides a catchy plot. "[W]hat chiefly distinguishes the elite
forms" from mere "entertainm ents," Graff writes, "is precisely that they
have something serious to say" (Literature 161). Literature, in short,
must have moved beyond its storytelling origins if it is to be respected.
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Embracing this distinction puts review ers in an awkward position.
Knowing th at people do not want to read books which bore them, they
assu re us we will be fascinated:
To reveal the ending [of Good Will] would be to spoil the
impact of the novella, which is crafted subtly as a
mystery. (Leavitt 45)
Despite the [ The Greenlanders'] being set far back in time,
it has a certain urgency. . . . [Like "ghost children," the
characters] speak their lives through . . . Jane Smiley in
her epic tale. (Norman 11)
W e crave to know how [A Thousand Acres] is going to come
out. (Fuller li)
There are surprises in this book [A Thousand Acres],
things to be uncovered, events th at tu rn in ways more
radical and permanent than we would have supposed. . . .
I was reluctant, in writing about this novel, to invoke
"King Lear" . . . because I didn’t want this sto ry to sound
like an exercise, like some clever, layered construct.
(Carlson 12)
After Jane Smiley brought forth The Greenlanders . . . she
became something of a literary statu s symbol. Reviewers
tended to say that while the 588-page book wasn’t for the
Judith Krantz crowd, they adored it. . . . But Smiley’s
latest book has put the lie to her standing as an acquired
taste. A Thousand Acres . . . has been selling briskly
enough to make the best-seller lists. (Green and Mills 59)
If we are debating whether or not to buy Smiley’s books for leisure
reading, such comments promise us enjoyment, even to the point of
aligning these books with the popular genres (such as ghost stories and
mysteries), using the language of addiction (we will "crave" the ending),
and explicitly denying their difficulty (these books are not a clever
exercise or an acquired taste). In short, according to the reviews,
anyone can enjoy these books.
Anyone, that is, who is prepared to work at it. Michelle Green
and Barbara Kleban Mills write, "Yet in its way, this 371-page saga of a
contemporary Iowa farm family is as ambitious as The Greenlanders.
This time, Smiley’s aim is nothing less than to update King Lear ..."
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103
(59). Similarly, other critics reassu re us that Smiley’s books are
"serious" literature:
[A Thousand Acres] is not comfortable to read. There are
no modernist tricks, no quick gratifications. . . . Since
her unforgettable novella The Age o f Grief (1987), she has
looked like an im portant novelist, and A Thousand Acres
emphatically confirms this impression. (Christiansen 38)
It takes a certain disciplined curiosity to get through [ The
Greenlanders], except by incremental readings, perhaps on
a hundred winter nights. (Norman 11)
This last image reflects the sacralized role of a rt in society. The
review ers do not picture someone reading the book aloud to family,
parodying the book in a comic stage act, or skipping around in it at
will. Instead, the solitary reader devotedly toils through the text, little
by little, night after chilly night, until the "minutely detailed tapestry"
is completely unfurled (Norman 11). Herein lies the contradiction:
literatu re must be gripping, compelling, impossible to put down—and
difficult to read. If it is not work, it must not be worthwhile.
Above all, in such reviews, literature must be distinguished from
popular tra sh . "It may sound preposterously melodramatic," Rupert
Christiansen writes of Ginny’s emotional reactions to her many
m iscarriages in A Thousand Acres, "but the action is patiently controlled
by a strin g en t logic which gives its every episode an irrefutable, rock-
solid motivation" (39). Heaven forbid this important work have anything
in common with (popular) melodrama. Verlyn Klinkenborg is even more
explicit about what important literature is not: "[H istorical fiction tends
to be pulp fiction these days. . . . Smiley’s new book, The
Greenlanders, is a wonderful exception" (36). Smiley’s books may be
compelling, they may be a good read, but they cannot be so effortless a
read th at they fail to have something serious to say.
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But why should we stipulate that genre novels, which are
pleasurable and relaxing almost by definition, have nothing serious to
say? Certainly, the authors tell us otherwise. Horror novels can make
us reaffirm our faith, or doubt the wisdom of faithlessness, as they
explore the n atu re of good and evil (Koontz). Speculative fiction throws
"new light on the human condition" (Tepper, qtd. in Contemporary
Authors 444), examining social stru ctu res and envisioning how they
affect us for the b etter—or worse. Mysteries so rt through issues of
justice, the importance of human life, and the "attempt to understand
the darkest of our deeds" (Grafton, qtd. in Herbert, Fatal Art 50). And
Krentz insists in the author blurb at the back of her paperbacks th at
she loves "strong romantic conflicts" which emphasize the importance of
relationships; "Contrary to popular opinion, romance is not a shallow,
frivolous thing. It is the cornerstone of the family and of civilization.
Today, stories of strong, romantic, loving relationships are more
important than they have ever been" (qtd. from the inside cover of
Hidden Talents).
The belief that fascinating stories preclude the possibility of
meaning is entirely consistent with the conception of literature as
sacred art, capable of bringing tru th to the reader in a way that
nothing else can. Once tru th -b earin g literatu re is envisioned as being
above ordinary people leading ordinary lives and reading in ordinary
ways, it cannot possibly be housed in the same books we breeze
through and then leave behind on the plane. If anyone can read and
understand a book without particular effort, well, that book simply
cannot be im portant literature.
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105
Infinite Speculations: Henry James and A Thousand Acres
Our cu ltu re’s need to separate serious a rt from mere storytelling
may stem from Henry James’s famous injunction th at novelists "show,"
not "tell" their stories. Accordingly, critics have faulted romance novels
for writing masses of description, explanations of historical customs, and
clearly spelled-out interpretations of events in the story. Radway
discusses one story in which the heroine’s mother was supposedly killed
in an accidental fall from her horse. When the heroine stumbles across
a riding crop near the scene of the accident, she does not immediately
recognize it as her mother’s. Thus, Radway writes,
because [the heroine] cannot imagine whom the crop
belongs to, the reader is prompted to provide the very
obvious answer. Lest she guess wrong, however, Whitney
[the author] closes down potentially infinite speculations,
narrowing them down to only one: "She realized suddenly
th at the sorry object she held in her hand was a woman’s
riding crop. To whom had it belonged. . . . Her mother,
perhaps?"
If this is not definitive enough, Whitney provides
fu rth er corroboration only eight pages later when the
heroine’s Aunt Letty identifies the crop as her sis te r’s.
(Romance 206)
Radway suggests th at the "infinite speculations" are closed down chiefly
to reassu re the reader th at she has guessed rig h t about the crop, and
that she is therefore also capable of guessing "the crucial, still
unanswered questions about th e hero’s love for the heroine and her
ability to realize her individual identity" (Romance 206). While admitting
in passing th at the device "adds to the suspense," Radway believes that
the main point of such devices is "tacitly" to hint that "even though
[the book] appears to be a novel, it is, in actuality, ju st another
version of the mythic story whose ending the reader already knows"
(Romance 206).
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106
The words "appears to be a novel" show how ingrained James’s
definition of the novel has become. But again, this definition separates
modern novels from their storytelling (as opposed to story-show ing)
origins. Romance w riters, by contrast, have embraced these origins. It
is quite possible th at Whitney chose to unveil the origins of the riding
crop slowly in order to increase the read er’s suspense, rather than to
reassu re her. Linda Barlow and Krentz ask,
[W]hy . . . must we show and not tell? Women enjoy the
telling. W e value the exploration of emotion in verbal
terms. W e are not as interested in action as we are in
depth of emotion. And we like the emotion to be clear and
authoritative, not vague or overly subtle the way it often
seems to be in male discourse. (28)
Rather than being a flaw, the tendency of Krentz to "tell" where Smiley
"shows" is simply a different style of writing.
The tale Krentz tells is generally far less complicated than the
tale Smiley tells, however. The difference is not located so much in
style (sentence stru ctu re, vocabulary, narrative point of view) as in
perspective. Modleski, writing about Harlequin and gothic romances, has
pointed out th at these texts revolve around reading, not texts, but
people: "the heroines engage in a continual deciphering of the motives
for the hero’s behavior" (34). Krentz’s romances show both hero and
heroine continually attempting to decipher the other’s behavior. But in
these novels, the behavior is, ultimately, decipherable. The characters
eventually manage to communicate th eir needs to the other, and they
finally understand how letting go of limiting fears and assumptions can
make their lives happier. Successful interpretation is possible because
deep down, both hero and heroine share the same world view.
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Reading the Other: The Act of Interpretation in A Thousand Acres
Smiley’s A Thousand Acres is also about the difficulties of
reading. But Smiley sta rts with all of the characters sharing the same
perspective: as the novel progresses, the shared world view splinters,
leaving the characters scattered and alone. As Ginny tells the story,
she looks back on the time when their lives still seemed "secure and
good," try in g to comprehend the chain of events as though the fu tu re
was w ritten in their past: "I’ve thought over every moment . . . time
and time again, sifting for pointers, signals, ways of knowing how to do
things differently from the way they got done. There were no clues"
(13).
Unlike King Lear, A Thousand Acres is not told from the point of
view of the Lear figure or his favorite, youngest daughter, but rath er
from the viewpoint of the oldest daughter, Ginny. Still, her father
Larry Cook is at the center of th e novel. His sudden decision to tu rn
the farm into a corporation, giving each of his daughters a third, sets
the plot in motion, and when he leaves the family homestead, the family
falls apart. For all his importance, however, Ginny does not understand
him. She thinks of him in the same reverential terms as she does God,
but unlike God, Larry Cook "had no minister, no one to make him
gel . . . even momentarily" (20). As a result, Ginny expends much of
her energy guessing how to keep her father happy. She carefully
follows his routine, cooking him breakfast ("sausage, fried eggs, hash
brown potatoes, cornflakes, English muffins and toast, coffee and orange
juice" (28)) when he wants it, and his usual Tuesday night dinners of
"pork chops baked with tomatoes . . . fried potatoes, a salad, and two
or three different kinds of pickles" on the dot of five o’clock.
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108
So accustomed is Ginny to following her fath er’s commandments
that, despite her misgivings, she goes along with his plan to incorporate
the farm and divide it between his th ree daughters. The papers of
incorporation and tran sfer remind her of "mushrooms that suddenly
appear after a wet night, uncannily white and fully formed, miraculous
but ominous" (38), portentous, yet easily dismissed as natural phenomena
observable on any farm. And she is happy: "I was always relieved
when my father got into a good mood, and he was laughing and
throwing his arm around Ty. This was maybe his best mood ever" (39).
For a long time, when Ginny is exposed to a different perspective than
her fath er’s, as when Jess Clarke describes his induction into the army
(55), or when h er sister Caroline blames her for the decision to
incorporate and its ultimate effect on their father (116-18), Ginny
becomes a leaf in the wind, trembling violently, hanging onto her
original perspective only with difficulty.
Ginny’s belief system is bolstered by that of her husband Ty, who
is heir to the same values as her father. Ty’s farm, though small,
"showed a proper history," handed down from grandfather to father to
Ty. And when Ty "was twenty-tw o and had been farming long enough
to know what he was doing, his father died of a heart attack, which he
suffered out in the hog pen" (12). To Ginny’s father, "this was the
ultimate expression of the rig h t order of things," and he welcomed Ty
into the family (12). As the inheritor of traditional family values, Ty
frequently smoothes disagreem ents between Larry and the other son-in-
law, Pete, between Larry and Ginny and her sister Rose.
Ty’s method of smoothing things out is to resist the women’s urge
to interpret. "You women don’t understand your father at all," he tells
Ginny. "You could handle him better. You don’t always have to take
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109
issue. You ought to let a lot of things slide." When Ginny protests
that "a lot of the taking issue that you see is ju s t us trying to figure
out how to understand him better. . . . There’s always some mystery.
He doesn’t say what he means," Ty responds flatly, "He says what he
means. You two always read something into it, whatever it is." As
Ginny slips into his arms, finding his space, as always "reassuring and
calming," Ty tries to explain:
"He’s irritable. He doesn’t like to be challenged or
brought up short. But he’s a good farm er. Everyone
respects him and looks up to him. When he states an
opinion, people listen. Good times and bad times roll off
him all the same. That’s a rare thing in a man." (104-05)
For Ty, what Larry Cook is and does is infinitely more important than
what all of that means; more important than why he is that way, and
why he does what he does.
This worldview is not terribly different from that of a category
romance, in which th e hero and heroine must learn to tru s t each other
even when they do not understand why the other person acts a certain
way. But in the romance, meanings are eventually made clear, and both
parties understand them. And in the romance, tru stin g in actions as
opposed to meanings leads to a happy ending. In A Thousand Acres, of
course, the ending is not "happy."
Ty sustains his faith in L arry’s solid appearance long after his
unusual actions—buying new kitchen cabinets and letting them sit out
in the rain, driving to Des Moines for an unprecedented visit to his
youngest daughter’s law firm, taking Pete’s truck and driving around in
it drunk, spitting cu rses and invective at his oldest daughter before
charging out into a violent thunderstorm —have sen t the re st of the
family into a frenzy of worry. Consequently, when everyone realizes
that Larry has lost his sanity, Ty cannot imagine that the cracks were
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110
due to a weakness in the man; he blames them on Ginny’s and her sister
Rose’s "taking issue with things." Where actions are taken at face
value, free of significance, insanity is inexplicable.
Ty’s resistance to wondering why things happen, and what they
mean, extends to his and Ginny’s failed attem pts to conceive. Each time
Ginny miscarries, Ty talks her through it, "certain th ere’d be a way to
carry the next one to term, certain th at this one ju st wasn’t meant to
be" (25). But neither he nor Ginny thinks to investigate the cause of
her five miscarriages. Later, she learns from their friend Jess th at she
may have been literally poisoned by her inheritance; fertilizer runoff in
the well water has been known to cause miscarriages. When Ginny tells
Ty this, he calls it a "harebrained" idea, insisting, "The ground filters
everything out! . . . Everybody knows that! Well w ater’s the best you
can drink" (259). The two have a shattering fight about their
conflicting values, Ty’s belief th at "patience is a virtue," Ginny’s
unwillingness to "just give in and take whatever happens," the effects
of the property tran sfer and who is to blame for them . . . and at the
end of it, Ty still cannot believe that anything important might lie
beneath the surface, beneath the level of their actions. His final
statem ent to her that night, "If you wanted to get a job in town, you
should have said so" (261), shows how completely Ty m isunderstands
what his wife does say.
Ginny’s two sisters, Rose and Caroline, are ju s t the opposite of
Ty. Neither of them has any difficulty ascertaining and apportioning
blame. Caroline
was always looking for the rights and wrongs of every
argum ent, trying to figure out who should apologize for
what, who should go first, what the exact working of an
apology should be. It was one of those things about her
that you could say came from being a lawyer, except th at
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I l l
she’d always been that way, and being a lawyer only
formalized it and, I suppose, proved to her th at blame
could indeed be divvied up. (32)
Rose also assigns blame u tterly without fear. When her husband beats
her one night, breaking her arm, she wears a sleeve over the cast
which says, "Pete did this." She ju s t as conscientiously remembers
L arry’s abuse of herself and Ginny, and is furious when his senility
robs her of the opportunity to make him feel remorse.
Neither Caroline nor Rose agonizes, as Ginny does, about the
correctness of their interpretations. Caroline is convinced, from her
far-aw ay life in Des Moines, th at everything about the land deal is
obvious from its effects:
"Two months ago, Daddy was happily farming his own land.
Now he’s lost everything he had and he’s wandering
around, trying to figure out something to do with himself.
You all made a big show of reluctance about this, but it’s
p retty telling, who’s benefited and who hasn’t. . . . A
little tiff doesn’t ju st tu rn into something as big as this
unless th ere’s something else going on. All I know is.
Daddy’s lost everything, he’s acting crazy, and you all
don’t care enough to do anything about it!" I said,
"Caroline—" [Ginny tells us] but she cut me off by
hanging up. (117)
Caroline’s certainty leads to her bringing suit against her sisters to try
to win her fath er’s farm back; by the end of the novel, she is
convinced th at the explanation for her fath er’s senility is that "some
people [meaning Ginny] are ju st evil" (363).
Rose, on the other hand, has given up drawing conclusions about
people, insisting to Ginny, "if you ju s t probe and probe and try to
understand, it ju st holds you back. You s ta rt seeing things from his
[L arry’s] point of view again, and you’re ju s t paralyzed. . . . That was
his goddamned hold over me, Ginny. . . . He made me see things from
his point of view!" (212) And as a teenager, seeing things from her
fath er’s point of view, she slept with him. And while Ginny worries
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112
about what the town thinks about their fath er’s condition, Rose says
simply, "Stick with what’s true. . . . He went out into the storm
because he was stubborn and childish" (211).
Like Rose and Caroline, romance heroines also fearlessly assign
blame. Of course, they are usually wrong in so doing, the world of the
romance being one in which no hero truly deserves blame; ultimately
these characters learn to "forgive and forget" wrongs done to them.
However, the need to assign blame, however temporarily, is fundamental
to the romance genre. As Modleski notes, "A great deal of our
satisfaction in reading these novels comes . . . from the elements of a
revenge fantasy, from our conviction th at the woman is bringing the
man to his knees. . . ." (45). And neither Smiley’s heroine, Ginny, nor
the novel itself is entirely comfortable with unyielding condemnation.
Rose never succeeds in her revenge—not that the townspeople do not
believe her story of childhood abuse, they ju st do not think it m atters.
And Caroline never realizes th at her father did initiate the sale of his
farm; at the end of the novel, she is left only with an idealized vision
of a farm childhood she barely remembers.
The problems in A Thousand Acres might have been resolved if
they had been confined to those intimately involved, as the problems in
romance novels generally are. Romance heroes and heroines rarely
worry about what the neighbors think. Unfortunately, the Cook family
drama plays itself out on stage, as it were, before the eyes of their
small community, a community which judges, as do Ty and Caroline,
based on appearances.
No one in the small town understands why Larry suddenly decided
to give away his farm, or why he ju st as suddenly lost his sanity. Like
Caroline, like Ty, they presume that the oldest daughters, "the ones who
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113
benefitted," are responsible. At a church supper, shortly after Larry
has run raging into a storm, their neighbor, Harold, gives voice to what
the community is thinking "as if he were making a long-awaited
announcement":
"Look at ’em chowing down here, like they ain’t done
nothing. Threw a man off his own farm, on a night when
you’d let a rabid dog into the barn. . . . Nobody’s so
much as come around to say I’m sorry or nothing. Pair of
bitches. You know I’m talking about Ginny and Rose
Cook. . . . I got their number. Nobody’s fooled me."
Then he leaned toward [Ginny]. "Bitch! Bitch!" (219)
Larry, who had wandered to Harold’s during the storm, and who Harold
had not bothered to help comb his hair or change his clothes in the
several days since, "sat th ere with a kind of bemused look on his face.
When a momentary silence fell, he said, ’Their children put them there.
I saw it myself’" (219). After an exhibition like that, no one in the
community will have anything to do with the Cook family. Ty cannot get
anyone to help with the harvest, though people do tu rn out to help
Harold.
On her lawyer’s advice, Ginny throws herself into keeping up
appearances in preparation for the lawsuit Caroline has filed:
I swept the porch, mowed the lawn, weeded the garden,
canned tomatoes and pickled peppers and onions, wore
housedresses in the heat ra th e r than shorts. I served up
meals at six and eleven-thirty and five on the dot as
though Ty were a train coming into the station. . . . The
Eye was always looking, day and night, even when th ere
were no neighbors in sight. Even when no one who could
possibly testify for or against me was within miles, I felt
the familiar sensation of storing up virtue for a later date.
(286)
But in the end, Ginny is unable to regain the perspective shared by the
community, or even the perspective once shared by her and Rose. "My
deepest habit was assuming that differences between Rose and me were
ju st on the surface, th at beneath, beyond all that, we were more than
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114
twinlike, th at somehow we were each o th er’s real selves, together
forever on this thousand acres," she muses (307), but all of th at
ultimately shatters. After the trial, Ginny takes a thousand dollars from
Ty and walks off, leaving the dinner cooking in the kitchen, cutting off
all communication between her and h er family: "Everything between us,
more, it turned out, than we could stand, was known" (335).
By the end of the novel, Ginny has gained the strength to view
her inheritance from more than one perspective. Jess left her the eyes
to see how the land poisons those who live on it. Rose left her "a
riddle I haven’t solved, of how we ju d g e those who have h u rt us when
they have shown no remorse or even understanding." Remorse reminds
Ginny "of Daddy, who had none, at least none for me." "A certain type
of man" reminds her of Ty, and "the ordered, hardworking world I used
to live in, Ty’s good little planet" (370). The re st of her inheritance is
reg ret, though she is not quite sure ju s t what she regrets; her nieces
Pammy and Linda, who do not have a g reat deal of faith in her; and
solitude. Not meeting any men like those she has previously known,
Ginny finds it "easier, and more seductive, to leave those doors closed"
(369). The most precious p art of her inheritance, however, was left to
Ginny by her "dead young self"; the ability to imagine what her father
"probably chose never to remember—the goad of an unthinkable urge,
pricking him, pressing him, wrapping him in an impenetrable fog of self
th at must have seemed, when he wandered around the house late at
night after working and drinking, like the very darkness" (370-71).
But the price of this newfound grasp of the unimaginable is Ginny’s
desire to connect with others.
U nderstanding is possible in A Thousand Acres, if one is willing
to sacrifice everything else to achieve it. This message is not entirely
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unlike th at of the category romance, as Modleski sees it. In order to
understand the other, both the romance heroine and Ginny must perform
a "disappearing act." The romance heroine gives up her rebellion, her
desire for revenge, and her negative feelings about the hero in order to
share his perspective. Ginny gives up her family, her farm -inculcated
values, and her desire for human relationships in order to understand
why her fath er behaved as he did. The endings of these books may
differ, but th eir central concern is the same.
Infinite Possibilities: Romance Novels and the Involved Reader
It is doubtful th at any readers who peruse a single Krentz novel
would say th at her writing approaches the complexity of A Thousand
Acres. The stru c tu re of Smiley’s book, the characterization, and the
depiction of contrasting points of view in her novel are far more rich
than in the average Krentz novel.
But to evaluate the romance genre on this basis, to compare A
Thousand Acres to a single romance novel, would be to redefine genre
reading according to the terms of academic reading. After all, no
romance fan reads ju s t one book, any more than fans of other genres
re stric t themselves to one example of th at genre. James Gunn has
suggested that in order to understand science fiction, one must read at
least 100 science fiction books (Roberts 18). By the same philosophy, if
one reads only a single romance novel, one cannot be said to
understand the romance. The perceived complexity of world view, or of
character, increases the more genre books one reads.
For example, in the course of a single novel, we might learn about
the romance hero. But in the course of a hundred novels, or a
thousand novels, our conception of the hero grows richer. And as our
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knowledge increases, we broaden the horizon of expectations against
which the hero is outlined. Iser describes how these expectations affect
the reading:
[I]f the reader is at p resent concerned with the conduct of
the hero . . . his attitu d e will be conditioned by the
horizon of past attitudes toward the hero, from the point
of view of the n arrato r, of the other characters, the plot,
the hero himself, etc. This is how the stru c tu re of theme
and horizon organizes the attitudes of the reader. . . .
(97)
Iser imagines the horizon of expectations being created within the
covers of a single volume. But in the case of formula fiction, where
readers think in terms of genre rath er than an individual text, his
description is even more evocative. Ju st as Smiley’s novel intrigues us
with the various possible interpretations of and perspectives on the
same story, Krentz’s novels delight us with their variations on the same
basic formula. This process sheds light on what Radway found
paradoxical, that even in this formulaic literature, readers "are reluctant
to admit the characters . . . are similar" (Romance 63). The outlines of
the hero’s role may be the same, but the way th at outline is filled is
forever changing.
Where one book reveals the rig h t answer to questions about love
relationships, therefore, the genre reveals hundreds. For example:
Oliver Rains needs to relinquish his self-control enough to
tell Annie Lyncroft he loves her in so many words.
( Wildest Hearts)
Jed Glaze and Amy Slater need to abandon their self-
imposed isolation, and learn to tru s t each other. (A Coral
Kiss)
Verity Ames and Jonas Quarrel need to stop taking each
other for granted, and to build on their love a more
permanent relationship. (Gift o f Gold, Gift o f Fire)
Joel Blackstone needs to understand other people’s
weaknesses, and to give up lifelong plans for vengeance,
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117
so he can tu rn his attentions to Letitia Thornquist.
(Perfect Partners)
Caleb Ventress needs to learn to accept his past, even the
more scandalous aspects of it, in order to accept his
growing love for Serenity Makepeace. (Hidden Talents)
The more romances one reads, the more clear it is th at one person’s
solution is not the same as another’s. In fact, the m eta-text of all of
these romances is th a t we need to escape from any overly confining
formulas which have been created for us, either by ourselves or others.
Of course, in romances, unlike serious fiction, escape is always
possible. The ending could be anything, as long as it is a happy one.
In fact, if the book does not have a happy ending, Radway, Thurston,
and others note, readers will not consider it a romance. This insistence
th a t endings always be happy is, critics often point out, "not realistic."
Obviously, critics assume, happy endings must be th ere for reassurance,
a(n imperfect) mechanism for rehabilitating the gendered inequities th at
slip through the cracks of the narrative, as, for example, when the
cruel behavior of a hero is explained as a symptom of his love for the
heroine.
Radway’s discovery that happy endings are a necessary, but not
sufficient, feature for distinguishing a romance suggests something
different. Rather than being a kind of varnish, designed to make
everything th at came before look shiny and blem ish-free, happy endings
a re im portant only because they help form the stru c tu re of the romance.
Once a novel is determined to belong to the romance genre, however,
this feature, like all other unchanging features of the formula, would
recede into the background as variations on the formula are emphasized.
"[I]t is the process, not the conclusion, that we are reading for,"
Suzanne Simmons Guntrum writes; "Indeed, it is safe for us to enjoy the
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118
process because we are already guaranteed of the ending" (153). If the
book is not a romance, the underlying plot stru c tu re cannot be ignored,
and the reader will be paying attention to an entirely different set of
features.
The operative phrase in th at sentence is "the reader will." All of
the differences noted so far between romance novels and serious novels
depend entirely upon the uses which readers make of these texts. Each
kind of novel can be studied, or read for "escape" when tired, doing
laundry, a t the beach, etc. The language of each can be savored; each
can be pleasurably and profitably reread; each can spark thought about
important social issues. Ultimately, readers decide what a text will do
for them.
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Chapter IV
Readers and Writers Out of Control
Some books are to be tasted , others to be swallowed,
and some few to be chewed and digested; th at is, some
books are to be read only in parts; others to be read,
but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and
with diligence and attention. (Bacon 1631)
Reading As Passive Consumption
Francis Bacon’s identification of books with food, of reading with
eating, is a familiar and compelling one, common to literary criticism
(Madonne M . Miner even titles her study of popular reading, Insatiable
Appetites). The metaphor matches the belief of confirmed readers th at
reading is good, th a t it fortifies us, th at we couldn’t lead a full life
without it. At the same time, this metaphor gives us a framework for
evaluating books. Those books are the best which stick to the ribs, so
to speak, which provide food for thought. And as Bacon points out,
those books which remain with us are those we read "with diligence and
attention." These are the literary books, not the genre novels or the
bestsellers which are read quickly, for entertainm ent rath er than for
learning.
This comparison intuitively seems right. Readers and critics
habitually use eating language to describe reading. For example, we
might describe a slow reading pace as "savoring the words." And the
sense of nourishm ent we feel after reading also corresponds to our
h ’he Norton editors define this phrase as "not with care."
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pleasure after eating a good meal. Interestingly, laboratory experiments
have noted subconscious activity of the "articulatory-m asticatory
apparatus (that mimics eating)," which may heighten reading enjoyment,
and probably reflects the connection of written with spoken language
(Nell 99). More difficult texts, of course, frequently inspire
sub vocalization. (These cognitive activities also have been noted to
induce finger movements in the deaf (Nell 183).)
However the metaphor has done some damage. While Bacon uses it
in the context of urging all of us to do our own studying, and to point
out th at th ere is no su b stitu te for learning, still it implies th at reading
is merely a consumptive activity. The books effect th e transform ation,
while read ers simply open, chew, and swallow. According to this model,
the conscious action of readers stops when th e books are selected.
Thus Madonne M . Miner can assert,
[I]n response to th e sceptic who doubts th at a critical
reader is capable of representing th e reading experience
of thousands of women who have devoured Scruples, I
maintain th a t although I may eat more slowly and more
self-consciously than members of th e female mass
audience, we all eat the same meal. (10)
In other words. Miner’s approaching the text from th e perspective of a
literary critic knowledgeable about psychoanalytic theories does not
change th e substance of the texts she studies, any more than a
biologist’s knowledge would change the substance of the foods she eats.
The same n u trien ts are present for all readers, whether they recognize
them or not.
Even more pointed is the drug metaphor, in which books are
compared to narcotics, as in "I’m addicted to m ysteries." The fact th at
popular novels are called "trash," or "junk," slang words for heroin,
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121
2
underscores this connection. According to this worldview, reading the
wrong kind of books is not merely a waste of time, it is a harmful
practice which distorts our understanding of reality. The warnings
against popular novels by literary critics often take the tone of
warnings against drugs. For example, Tania Modleski explicitly compares
Harlequin Romances to narcotics:
W e have seen that Harlequins, in presenting a heroine who
has escaped psychic conflicts, inevitably increase the
read e r’s own psychic conflicts, th u s creating an even
g reater dependency on the literature. This lends credence
to th e other commonly accepted theory of popular a rt as
narcotic. As medical researchers are now discovering,
certain tranquilizers taken to relieve anxiety are, though
tem porarily helpful, ultimately anxiety-producing. The user
must constantly increase the dosage of the drug in order
to alleviate problems aggravated by th e drug itself. (57)
Modleski goes on to suggest th at the enormous amounts of energy which
women invest in tem porary solutions to their troubles (such as the
temporary relief afforded by reading Harlequins) should be rechanneled
into more constructive efforts. Here again, reading is not deemed to be
a constructive activity when the books are not nutritious.
Popular Fiction’s Easy Pleasures vs. L iterature’s Hard-Won Rewards
A good p art of the reason for reading’s bad reputation is no
doubt the fact th at it is a highly pleasurable activity, and our culture
disdains pleasure th at is not subordinated to some nobler purpose. The
2
The Oxford English Dictionary identifies the first use of "junk" to
describe a narcotic drug in 1925, well before the uses of "junk food"
(1973) or "junk mail" (1954). There is no listing for "junk reading" in
either the main dictionary or its supplements. The first use of "trash"
to denote "[w jorthless notions, talk, or writing; nonsense; ’rub b ish ’,
’stu ff’" occurs in 1542; however, th ere is no listing for "trash" as
narcotic drug in either the main dictionary or its supplements. While it
would be interesting to find out if reading was given drug-related
nicknames, or if drugs were given reading-related nicknames, the fact
th at such slang term s converge is significant in itself.
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122
comparison to food and drugs still holds: candy is highly pleasurable
but nutritionally empty, narcotics are pleasurable but unhealthy and
addictive. Or another comparison: reading cheap novels is mental
m asturbation—unproductive and narcissistic. To a culture founded on
Protestantism and Utilitarianism, unproductive pleasure is sinful, because
it neither glorifies God nor benefits society.
Thus, reading is unable to be saved . . . unless, of course, it can
be linked to some higher purpose, as literary reading usually is.
Robert Alter (in The Pleasures o f Reading in an Ideological Age)
identifies pleasure as one of the chief elements that distinguishes
literature from other kinds of texts:
[L jiterature is remarkable for its densely layered
communication, its capacity to open up multifarious
connections and multiple interpretations to the recipient
of th e communication, and for th e pleasure it produces
in making the instrum ent of communication a satisfying
aesthetic object—or more precisely, the pleasure it gives
us as we experience the nice interplay between the
verbal aesthetic form and the complex meanings
conveyed. (28)
L iterature can be identified by its "densely layered communication"—it
communicates more than the average newspaper headline or popular
novel, according to Alter. But what separates literatu re from other
complex texts is the pleasure it brings, "the range of aesthetic
delights . . . far removed from any chaste (and purely secondary)
pleasure a read er may experience" in nonliterary texts such as Spinoza’s
Ethics.
And when this pleasure is unhitched from such complex
communication, according to this view, the text becomes mere popular
trash. Using a book by romance novelist Barbara Cartland as an
example, Alter asserts th at the language of popular novels, though
"aspiring or pretending to convey, like the best literary prose, more
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123
than ordinary language, really conveys less" (109). Furtherm ore,
whatever pleasure the prose brings is too easily come by:
If bad w riting works—and sells—through the effortless
ease of access it affords readers by adhering to familiar
formulas, good writing revels in difficulties—technical
emotional, and conceptual difficulties overcome by the
w riter in innovative configurations of language which
then become both the challenge to the reader and the
re a d er’s delight. (109)
Those books which are easy for readers to "get into" may sell in large
quantities, but th eir ease of communication is th eir downfall.
Im portant here is Alter’s scorn for easy texts. To him (and many
others) reading must be labor in order to be worthwhile, and only from
such labor will lasting rew ards come. This philosophy is not far
removed from P uritan asceticism. Alter’s reader may be an "incurable
language addict" who enjoys reading, but th at reading is work,
nonetheless, difficult work, and not merely easy pleasure.
Bias Against Authors of Popular Fiction
Implicit in th e belief th at worthwhile reading must involve work is
the longing for control: discriminating readers and skilled w riters are in
control of their actions; readers and w riters of popular trash are
supposedly at the mercy of their desires. Rather than assuming th at
the style of, say, popular romance, is a hard-earned craft, often critics
assume th at it is a failed attem pt at being something else; at best,
derivative, at worst, ridiculous. Hence Alter talks about "uninspired"
style which "strives so self-consciously to be literary th at it parodies
the mechanisms of literary style" (108). When he discusses a passage
by Barbara Cartland, the only stylistic element which he treats as a
successful and deliberate choice is "the peculiar typographic convention
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124
of beginning a new paragraph for each brief sentence, apparently for
the purpose of distending a long story into a sh o rt novel" (108).
Why he thinks Cartland would want to make her story take up
more space than necessary, Alter doesn’t say; perhaps he believes she
can thereby make more money (by selling a story as a stand-alone
novel) with less work (she writes fewer words than a literary novelist).
A ttributing au th o rs’ motivations to greed is another way of emphasizing
their artistic passivity. Rather than creating out of their own unique
visions, such authors are driven by the market to produce only what
sells. While the English language has long perceived a dichotomy
between (independent) genius and (other-controlled) mechanism, Kathy
McDermott notes in "L iterature and the Grub S treet Myth" th at it
became attached to literatu re in the eighteenth century. The upsurge
in author/hack language at a time when popular reading became
widespread suggests th a t it relates more to the economic realities of the
period than to methods of literary production. Similar use of "hack"
language to condemn booksellers (as compared to "genius" patrons/m en
of taste) lends fu rth er weight to McDermott’s theory. In any case,
scorn for a rt th at is perceived to be m arket-driven p ersists today,
along with worries that the "mechanisms" of mass media will run amok,
and become a menace to civilization.
Alter is by no means alone in the assumption th at w riters of
popular fiction are failed imitators of literary genius. Even when Janice
Radway, a sympathetic popular culture critic, points out in "The
Aesthetic in Mass Culture: Reading the ’Popular’ L iterary Text" th at the
"literary" (quotes in original) language of many popular romances serves
a useful purpose for readers, she hastens to add th a t it is "unlikely
th at [the author] consciously chose these syntactic p attern s in order to
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125
evoke the bookish world of th e sentimental romance" (409). In other
words, any successful "literary" writing is accidental or instinctive.
Though Radway’s statem ents are kinder than holding the language
up to ridicule (which Alter and many other critics do), she still doesn’t
give romance authors much credit for a rtistry , a fact which some
authors have noted and protested. Linda Barlow and Jane Ann Krentz,
both very successful romance novelists, noting th a t passages from their
books are regularly mocked by "everyone from college professors to talk
show hosts," explain their stylistic choices:
Why [do we write such passages]? Are we woefully
derivative and unoriginal? Do our editors force us to
w rite this way? . . . Are we incapable of expressing
ourselves in any other manner?
The answ er, of course, is none of th e above. W e
w rite this way because we know th at th is is the
language which best serves our purposes as romance
authors. This is the language that, for romance novels,
works. (21, emphasis in original)
Barlow and K rentz’s qualification that such language works "for romance
novels" is an im portant one. These authors view romance as a worthy
* 1
genre for which to write. Alter, Radway, and o th ers would seem to
disagree; they p ersist in evaluating the style of such novels according
to the rules of (supposedly superior) works outside the genre. As a
result, the language which readers and authors believe "works" for
romance is believed to be a failed attempt to achieve the language of a
different kind of text.
3
This charge would seem especially unfair in th e case of Janice A .
Rad way, whose influential Reading the Romance specifically argues that
romances are worthy of critical investigation, and th at romance reading
is not a passive, mindlessly consumptive activity. However, at times,
Radway’s rem arks are condescending, a fact which has been noted by
romance readers them selves (Krentz). When I comment on such remarks
by Radway, Tania Modleski, and other scholars, I do not mean to be
condemning th eir work out-of-hand. That they undertook to research
genre texts is in itself an act sympathetic to popular readers.
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126
I should point out here that, although the romance novel is
stylistically often deemed the lowest of the genres, it is by no means
the only genre singled out for this kind of ridicule. Parodies of the
private eye and the science fiction novel abound; praise for the style of
these works is frequently grudging, at best. For example, Anthony
Lane marvels in his article, "The Top Ten," th at Sue Grafton’s style in K
Is for Killer "[e]very now and then . . . scores a direct hit":
"The victims of unsolved homicides I think of as the
unruly dead," she says on the opening page. This
brought me up short; it is a rath er beautiful sentence,
all th e more provocative for being mildly archaic, and
it’s not a freak. (90)
But despite her success in writing occasional sentences th at "Saul
Bellow wouldn’t be ashamed to think of," Lane believes Grafton’s style to
be derivative, an example of a "thin piece of ground" which Dashiell
Hammett and Raymond Chandler worked so thoroughly th at its "sour
sudden poetry" could never belong to anyone else.
Bias Against Readers of Popular Fiction
This lack of originality "could be the attraction, of course," for
those who relish the genre, Lane muses, bringing up another way in
which popular fiction is assumed to mark a loss of control—it is a loss
of control for the reader, who is incapable of appreciating superior
literary style. When such readers make choices, they choose more of
the same, which monotony they find "as pleasant as the rocking of a
cradle" (Lane 91), ra th e r than delighting in the new and unexpected.
All too often, avid readers of popular fiction are considered incapable of
even this negligible discrimination.
As a resu lt of such a view, though Lane finds he himself prefers
some books to others, he wonders if the average reader can make such
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127
distinctions between bestsellers: "There must be people who go out and
buy these books because they are on the list—who get the Michael
Crichton and the new John Grisham as well as the Caleb Carr. If so,
don’t they notice the difference?" (84). Lillian Robinson wonders the
same thing when she notices th a t Jane Austen’s works are available "in
mass market paperbacks, with cover illustrations and (grossly
exaggerated) plot descriptions th at seek to ren d er them
indistinguishable from their presumed pop fiction successors" (220).
Robinson ponders what might happen when read ers choose (accidentally,
of course) one of the works which have been tricked out in this
fashion:
Does the reader who relished Bath Cotillion [a
forgettable historical romance] find th a t the issues and
problems Jane Austen raises stand in the way of her
story? Does the more elegant style in terfere as well?
Or do the superfluous elements of superior character,
incident, and analysis simply go unnoticed? (221)
The possibility th at the average romance reader might appreciate
Austen’s prose as much as she does never occurs to Robinson, even
though she is a self-confessed fan of romance fiction. Nor does the
possibility occur to Lane th at even those readers who seek out
bestsellers because they are bestsellers might still prefer some books to
others.
The ultimate image of the popular reader was penned by C. S.
Lewis in An Experiment in Criticism:
W e have all known women who remembered a novel so
dimly th a t they had to stand for half an hour in the
library skimming through it before they were certain
they had once read it. But th e moment they became
certain they rejected it immediately. It was for them
dead, like a b u rn t-o u t match, an old railway ticket, or
y esterd ay ’s paper; they had already used it. Those who
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128
read great works, on the other hand, will read the same
work ten, tw enty or th irty times during the course of
their life. (2)
Research has proven Lewis wrong on several counts. For one thing,
some readers of popular novels frequently reread th eir favorite books.
In fact, Victor Nell discovered th at some people (he term s them "reading
gluttons") deliberately try to forget books quickly so they can be
reread. Other readers quickly scan a chapter, then reread it, relying
on advance knowledge from the firs t reading to make th e second less
upsetting. Lewis might not believe these to be positive activities, of
course, but they do contradict his assertions. Furtherm ore, it is
conceivable th at people who reread "the g reat works" do so for similar
purposes.
More to the point, however, "those who read g reat works" are
very likely the exact same people who read lesser works. A. Szalai’s
1972 study The Use o f Time (summarized in Neil), an eight-year project
which involved 27,000 people in 11 countries and th ree continents,
revealed th at reading is "a habit distributed bimodally in the population;
either one is hooked on book reading and reads a lot, or one isn’t and
reads very little" (Nell 21). There is a far g reater split between those
who read books and those who don’t, than between read ers of trash and
readers of literature.
In fact, Szalai notes th at neither in terest in books nor the quality
of books chosen varies according to education or occupation. Later
studies have upheld this finding, as Martin Kling notes in his review of
reading research. Analyzing the data collected in a 1979 study by
Mikulecky et al., Kling concludes th at "82.7% to 96.1% of the variance of
whatever constitutes adult reading habits has yet to be explained" (67).
Reading habits are apparently not driven by sex, race, income, or
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129
education (though more habitual read ers are women). A more recent
study confirmed th at reading in terests are also not determined by
education or occupation (M. Cecil Smith). This indicates th at reader
choices are purposeful, not entirely at the mercy of socioeconomic
factors.
The studies in Nell’s Lost in a Book: The Psychology o f Reading
fo r Pleasure which focus on literary evaluation also suggest that
readers make conscious (rath er than accidental) decisions when selecting
th eir reading material. Nell asked university students, professors, and
librarians to rank passages from which all quality cues (title, author,
book jacket "blurbs" and artw ork, revealing character names such as
"Miss Mar pie," etc.) were omitted. Passages chosen ranged from James
Michener’s Hawaii to James Joyce’s Portrait o f the A rtist as a Young Man
to Gray’ s Anatomy. The different groups of readers showed "wide
agreem ent about what constitutes a good read across language, career
choice, and gender differences" (132). Analysis of which texts were
clustered in the rankings suggests th at, instead of trying to rank all
the items in order, readers evaluated books according to desirability;
books which provide a "good read" were placed in one group, the rest
(most of the classics, some n arrative nonfiction, all didactic nonfiction)
in the other. Again, the different groups of read ers showed statistically
significant levels of agreement. The fact th at very different groups of
people showed high levels of agreem ent when evaluating literary quality
in one of Nell’s experim ents also su g g ests th a t readers of popular fiction
don’t choose tra sh y books because they "don’t know any better." Nell’s
subjects tended to rate th eir own reading preferences as "trash," even
though they clearly knew which books were considered higher quality.
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130
Interestingly, Nell found th at his subjects relied on levels of
difficulty, ra th er th an literary excellence, in assigning rank. Because
th e equation of difficulty with merit leads to "the absurd consequence
th at a Chevrolet workshop manual and th e poetry of T. S. Eliot" are of
equal worth, Nell hypothesized th at education would weaken this
association. He did find slight indications th at readers with more
literary sophistication were less likely to make such an equation, but
the indications were not significant. Nell’s stu d y —which investigated
fewer than 200 su b jects—is not conclusive in itself. However, the
resu lts reflect Bacon’s words about reading and eating; difficult books
which read ers can chew and digest slowly are best. Furtherm ore, the
fact th at all groups of readers associated reading ease with low quality
also helps explain th e persistence of th e belief th a t pleasure readers are
out of control. No demanding text slows down th eir headlong rush
through the bookshelves.
Why W e Read Popular Fiction
The assumption th at popular w riters and th eir readers are out of
control leaves us with an important question: If th e style of popular
w riters succeeds only accidentally, and if readers are barely able to
distinguish one book from another, than why do certain kinds of
popular books consistently sell, while others are dismal failures?
In answer, critics have frequently pointed to market forces.
Readers, they point out, are influenced by magazine advertisem ents,
au th o rs’ publicity appearances, television and movie tie-ins, point-of-
purchase displays, etc. The success of Harlequin romances lends
support to this view th at readers (at least, "uneducated" or otherwise
"weak" readers) are at the mercy of unscrupulous producers who are
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131
skilled at exploiting "target" populations for profit. While th ere is some
tru th to this view, it cannot completely explain why some books are
more popular than others. For one thing, the "producers" of books
aren ’t a monolithic entity, and they frequently don’t make much profit.
Furtherm ore, th ere are many sites along th e passage from book
production to reception where individual choice interferes with
marketing decisions. Bookstores may not carry what a company
publishes, review ers may choose not to look at advance copies, readers
may not purchase th e hyped books. The forces of capitalism are far
less compelling than determ inistic theories would suggest.
The power of myth is also frequently claimed to be the reason
that some books are more popular than others. For example, in an
essay which reminds us th at popular literatu re plays a significant role
in American cultural history, Morris Dickstein pointedly refrains from
calling popular books art, though he does admit th at they "have
achieved a special hold on the popular imagination," compensating for
their literary deficiencies—clumsiness of plot, shallow
characterization, merely workmanlike sty le—by their
strength as parables or archetypes, th eir mythic force,
or their psychological reverberations. . . . One of the
marks of popular a rt . . . is th at it depends so little on
its original form, as if its author had accidentally tapped
into a psyche much larger than his own, and made
himself irrelevant in th e process. (47)
While much of myth criticism is extraordinarily compelling, and may well
explain the endurance of literary classics as well as popular creations
such as Dracula or Scarlett O’Hara, to point to myth as the sole reason
for a novel’s success begs th e question of why we make specific
evaluative judgm ents. If a novel is successful because it taps into
mythic power, then its "literary" quality (or lack thereof) is beside the
point. Myth criticism does not explain why literary critics value King
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132
Lear over King Kong, for example. Nor can it explain why popular
readers might prefer Travis McGee to Mike Hammer.
Ironically, one of the most condescending explanations—that
popular readers are looking for sensation, or "cheap th rills"—may be
the most accurate. Of course, "cheap thrills" are surprisingly hard to
define. When Victorian audiences condemned authors of some popular
works for being overly sensational, authors protested th at their novels,
frequently based on newspaper reports, were actually more realistic
than tamer books (Brantlinger 9-10). Still, sensation itself—however it
is defined—has eagerly been sought in some fashion or another since
prehistory. The attraction to "altered states of consciousness,"
according to William James, underlies the drive toward religious
experiences. And th e power of storytelling also holds sway over all
humanity (including the teller as well as the listener), so much so that
primitive societies often had taboos against storytelling in the daytime,
presumably so as not to interfere with the hunting and harvesting
necessary for survival (Nell 30, 48). Our need for story is revealed in
our hunger for news and gossip, as well as fiction.
Entwined with th e power of story is the power of language itself,
revealed whenever our attention is attracted by sentences, phrases,
even single words. Confirmed cereal box read ers—who may read the
same cereal box every morning—can a tte st to the compelling power of
words. The words of Lord Eustace Percy (qtd. by Nell from Q. D .
Leavis’s Fiction and the Reading Public) also graphically illustrate the
phenomenon:
Discomfort and exhaustion seem only to increase the
need for th e printed word. A friend, in describing the
advance of one of the columns in East Africa during the
war, has remarked how his men, sitting drenched and
almost without food round the campfire, would pass from
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133
hand to hand a scrap of magazine cover, in order th at
each man might re st his eyes for a moment on the
printed word. (Nell 62)
This may have more to do with the symbolic power of language, in which
mere words can express th e most influential and affecting concepts, than
with the power of story. However, it is clear th at the seductive pull of
the w ritten word can be nearly irresistible. Furtherm ore, if language is
considered to be more of a human construct than a biological drive
(such as hunger), the need to experience th e "sensation" of language
and sto ry is not a sign of an uncivilized reader. After all, the power of
language moves many people to make literatu re their profession.
This belief th at reading is a constructive activity has, of course,
gained currency among literary critics. Nevertheless, even among
reader-response theorists, traces of a bias against popular reading
exists. Wolfgang Iser, for example, insists in The Act o f Reading th at
interpretation does not extract meaning from a text. Were th at the case,
then certain "peculiar presuppositions" would follow, he notes: 1) th at it
is best for the author to disguise meaning, 2) th at critics’ discovery of
meaning is a loss to the author, 3) that once meaning is discovered the
work is used up, and 4) th at a critic who focuses on the meaning
cannot see th e actual text (rather like the optical illusion where one
sees either a duck, or a rabbit, but not both a t the same time).
Rather than locating meaning in the text, Iser argues th at it lies
in the "interaction between the textual signals and the read er’s acts of
comprehension" (9). Therefore, "meaning is not an object to be defined,
but is an effect to be experienced" (10). In o rd er to understand how
this effect is experienced, Iser states th at th eo rists must allow for the
presence of readers without in any way predeterm ining their characters
or historical situations—hence, he constructs the "implied reader." The
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134
implied reader, Iser maintains, is both a textual stru c tu re (the text
provides various standpoints or perspectives) and a stru ctu red activity
(when th e reader p uts the different perspectives together and figures
out where they converge). Thus, the implied (or ideal) reader is not
the same as th e actual reader. Nor is th is reader th e same as the
author, because th e implied reader must fully understand all of the
possible meanings potential in the text, independent of any historical
situation, and an author obviously cannot do this. Still, the concept of
the implied reader makes it possible for us to describe how an actual
reader creates meaning.
Unless one wants to understand how actual read ers of popular
novels create meaning, th at is. For Iser claims th a t popular novels are
so simplistic th at an implied reader actually could fully understand all
of its potential meanings, with the resu lt of "total consumption of the
text":
[T]here are texts which can be "consumed" in this way,
as is obvious from th e mounds of light literatu re that
flow regularly into th e pulping machines. The question
then arises as to w hether the reader of such works is
really the one meant by the term "ideal reader," for the
latter is usually called upon when the tex t is hard to
g rasp—it is hoped th at he will help to unravel its
m ysteries and, if th ere are no mysteries, his presence is
not required anyway. (29)
This passage—the only reference to popular reading in th e book—
contradicts Ise r’s earlier statem ent th at interpretation does not extract
meaning from a book, thereby using it up. For a popular text to be
consumed, its meaning must be "an object to be defined," precisely what
Iser has said it is not. This contradiction stems from a too-narrow
definition of reading which only includes vertical reading, or study
reading. If Iser allowed his implied reader to inhabit th e horizontal
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135
plane traveled by actual genre readers, th e multiplicity of perspectives
and meanings offered by "light literature" would show themselves.
Why Reading Appears to Be Passive (and Why It Is Not Passive)
Nell’s stu d y of the psychological processes of reading, Lost in a
Book, helps illuminate our reasons for thinking of reading and writing
as passive activities even when they aren ’t. The reading process is
paradoxical. On one hand, it is clearly passive. Pleasure reading (what
Nell terms "ludic," or "playful" reading) can put us in a trancelike
state, in which we free our ego enough for it to be receptive to the
thoughts of another. Distractions recede beneath our conscious
awareness—we think of nothing else but th e book, and may actually be
transported so completely that we stop reading and merely daydream
about what has been read. The process is pleasurable enough th at
people report being addicted to reading, to the point of becoming
anxious when they can’t read.
On the other hand, what enables us to achieve the ludic trance is
a high level of reading skill. W e must not only be able to read quickly,
but our reading rate must be flexible, and must adapt without conscious
thought to skim past boring passages and focus on pleasurable ones.
Ludic readers read some passages, on average, more than two and a half
times faster than others; and they constantly vary th eir pace (Nell 248).
Furtherm ore, the easiest texts are not the most likely to entrance
u s—rath er th e texts of medium difficulty fill up our cognitive capacity
and thus keep us from attending to anything else. Because the task of
converting w ritten text to "a language analogue" and then determining
its meaning is more cognitively demanding than, say, watching television
(which provides a "ready-made language and a pictorial
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136
representation"), readers tend to use far more of their brains’ cognitive
capabilities, even though both readers and viewers appear to be sitting
still with a fixed stare. The cognitive demand stems, not from what the
w riter has set down, but from what the reader brings to the text. Nell
compares th e process to a pebble being tossed into a pond:
[C]omprehension may be seen as a set of concentric
circles. The central point, where the sentence-pebble
strik es the pond, is in large measure common to all
speakers of the language, because it is the literal
content. . . . But the first of the ripples taps aspects
of the listen er’s episodic memory, with each successive
ripple drawing on a wider circle of idiosyncratic
associations dislodged from the listener’s autobiography.
(79)
This metaphor helps clarify theoretical assertions th at "there is no
book," Nell points out. At the site where the pebble strik es the water,
comprehension is bound to the text, and "readers asked to reproduce
th e gist of th e text do so in almost identical terms" (79). But because
the text evokes so many personal reactions from the reader, the "book-
related stru ctu re" th a t fills attention is different for every person. In
th is sense, the book does not exist. The "altered state of
consciousness" which is the reading trance is created by readers
themselves.
At the same time, readers are learning. A 1993 study conducted
by Richard R. West, Keith E. Stanovich and Harold R. Mitchell located
habitual readers by unobtrusively watching airp o rt behavior. Solitary
individuals who read non-w ork-related material for 10 consecutive
minutes were classified as readers; individuals who did not read for 10
consecutive minutes and were not observed to have reading material
with them were termed non-readers. (Those who didn’t fit into either
category were not asked to participate in the experiment.) Both readers
and non-readers were tested for cultural knowledge and vocabulary,
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137
using nine separate questionnaires. Readers scored significantly higher
than non-readers, making exposure to print a substantial predictor of
knowledge, even after differences in age and education were controlled.
These results, together with the resu lts of related studies, led the
researchers to conclude th at reading acts to develop certain cognitive
skills and knowledge bases. It is especially significant th at West et al.,
found the influence of p rin t exposure to be high even when they limited
their experim ent to recreational reading. Clearly, th e benefits of
habitual reading are attained even when "trash" is among the materials
being read. Rather than simply consuming a text, readers use the text
to enhance th e ir own learning.
Reading is not a passive activity on a physiological level, either.
In fact, laboratory experiments find readers to be in a heightened state
of arousal, as measured by movements of facial muscles, electric activity
in skin, resp irato ry and heart rates. The activity is equally arousing
for both ludic reading and work reading, and much more so than for
plain relaxation. In fact, the enjoyment of reading at bedtime may
result from th e drop in physiological activity when the book is put
down (Nell 190-91).
The inaccurate belief th at reading is a passive activity is also
encouraged by the similarity of reading to dreaming. Sigmund Freud, in
noting this similarity, in fact describes pleasure reading as "vicarious
daydreaming," almost as if readers were too passive even to daydream
for themselves. Actually, as Freud himself points out, the vicarious
nature of the daydream ensures th e read er’s freer participation in it.
Not only can th e reader thereby enjoy repressed fantasies without
taking responsibility for them, "without reproach or shame" (qtd. in Nell
204), but because the reader remains conscious, the te rro rs of some
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138
fantasies are held at bay. Furtherm ore, the reader can enjoy th e "mild
narcosis" of a daydream without expending th e effort of creating it from
whole cloth.
Types of Readers: The Ludic Reader
Since ludic reading is in so many respects an active performance,
it is not su rp risin g th at readers can apply th e process toward different
purposes. Nell identifies two contrasting types of ludic readers. The
"Type A" reader uses pleasure reading to escape unpleasant aspects of
life, while the "Type B" reader reads to more fully appreciate life.
Type A readers, who see the activity as an "escape from" rath er than
an "escape to," are less choosy about th eir reading material, and more
anxious when they are prevented from reading. Type A readers are
therefore more likely to describe them selves as "addicted." Type B
readers, by contrast, read fewer books, but experience more deep
involvement in them than a Type A reader typically does. Type B
readers also effectively use their imaginations to help them enjoy
atypical texts, such as instructional manuals, while Type A readers
prefer books which require less imaginative work. Both types of
reading are perceived to be effortless, as opposed to reading which will
require some outw ard-directed response (such as w ork-related reading,
or reading assigned at school.)
However, Nell stresses, the boundaries between the two "types" is
highly permeable. Someone may be a Type A reader in the doctor’s
waiting room, and a Type B reader a t home in front of the fire.
Furtherm ore, a Type A reader may begin a book in order to escape the
uncomfortable waiting room, but end up u tterly absorbed in it; while a
Type B reader may be unable to enjoy finishing the cookbook he
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139
brought with him to pass th e time because he is so anxious about the
upcoming physical exam. And when the book in question is one on
which th e reader expects to be tested, the reading may cease to be
pleasurable at all. In this sense, Nell’s types serve the same purpose
as Ise r’s implied reader: they illustrate the processes of various
readers, and they dem onstrate th at reading is not simply a passive
activity. The actual reader controls the type of reading experience th at
will occur, be it pleasurable reading (of either type) or required
reading.
As long as we believe that the reader of popular novels is out of
control, and as long as we mistakenly believe pleasure reading to be a
passive activity, we are likely to look down on such readers as well as
the texts they choose. Assuming th at those readers who choose the
best books are more in control of th eir actions, know more and can
in terp ret better the material better, we forget th at read ers of popular
texts and readers of difficult texts are the same people, who frequently
have learned th e same kinds of things. When Radway discusses a
passage where a romance heroine is given a sword by her father on her
tenth birthday, for example, she comments,
Although I doubt very much th at the Smithton readers
know how to read this psychoanalytically as a symbol of
desire for the power associated with the penis, such
skill is not necessary, for Lindsey tran slates h er
symbolic language almost immediately. (Romance 125)
To be fair, Radway has met and conversed at length with the Smithton
readers, and has more basis for making this claim than simply the fact
th at they are romance readers. On th e other hand, she bases her
conclusions about romance read ers’ need to have meanings spelled out
for them on the Smithton readers, as representatives of romance readers
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140
in general. And Radway’s comments are typical of other critics’ on this
subject (such as Peter Mann, Miner, Lillian Robinson).
Types of Readers: The Common Reader
With the different types of readers in mind, it is easy to see th at
the "common reader" whose virtues are extolled by Samuel Johnson,
Virginia Woolf, and others is not engaged in ludic reading. The
"common reader" with whom Johnson rejoices to concur is, specifically,
the reader who liked Thomas Gray’s "Elegy," four stanzas of which
Johnson admired for their originality. Johnson also wonders "by what
peculiarities of excellence Shakespeare has gained and kept the favour
of his countrymen" (300). Though he points out, "that book is good in
vain which the reader throw s away," and criticizes Milton’s Paradise
Lost for being "one of those books which th e reader admires, lays down,
and forgets to take up again" (439), Johnson does not agree th at
popular books deserve th eir acclaim. He goes on to judge Paradise Lost
as a masterpiece, despite th e fact th a t it doesn’t absorb its readers, and
he roundly condemns Fielding’s Tom Jones, although it does absorb its
readers. True, Johnson did not assume, as some of today’s critics do,
th at a work was bad because it was popular, but he did not concur with
the popular read er on all things. Therefore, Johnson was not the
champion of popular reading th at many popular culture critics have
suggested. Johnson rejoices, rather, to concur with the reader who
reads vertically, for study.
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141
Virginia Woolf begins her volume The Common Reader with a nod
to Johnson’s statem ent about concurring with th e common reader. But
she broadens his definition considerably:
[The common reader] is worse educated, and nature has
not gifted him so generously [as the critic or the
scholar]. He reads for his own pleasure ra th er than to
impart knowledge or correct the opinions of others.
Above all, he is guided by an instinct to create for
himself, out of whatever odds and ends he can come by,
some kind of whole. . . . He never ceases, as he reads,
to run up some rickety and ram shackle fabric which
shall give him the tem porary satisfaction of looking
sufficiently like th e real object to allow of affection,
laughter, and argum ent. (1)
This description sounds like the activity of th e recreational reader.
However, fu rth e r investigation makes it clear th a t the passage describes
not what the average pleasure reader does, but what Woolf herself does,
when reading. The section on the common read er ends with Woolf
promising to write down "a few of the ideas and opinions which,
insignificant in themselves," have been singled out for the praise of a
great figure like Johnson, and all of th e ideas and opinions which follow
are her own.
The ensuing book is described by editor Andrew McNellie as "a
kind of unofficial, eccentric, literary and social history, from the
fourteenth to the tw entieth centuries, with excursions into ancient
Greece and T sarist Russia included for good measure"; all this, at least
in the original imprint, presented without footnotes (xiv). As engaging
as the essays are, and as engaged as she may have been while reading
the books which inspired them, such scholarly productions are not the
typical resu lt of ludic reading.
Confusion between the traditional "common reader," who reads
vertically, and the ludic reader, who reads horizontally, helps explain a
fundamental discontinuity in The Canon and the Common Reader, by
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142
Carey Kaplan and Ellen Cronan Rose. Kaplan and Rose set out to
dem onstrate th a t feminist academics are not elitist, as evidenced by the
way they listened to judgm ents of "common readers" and accepted the
works of Doris Lessing into the canon. Yet evidence th at "common
readers" thought highly of Lessing is suspiciously academic: many
advertisem ents were purchased in "gatekeeper" periodicals such as the
New York Times Book Review, her works were reviewed by "cultural
authorities" in those same periodicals, her works were included in
critical studies such as Walter Allen’s The Modern Novel in Britain and
the United States, a woman writing her dissertation begged to be able
to write about Lessing, and a Doris Lessing Society was established as
an allied organization of th e M LA. Since, as has been noted, cultural
authorities and academic scholars are also ludic readers, this evidence is
not, in and of itself, without merit. However, many pleasure readers are
not academics. The lack of non-academic signs of Lessing’s popularity
suggests th at for Kaplan and Rose, "common readers" read vertically,
ju st as they do for Johnson and Woolf.
The Woman Reader and Pleasure in th e Genre Text
One aspect of Kaplan and Rose’s common reader does match the
"ludic reader" identified in readership studies: th eir common reader is a
woman. Indications are th at, worldwide, most people who read for
pleasure are women. The American’s Use of Time Project, conducted by
the U niversity of Maryland in 1985, showed th at women spend more time
than men do reading books (John P. Robinson), even when work hours
were taken into account. This was confirmed by a 1991 Gallup poll
which found th at women readers read an average of 18 books a year,
compared with only 12 books a year for men who read (Waldrop), and it
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143
matches th e conventional wisdom of booksellers (as reported in places
like Publishers Weekly). An investigation of the habits of French-
speaking readers in Canada and France also found th at women were
more likely to read books for pleasure. This was so despite the fact
that 75 percent of the books published in France were w ritten by men,
and th at men dominated the publishing industry in both France and
Canada (Dionne and Thery). Gaye Tuchman and Nina E. Fortin’s work in
Edging Women Out also suggests that reading was seen as a feminine
activity in England, a t least until novels became marked as high-culture
artifacts and men began writing them more frequently. Even after the
novel was embraced by serious critics, of course, women wrote and read
less "literary" books. Perhaps the fact th at readers are more likely to
be women made th e cultural assumption th at readers are passive (as
women have been believed to be) seem more "right."
It is interesting to view the increased likelihood of a popular
read er’s being a woman with Roland B arthes’s views on the pleasure of
the text in mind. Using Nell’s metaphor of a pebble striking a pond,
the ripples correspond to what Barthes terms pleasure, which he
describes as "an excess of th e text, to what in it exceeds any (social)
function and any (structural) functioning; . . . euphoria, fulfillment,
comfort (the feeling of repletion when culture penetrates freely)"
(Pleasure 19). This Barthes defines in opposition to "bliss"
(jouissance/orgasm ), which cannot be expressed in words, and which
occurs outside the text, or rather, in gaps formed within the tissue of
the text:
[I]t is interm ittence, as psychoanalysis has so rightly
stated, which is erotic: the interm ittence of skin flashing
between two articles of clothing (trousers and sweater),
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between two edges (the open-necked sh irt, th e glove
and the sleeve); it is th is flash itself which
seduces. . . . (Pleasure 10)
Bliss never arises from the ordinary course of reading a text; it is not
merely an increased degree of pleasure. In fact, while bliss may be
brought about through the repetition of pleasure, it occurs only when
th a t repetition ceases: "And when something follows of itself, I abandon
it: th at is bliss" (43). Bliss and pleasure, as Barthes defines them,
cannot exist side-by-side.
Consequently, Barthes prefers postmodern texts which emphasize
discontinuity, rath er than texts by, say, Jules Verne (whose works
Barthes can read fast without being "hampered by any verbal loss
(Pleasure 12)):
Read slowly, read all of a novel by Zola, and the book
will drop from your hands; read fast, in snatches, some
modern text, and it becomes opaque, inaccessible to your
pleasure . . . th e seam of the two edges, th e interstice
of bliss, occurs in the volume of th e languages, in the
uttering, not in the sequence of utterances: not to
devour, to gobble, but to graze. . . . (Pleasure 12-13)
A modern text which is inaccessible to pleasure will allow bliss, provided
th at the text is read quickly, in stops and sta rts, ra th e r than entire in
one continuous sitting. What Barthes has described h ere is a distinctly
male model of erotic bliss, in which orgasm must be followed by
detumescence and the absence of some sexual pleasures, before it can be
achieved again.
Furtherm ore, those kinds of texts which Barthes believes will
supply bliss are texts which encourage interm ittent reading. Such
books are v ery different from the novels which encourage readers to
spend long periods of time enjoying them, and which tend to bring
about ludic trance. These books, especially formula novels, correspond
far more closely to what Barthes terms the "text of pleasure: th e text
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th at contents, fills, grants euphoria; th e text th a t comes from culture
and does not break with it, is linked to a comfortable practice of
reading" (Pleasure 14). Given this, perhaps th e notion th a t popular
fiction is male (because it reinforces patriarchal ideology) should be
reconsidered. Helene Cixous (along with others) has insisted that
"women must write through their bodies" in o rd er to su b v ert the Law-
of-the-F ather (315). It may be th at th e female body is better
represented by formula fiction than by avant garde novels. A genre
expresses "infinite and mobile complexity," as well as "the profusion of
meaning th at run through [language] in every direction" (Cixous 315)
within its multiple, ever-changing body of texts.
Certainly, cultural bias is stro n g est against those genres which
are marked as female, as shown by magical fantasy (as opposed to
cyber-punk, or "hard" science fiction), romances, sentimental novels,
etc. Our disapproval of "wasting time" on th ese kinds of texts stems in
part from our feelings about the value of outw ard-directed labor (for
the betterm ent of society, or the glory of God) as opposed to "frivolous"
reading for private enjoyment. Not only is reading such genres a
private activity, but the women who prefer them are perceived to belong
to the private realm. Thus such books receive a double measure of
disapproval.
To some extent, this marginalization can be a source of subversive
power. Members of fan organizations (and read ers of fan magazines)
frequently comment on the camaraderie of such groups, and science
fiction clubs, at least, are legendary for th eir ability to find a home for
adolescent misfits. Marginalization can also be a source of critical and
artistic power. Josephine Donovan, for example, outlines a compelling
argum ent th at women are in a better position to critique society through
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their art, because they identify more with use-value production (in
which objects are created in order to be used by their creators) than
exchange-value production (in which objects are created in order to be
sold). Still, a bias against popular fiction, especially those books
p referred by women, has hampered critical inquiry.
Changes in the Detective Genre: Woman As Private Eye
Though th e re is obviously some connection between a bias against
women and a bias against popular fiction, this discussion must not be
essentialized, especially because genres are not irretrievably male or
female. The male genre of the hard-boiled detective story, for example,
has grown to accommodate the female private eye. Sue Grafton’s Kinsey
Millhone is only one of the many female detectives to make a place for
herself in th e genre, which focuses on one person’s heroic fight against
the corruption of the modern world.
The fact th a t women detectives have entered the genre is
remarkable in itself, because for most critics, maleness is an essential
p art of th e definition of the detective. Chandler’s famous description,
"Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean," is
only the most famous such instance (Cawelti 150). Noting th at detectives
are eccentric outsiders, for example, Richard Alewyn describes them in
terms which are specifically male:
They have no wife, they have no children, they have no
profession, they live in messy rooms, they lead an
irreg u lar life, they tu rn night into day, they smoke
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opium or raise orchids; indeed, they have unconcealed
artistic inclinations, they quote Dante or play the violin.
(67)
If male detectives live outside ordinary society, female detectives must
be even fu rth e r beyond the pale. Similarly, John G. Cawelti points out
th at hard-boiled detectives regularly find themselves "romantically or
sexually involved with th e murderess" (147). The sexist language of
these critics is not accidental. Only recently, as Dorie Klein pointed out
in her article, "Reading the New Feminist Mystery: The Female Detective,
Crime and Violence," has society allowed female crim e-fighters to become
more than women’s wardens or juvenile detail officers, much less private
investigators. Given this, it is not su rp risin g th a t female detectives
have only recently begun filling bookshelves.
Unlike the classical detective (who is more likely to be female),
the hard-boiled detective does not operate in a tranquil society which is
interrupted by a murder. Instead, the society of the detective is
corrupt, and society’s institutions of ju stice mirror th is corruption. The
police and the courts cannot be tru sted ; it is up to the detective, a
romantic hero who struggles to keep his spiritual independence, to fight
the (possibly losing) battle against sin. Thus, Cawelti notes,
while the classical detective’s investigation typically
passes over a variety of possible suspects until it lights
a t last on the least-likely person, his hard-boiled
counterpart becomes emotionally involved in a complex
process of changing implications. Everything changes
its meaning: th e initial mission tu rn s out to be a smoke
screen for another, more devious plot; th e supposed
victim tu rn s out to be a villain; the lover ends up as
th e m urderess and the faithful friend as a rotten
betrayer; the police and the d istrict attorney and often
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even th e client keep trying to halt th e investigation;
and all the seemingly respectable and successful people
tu rn out to be members of th e gang. (146)
The location of eternal values in the detective would not seem to
preclude a woman’s taking th is role; after all, women are historically
charged with th e task of maintaining society’s values as they manage
"hearth and home." However, women are expected to stay home in order
to accomplish this, not wander out into th e mean streets.
Furtherm ore, the hard-boiled detective does not struggle to
preserve the values of his society; the values he preserves are his own.
In his book, Form and Ideology in Crime Fiction, Stephen Knight has
discussed at some length the ways in which the hard-boiled novel
centers on th e individual. In Chandler’s stories featuring Philip
Marlowe, for example, everything reflects Marlowe. The other characters
talk like Marlowe. They only react to Marlowe, or to each other while
paying attention to Marlowe. The very scenery reflects Marlowe’s state
of mind. The ultimate discovery of the villain in these novels does not
reveal who threatened the client, or who threatened the social order,
but rather, who threatened Marlowe, and Marlowe’s joke in Farewell, My
Lovely th at he is a "private I" sums up this ideology. The detective’s
story is privileged in these novels over all others.
For Knight, placing th e hard-boiled detective in a superior
position is "a way of containing the disturbing knowledge th at all other
people are themselves individuals and face the world ju s t as the w riter
does" (147). This tactic reflects the kind of "individualism" which
Gyatri C hakravorty Spivak relates to "imperialism." Spivak points out
that, in Jane Eyre, Bertha Mason’s purpose is "to set fire to the house
and kill herself, so th at Jane Eyre can become the feminist individualist
heroine of British fiction" (185). In the same way, all other people in
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the traditional hard-boiled novel exist so th at the detective can confirm
his worst suspicions of the world’s corruption.
Whether adding a woman to th e formula changes these effects is a
hotly debated question. Dorie Klein finds th a t a detective’s being a
woman changes u tterly the effect of violent scenes. Rather than beating
their way out of tough situations, such characters are extremely
cognizant of the special dangers they face as females. Furtherm ore,
Dorie Klein notes, these characters are allowed to be independent, alone
without being lonely. On th e other hand, Kathleen Gregory Klein
believes th at simply changing the gender of the detective is not enough
to subvert the messages of the formula. Interestingly, these debates
cannot be formed outside of the genre; these issues are not based on
individual books in themselves so much as books as representatives of
the tradition.
The fact th at such debates occur at all is evidence th at readers
in a genre do not see formula books as being "more of th e same."
True, to those read ers who aren ’t accustomed to a genre, such books
appear to be rehashing the same material. But fans of a genre
distinguish subtle differences which are apparent only when the terrain
is familiar, Randall Roorda points out th at one expectation of a reader
of narrative
concerns a certain suspension of expectation. . . . It’s
the expectation of the bear th at went over the mountain,
which Annie Dillard takes as her own: "to see what he
could see." What you’re likely to see, as Dillard knows,
is "more of same," same mountains, same trees. But with
expectation suspended, sameness is punctuated with the
unprecedented; th a t is, with moments of recognition.
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What has never happened to you may happen, and be
recognized as th at which perennially happens. (9)
Reading in a genre follows th e same pattern as a n ature walk.
Repetition may be punctuated with the unexpected. Furtherm ore, the
unexpected can only be recognized against the backdrop of repetition.
So even when a genre novel features many of the same characters, in
the same locale, it does not seem to be "more of th e same" to its
readers.
Among Sue Grafton’s repeated characters, for example, is Kinsey
Millhone’s landlord, Henry Pitts. Kinsey tells us in "A" Is for Alibi th at
Henry is
a former commercial baker who makes a living now, at
the age of eighty-one, by devising obnoxiously difficult
crossword puzzles which he likes to try out on me. He
is usually also in th e process of making mammoth
batches of bread, which he leaves to rise in an old
Shaker cradle on th e sunporch near my room. (13)
Kinsey admires Henry’s bright blue eyes ("the color of ground morning
glories" (Corpse 12)), his dignified manner, and his elegant physique
(that of an "octogenarian ’hunk’, tall and lean with close-cropped white
hair" (Burglar 75-76)); many times she comments on his sexual appeal.
Paradoxically, we usually see this hunk of manhood sunning himself on
the patio or baking in the kitchen, spaces usually inhabited by a
woman. When Kinsey comes home, Henry is there; when she leaves on
her investigations, Henry stays behind. As far as most of these novels
are concerned, ap art from his role in making Kinsey’s life more
comfortable (a role very like th at of "mother," or "wife"), he might as
well not exist.
Granted, Henry fills an im portant function. Because his te rrito ry
is so circumscribed, he is th e only friend of Kinsey’s who appears
regularly in every novel. Aside from him, no one can comfort Kinsey
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with tea and home-baked brownies, no one will notice if she disappears
for days at a time, and no one can help her pick up the pieces when
her apartm ent is damaged. Henry’s character also prevents Kinsey from
seeming too isolated; besides him, she has, after all, very few friends
and (at the beginning of the series) no known family. In fact, Henry’s
two-week absence in "E" Is for Evidence, when he visits family in
Michigan, effectively underscores Kinsey’s aloneness when she is framed
for insurance fraud.
However, at times Henry seems more like a furnishing of Kinsey’s
apartm ent than a person with a life of his own. In fact, Kinsey refers
to him this way herself: "For two hundred dollars a month, I have
everything I want, including a debonair eighty-one-year-old landlord
named Henry Pitts" (Burglar 75). If we were to read only one of
Grafton's Kinsey Millhone books, therefore, we might think of Henry
Pitts as a two-dimensional character.
Readers familiar with all of these books, however, are better able
to appreciate the many sides of Henry’s character. In "C” Is for
Corpse, he falls in love with a con artist, Lila Sams, who convinces him
to loan her $20,000. When he learns th at he has been swindled, his
normally dignified manner becomes more than a habit of character; it is
a means of controlling painful emotions:
"Lila said she’d deposit it [the money] to an escrow
account at the title company. The bank manager urged
me to reconsider, but I thought he was simply being
conservative. I see now, he was not." His manner had
become very formal, and it nearly broke my heart
[Kinsey thought]. (185)
Later, in "I” Is for Innocent, a visit from Henry’s brother William shows
another side to Henry’s character. Henry dislikes William’s
hypochondria, but when William is distracted from his physical ailments
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by th e woman who runs a local Hungarian restaurant, Henry dislikes
William’s courting behavior even more. Kinsey, seeing both brothers
together, reflects, "I could almost picture them as th ey ’d been at eight
and ten years old, respectively. Henry was all elbows and knees,
conducting himself with a sullen-younger-brother belligerence" (240).
These occurrences are more significant when viewed against the
backdrop of Henry’s usual behavior. Lila Sams seems all the more
dangerous because she separates Henry from his normal activities. And
his worry about his b ro th er’s romance, and his simultaneous descent
into childish behavior, seem all the more striking because we are used
to his dignified ways, and because, as Kinsey reminds him, he himself
was in love "not th at long ago" (241).
So when Henry encourages Kinsey in "J" Is for Judgm ent to learn
more about her birth family, his advice seems especially reliable because
we know th a t Henry hasn’t idealized his own family. At the same time,
Kinsey’s refusal to take th at advice seems reasonable because she has
first-h an d experience with Henry’s family difficulties, and with Henry’s
own self-blindness. When Grafton re tu rn s to Henry to his usual place
as H enry-in-the-kitchen, his character is still enhanced by the things
we know about him from the other books. Grafton develops her
characters in more than two dimensions, but we have to read
horizontally to recognize this fact.
This is not to say th at th ere is no element of convention in
m ystery novels. Kinsey finds the villain every time; m ysteries which
problematize this formula (Sharyn McCrumb’s I f Ever I Return, P retty
Peggy-O, Elisabeth Bowers’s Ladles Night, Amanda Cross’s Death in a
Tenured Position) are rem arkable because they are so unusual.
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And though we might consider Kinsey’s unrem ittingly female voice
to offer a possible identification with the maternal voice, and a
consequent subversion of the phallocentric order, Kinsey still follows the
well-worn path of the male private eye. Where he unknowingly sleeps
with a m urderess, for example, she sleeps with the m urderer (in "A" Is
for Alibi). True, Kinsey’s suspicion of her lover is connected more to
her desire for investigative integrity than to the traditional hard-boiled
detective’s suspicion of society a t large. And she does break up with
Charlie midway through the novel, as soon as she recognizes her
uneasiness. Still, Kinsey does sleep with a m urderer, and ju s t like the
traditional private-eye, she does end up killing him (albeit unwillingly,
and in self-defense). The question of w hether Grafton su b v erts the
detective formula is therefore difficult to answer.
Analyses of Literary Formula
Whether or not the familiar signs of the genre are subversive, the
familiarity is paradoxically what motivates readers to continue reading,
as George N. Dove points out in his book, Suspense in the Formula
Story. Readers must care what happens next if they are to finish th e
book, and one important means of making them care is to give them
privileged knowledge. This technique marks th e difference between
shock and suspense, as Alfred Hitchcock has illustrated in the following
example (qtd. in Dove 29-30). Suppose a Board of Directors is holding a
meeting, ignorant of the fact th at a time-bomb has been planted beneath
their conference table. If the bomb explodes without warning,
shattering the room and killing everyone in it, that, according to
Hitchcock, is shock. But suspense is created when the audience knows
th at the bomb is there, when the story is periodically interrupted to
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154
focus on the clock as it ticks away the time. Readers provided with
foreknowledge have more invested in finishing the book; not only do
they have a general curiosity about "what will happen next," they have
a particular curiosity to see how the specific problem will be resolved.
Recognizing this helps us understand th e attraction of genre
reading, Dove notes. Readers who have an idea of what might happen
next, based on th eir familiarity with th e formula, are more likely to care
enough to finish th e book. (Nell would add th at this familiarity
additionally heightens read ers’ ability to enjoy text because it helps
them feel safe.) This is similar to playing a game; knowing the rules of
a genre heightens the enjoyment of it, and th e outcome means more
when th e rules are followed. This principle may also heighten our
pleasure in reading books like A Thousand Acres, which are based on
other v ery familiar texts.
Dove models the experience after a kind of conversation between
what he term s the "Voice of Cognition," the "Voice of th e Novel," and
the "Lecturer Beside the Screen." The Voice of the Novel basically
repeats th e content of the sto ry —what is happening, how the events are
perceived within th at single story (e.g., "It’s an irresolvable conflict").
The Voice of Cognition is the formula talking ("Romances always have
happy endings so this is not an irresolvable conflict").
These voices are similar to what Kenneth Burke term s the
psychology of information, which emphasizes the "giving of information,"
and the psychology of form, which emphasizes the "creation of an
appetite in the mind of the auditor, and the adequate satisfying of th at
appetite" (Counter-Statem ent 31). Put another way, with the psychology
of information, language is "intrinsically interesting," as opposed to
"intrinsically valuable," whereas with th e psychology of form, language
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is valuable for what it does, not what it says (Counter-Statement 33,
37). Like Dove’s Voice of the Novel and Voice of Cognition, Burke
believes th at both kinds of psychology are always present. However
unlike Dove, who believes the voices reside in the text, Burke locates
them in th e audience. The ty p e of psychology emphasized depends on
what the reader is looking for, information or aesthetic pleasure.
Furtherm ore, while Dove believes his voices are present only in formula
fiction, Burke insists th at th ere is no "difference in kind between the
classic method and th e method of the cheapest contemporary melodrama,"
at least as far as these "psychologies" are concerned (Counter-Statement
37)
In place of Burke’s active reader, who determines which kind of
psychology will be emphasized, Dove sets up the Lecturer Beside the
Screen, who "passes along the messages and makes those signals that
are private to the experienced reader and will pass largely unrecognized
by the uninitiated" (23). This voice shares qualities of both the reader
and author. It mediates between the other two voices, but may mislead
or make mistakes. The Lecturer Beside the Screen stands for the
successful interpretation process of the skilled formula reader, and is
analogous to Iser’s implied reader.
While Dove’s analysis is cogent and informative, his terminology
leaves something to be desired. Describing these perspectives as
"voices" masks the fact th at readers construct such conversations for
themselves. Dove also speaks of how the readers cannot hear all of
these voices until they become "conditioned" by the formula, a passive
image. Though Dove insists th a t the reading process is interactive, not
merely passive consumption, his language overshadows these claims and
in th at respect is misleading. Nevertheless, a reader who cares enough
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to invest time and energy into creating and listening to these voices is
likely to become a fan of the genre.
Such fans are rewarded in th at they can perceive subplots and
signs of character evolution th at develop between books in a series,
rath er than within a single book. For example, one im portant subplot of
a feminist detective series concerns the detective’s quest for self-
knowledge. The detective may be a "private eye," but th at eye is
turned outward, into society, rath er than inward. The detective
typically gains in self-aw areness only when outside events force it on
her. This is definitely tru e of Kinsey Millhone, who, although she is
skilled at unearthing information about families, and although she lives
in the same state in which she was born, knows next to nothing about
her own biological family. Her parents were killed in a car accident
when she was young, she was raised by a bachelor au n t—this is the
sum of her knowledge. And Kinsey wraps her loner statu s around
herself like a protective cape. When a woman she happens to meet on
the periphery of an investigation (in "J" Is fo r Judgment) mentions
Kinsey to a friend, and when th at friend tu rn s out to be Kinsey’s long-
lost cousin, knowledge of her family is forced upon her. But Kinsey
doesn’t like it; she abruptly withdraws. The next book in the series
( "K" Is fo r Killer) barely acknowledges these occurrences, however. The
series character grows and changes at a slower pace than a character
in a single novel. (Kinsey, according to Grafton, ages 6 months per
book; new books are published a t the rate of about one per year.)
This is similar to the progress of soap operas, in which nothing
seems to happen because the pace of events is so slow. The slow pace
also requires quite a bit of repetition, as new view ers/readers are
brought up-to-date. But as Modleski rem arks about soap opera, this
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157
quality may put genre novels in the vanguard of popular art. Not only
do they allow for increased audience involvement, they are better
situated for addressing issues of character and interpersonal relations
than a rt forms which depend on a fixed ending. While th e sense of an
ending is crucial if an individual genre novel is to be successful, the
series and th e genre as a whole are characterized by indeterminacy.
Kinsey may have located yet another criminal, but what will happen to
her relationship with her family? And what about her relationship with
Jonah Robb? Will he ever leave his abusive wife? etc.
The complexity of horizontal reading explains why stru ctu ralist
analyses of genre are ultimately unsatisfactory. Such analyses can be
useful for limited purposes, but they are frequently unable to explain
the power of one kind of text as opposed to another. Dove’s
explanations, for example, while illuminating, are too general to be useful
in this regard. One of the more specific principles of m ystery he
identifies, for example, that of not allowing unnecessary characters into
the text (42), is actually a mark of all narrative. If it were not, readers
of James Joyce’s Ulysses wouldn’t have speculated for countless pages
on the identity of th e man in the mackintosh.
Similarly, Dove’s stages of cumulation, postponement, alternation,
potentiality are not limited to the m ystery genre, or even to genre
fiction, especially when he defines them as nonsequential and possibly
overlapping (50-51). In fact, they could easily be applied to A
Thousand Acres. Cumulation ("the phase th at accommodates the
development of promises, clues, questions, tensions which will determine
later effects") occurs in th at part of A Thousand Acres where Larry
gives his farm to his older daughters, and Ginny has premonitions of
doom. Postponement ("the phase in which the promise of early
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158
resolution is deferred") takes place when the effects of L arry’s actions
do not "blow over"; in fact, they worsen. Larry begins to act
unpredictably, Caroline and th e townspeople suspect foul play, etc.
Alternation ("the period of doubt, where the chances regarding the
outcome are uncertain") encompasses th e section of the novel where the
characters act without noticeable benefit: they take the case to court,
Pete commits suicide, and Ginny tries once again to fit into the rhythm
of farm life. And potentiality ("the crisis, in which chances appear to
be favoring a given outcome") occurs when Ginny leaves Ty, and
steadfastly refuses to participate in the farm community. Identifying
these stages in A Thousand Acres does oversimplify a complex plot, and
it completely overlooks many of the more intriguing subplots (such as
what happens to Jess). Still, it works as well as Dove promises th at it
will for m ystery and other genre fiction, suggesting th at his model does
not identify what is unique about popular forms.
The applicability of Dove’s "Suspense S tructure" to a non-formula
novel may be explained in p art by its similarity to linguistic story
grammar. In The Psychology o f Reading, Insup and M . Martin Taylor
identify several hypothesized story grammars, which posit several story
parts, all of which can be labelled, and which are temporally or causally
related (314). A typical story grammar contains elements such as
setting, beginning, reaction, attempt, outcome, and ending (314-15).
Setting and ending have no analogue in Dove’s "Suspense Structure,"
probably because Dove doesn’t concern himself with all of the elements
of the story, ju s t th e p arts which cause suspense. However, the other
elements of sto ry grammar are very similar to Dove’s elements.
Beginning is roughly equivalent to cumulation, reaction to postponement
(characters react when they realize they aren’t facing a simple problem),
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attem pt to alternation (though characters act, it isn ’t clear which, if
any, actions will succeed), and outcome to potentiality (when the
probable resolution of th e situation is made clear).
This similarity to story grammar suggests th a t Dove, apparently
without reading linguistic analyses of th e story, has developed an
accurate model of how suspense works. However, if this model can be
applied to any kind of story, it does not explain what makes reading in
a category different from reading a literary novel. Nor does it allow for
the active participation of a reader, who in Dove’s model is lectured by,
rath er than in dialogue with, the text, and who in Taylor and Taylor’s
model is not given even th at small role. Because readers who are
imprisoned by a formula are no more in control of their actions than
read ers and w riters held in th rall by th e plot, such models trivialize the
reading process, and therefore cannot explain or overcome bias against
reading popular fiction. What is needed is a functional definition of
these texts, one which takes into account the act of reading
horizontally, in o rd er for the appeal of these novels to be understood.
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Chapter V
Reading and Rereading: A Hypertext Model of Genre Fiction
I can’t wait to check my e-mail each day for th e newest
posts in this thread. It’s like [reading] a whodunnit.
(J. B. Prentiss)
As the above epigraph (from a post to an electronic mailing list
for American literature) dem onstrates, th e effects of any language use
depend on the intentions of the h ea rer/read er as much as the intentions
of the speaker/w riter. Because language is a human construct, we are
never passive recipients but active participants in it. In order to
understand the bias against popular literature, therefore, we need to
look closely at how readers read and write such texts, especially since
the practices of reading and writing have themselves been criticized
(e.g., mindlessly consuming plot, clumsily imitating literary styles).
Rhetorical and linguistic theories which focus on language in action are
ideally suited to th is type of investigation, not only because they
examine how language is used, but also because they allow for differing
intentions of the people using it.
Intentions are central to all language uses. As John R. Searle
states in "What Is a Speech Act?" in order for communication to take
place, we must believe th a t language is intentionally produced, as
opposed to it being a resu lt of natural phenomena such as breathing or
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digestion. Kenneth Burke makes the same point when he talks about the
difference between action, which is intentional, and motion, which is
unintentional:
I need but point out that, w hether or not we are ju st
things in motion, we think of one another . . . as
persons. And the difference between a thing and a
person is th a t the one merely moves whereas the other
acts. For the sake of the argum ent, I’m even willing to
gran t th at the distinction . . . is but an illusion. All I
would claim is that, illusion or not, the human race
cannot possibly get along with itself on the basis of any
other intuition. (Language as Symbolic Action 1040)
All too often in literary scholarship, writing has been characterized as
action while reading (especially reading of popular genre fiction) has
been characterized as motion, a passive process which is wholly
constrained by the w riter. The result of reducing the action of reading
to motion is th at all determ inations of literary value are presumed to be
text-dependent. However, because this conception of value cannot
account for all the variables, we find ourselves unable to explain our
reasons for preferring one kind of text over another.
Speech Act Theory
In fact, even the smallest uses of language rely on a complex
network of variables, not on the text alone, as speech act theory shows.
Searle points out th at any speaker always performs several kinds of
acts, including the physical act of making speech noises (utterances),
the propositional act of referring to certain items of content, the
persuasive act of affecting listeners, and the functional act of making a
statement, asking a question, issuing a command, giving a report,
greeting, warning, etc. This last, the illocutionary act, Searle considers
to be the basic unit of communication, because it allows us to
understand far more than the literal words th at are spoken.
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So in th e following conversational exchange (Winterowd 34):
Wife to husband (at a party): I t’s getting late.
Husband to wife: I t’s only eleven,
according to the literal meaning of th e discourse, the couple is
exchanging information. But given the context of the exchange, at a
party, the husband also understands the wife to say, "It’s time to go."
And the wife un d erstan d s the husband to say, "I don’t want to go yet."
These understood meanings are the illocutions of the exchange.
J. L. Austin reminds us th at in order to perform a successful
speech act, more is needed than simply to u tte r a grammatical sentence.
The context also must be appropriate to the illocution. In the example
above, one appropriateness condition is that the wife must speak to
someone with whom she has an intimate relationship, and to whom she is
roughly equal in statu s. If she made the same comment to a guest in
her house (at least without preamble), she would be perceived as being
rude.
Speech act theory terms the husband’s response in the above
exchange as the perlocution, or consequence, of the wife’s illocution, or
intention. It is im portant to recognize, however, th at the perlocution is
not constrained by th e illocution, as shown by this amusing exchange
(from the film White Men Can’t Jump):
Woman to man (in bed): I ’m th irsty .
Man: (gets up and brings her a glass of water)
The man’s response would be perfectly reasonable if the woman’s
illocution were a req u est for water. But when the man re tu rn s to bed
with the water, th e woman exclaims angrily th at she did not want him to
bring her a glass of water, she wanted him to sympathize by saying,
"Yes, I know what it’s like to be th irsty ." The man’s consistent failure
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to understand the woman’s illocutions forms a humorous subplot to the
movie.
As this example shows, every illocution depends for its success on
th e interpretation of th e listener. And every re su ltan t perlocution can
be interpreted as an illocution. In this way, every act of speaking
involves an act of reading. This is even more obvious with written
discourse, which, as Burke points out,
is a constitutive act—and after the act of its composition
by a poet who had acted in a particular temporal scene,
it survives as an objective stru ctu re, capable of being
examined in itself, in temporal scenes quite different
from the scene of its composition, and by agents quite
different from the agent who originally enacted it.
(Grammar o f Motives 482)
Thus removed from th e original scene, the meaning is more dependent
on th e interpretation of the reader, and th e perlocutionary responses to
any w ritten speech act are more likely to vary.
This becomes more complicated as language use expands beyond
single statem ents to longer texts. H . P. Grice’s concept of the
Cooperative Principle (CP), in which he attem pts to relate Austin’s
appropriateness conditions to general rules for verbal discourse (and
other goal-directed cooperative human behaviors), can illuminate what is
happening with these longer texts. Grice points out th a t since language
use, and in particular conversation, is perceived as coherent, it must be
governed by a general principle which participants observe, namely,
"Make your conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage
at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk
exchange in which you are engaged" (26).
In order to observe the CP, Grice posits th a t we follow four
"maxims": 1) maxims of quantity—make your contribution as informative
as required for th e purpose, but not overly informative, 2) maxims of
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164
quality—make your contribution one th at you believe to be tru e, and for
which you have adequate evidence, 3) maxims of relevance—make su re
your contribution is related to th e point of the exchange, and 4) maxims
of manner—make your contribution clear, brief, orderly, and
unambiguous. These rules function as very general appropriateness
conditions which participants in language use normally assume to be
present.
Interestingly, Grice became interested in the functioning of
ordinary language in an attem pt to refu te th e position th at it was
"loose, imperfect, metaphysically loaded, and altogether inadequate to
philosophy and science" (P ratt 128). Grice’s goal parallels Mary Louise
P ra tt’s goal of refuting the assumption that ordinary language is
impoverished compared to literary language. This assumption th at
literature is not a "real" speech act, but a "special" kind of language
use, P ratt argues, has led to an impoverished understanding of both
literatu re and ordinary language.
Skepticism about ordinary language by both scientists and literary
scholars, P ratt notes, "is in the end skepticism about ordinary people,
be they nonscientists or nonpoets" (128). As the language of science
and the literature of the academy became increasingly inaccessible to
people lacking specialized training, this inaccessibility became a sign of
value. Ultimately, this division between ordinary and "special" kinds of
language use created a situation which both P ratt and Grice find
objectionable: "namely the mistake of positing a contrast based on
intrinsic features of expressions when in fact the contrast, to the extent
th a t it exists, is based on m eaning-independent contextual features, that
is, use" (129).
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This same mistake is responsible for th e split between "good"
canonical literatu re and "bad" formula fiction. Not only have we
assumed th at literatu re follows completely different principles from those
of other language use, we have assumed th at formula or genre fiction
follows completely different principles from those of literature. This has
impoverished our understanding of the reading of both kinds of texts.
Furtherm ore, the assumption th at literary language, "ordinary" language,
and generic language differ is not supportable, as P ratt shows in her
book, Toward a Speech Act Theory o f Literary Discourse.
Congruences Between Literary and Nonliterary Discourse
P ratt has traced numerous similarities between literary speech and
nonliterary speech. These features are also points of similarity between
formula fiction and literary (non-formula) fiction:
1) S tructure: Narrative display texts occur naturally in speech, as
research by William Labov demonstrated, and fully developed narratives
are made up of the following sections: abstract, orientation, complicating
action, evaluation, resu lt or resolution, coda. These six sections also
make up literary narratives, P ratt states, especially when features such
as the title, cover "blurbs," and the like are taken into account (these
can provide th e abstract). Such sections are also p art of genre
narratives. In any of these narratives, sections might be combined or
abbreviated, b u t they are always present when the narrative is fully
developed. P ratt suggests that, "[u]nless we are foolish enough to claim
that people organize their oral anecdotes around p atterns they learn
from reading literature," we must conclude th at "the formal similarities
between natural narrative and literary narrative derive from the fact
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th at at some level of analysis they are utterances of the same type"
(69). That type must be identified a t the level of action.
2) Context: Both literary and nonliterary texts need appropriate
contexts in order to be properly understood. This sense of context is
roughly analogous to Austin’s concept of appropriateness conditions.
L iterary scholars, and even some speech act theorists, have assumed
th at th e fictive n ature of literatu re means th at it is not a "true" speech
act but a "pretend" speech act, because it lacks a "real world" context.
This idea has appeal because, as P ratt admits, much of what it is based
on is tru e: literary works are speech acts which are on exhibit, authors
are not bound by th e appropriateness conditions for the speech acts
which they invent, and literary speech acts do not "carry on the
world’s business" th e way other speech acts do.
However, P ra tt reminds us, none of these features are unique to
literatu re (they are present in jokes, teasing, hypothetical scenarios,
expressions of re g re t for "what could have been," etc.) and they
therefore cannot define literature. Furtherm ore, the fictive status of a
narrative text does not change the way it is used: we read a "true-
crime" novel in much the same way as we would read a fictional
detective story, for example. Rather than assuming th at literature lacks
a context, P ratt suggests, we should conclude th a t literatu re is its own
context. This is exactly what happens with genre fiction—it forms its
own context, within which th e text is most fruitfully read. Furtherm ore,
if the text does not fit the expected generic context, the reader will
likely respond with annoyance and disdain, regardless of how well it
might fit other contexts.
3) Audience: The audience is an important influence on natural
narrative. Because spoken n arrativ e requires a longer-than-usual
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167
conversational "turn," the teller must ask the permission of her hearers
to impose upon them in this way. (The request is often implicit, in
questions such as, "Did I ever tell you about . . . ?" and th e granting
or denial of permission is likewise implicit: "No, what happened?" or "I
was th ere when you talked about it to. . . .") The granting of
permission places a special burden on the speaker to be respectful and
entertaining, and th e audience thereby assumes the rig h t to evaluate
the speaker. So powerful is the expectation of audience evaluation,
even nonresponse on th e p art of the audience is thought to be
evaluative (a negative response). Effective speakers will pay attention
to such responses or nonresponses and alter th eir n arratives
accordingly.
P ratt points out many features of reading literary narrative which
parallel listening to spoken narrative. Permission is granted when the
reader picks up the book, and the reader expects to be entertained as a
resu lt of granting th a t permission. If not, the reader does not simply
stop reading; he usually responds with annoyance or even anger that
the book has wasted his time. Furtherm ore, evaluation takes place on
the level of the individual’s response (in throwing th e book across the
room, recommending it to friends, etc.) and on th e level of institutional
response (book reviews, inclusion in college syllabi, etc.). All of these
features are also p resen t when genre fiction is read; in fact, they may
be more prominent, because the sacralization of literatu re since the
nineteenth century has led some readers to believe they have less rig h t
to respond to canonized literatu re than other read ers ("Something must
be wrong with me if I don’t like Hawthorne, so I ’ll ju s t keep my mouth
shut"). The fan culture, on the other hand, can influence the future
direction of a genre, sometimes to the dismay of w riters in that genre.
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This is especially tru e in the case of speculative fiction, which
has an extremely active fan culture. This situation inspired SF w riter
Thomas M . Disch to state:
Genre fiction may be distinguished from other kinds of
writing in being shaped by the (presumed) demands of
its audience ra th e r than by the creative will of its
w riters. . . . It follows th at we may learn more about
any genre by examining its readership than by studying
its w riters, (qtd. in Broderick 8)
For Disch, the importance of audience demands accounts for "what was
right" about SF as well as "most of what was radically wrong." He did
not insist th at attendance to audience demands was necessarily wrong,
but since he believed the audience of SF to be constituted of children
for whom "crucial aspects of adult experience [such as sex and love]
remain[ed] boring," he found the genre to be limited thereby (Broderick
8). Disch’s conclusions might have been different had he a more
positive view of his audience, and had he recognized th at audience
demands influence all narratives, not ju st genre fiction. Still, he
correctly acknowledges th e importance of audience participation in the
genre.
Conversational participation frequently is influenced by narrative
in another very specific way: the dynamics of tu rn -tak in g in
conversation also creates the tendency for n arratives to occur in
sequence, with each participant being granted the opportunity for an
extra-long opportunity to speak. Such sequenced narratives are
reflected in literature (as in The Canterbury Tales); they are also part
of discussions about literature, when one reader describes a book,
another reader describes a similar book, etc. This sharing of narratives
about books is a t least as likely to occur in conversations about genre
texts as in conversations about traditional literary texts. Furtherm ore,
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169
the creation of new genre texts can be interpreted as following the
principles of narrative tu rn -tak in g in conversation.
4) Definitiveness, preparation, and pre-selection: The fact th at we
consent to become an audience is not the only reason we approach
literary works with increased expectations of delight, P ratt tells us. W e
also have higher expectations of literary works because we have world
knowledge about how they are created. W e know that, except in
unusual cases of posthumous or unwilling publication (which are always
made known to us), the w riter considers the text to be finished, because
she has had the opportunity to plan, prepare, and revise her work. W e
also know th at th e text has passed through an extensive selection
process carried out by specialists, including agents, publishers, editors,
review ers, censors, librarians, professors, etc. These facts may not
determine our expectations of the work (as P ratt notes, the cover blurb
"Banned in Boston” will affect the gospel preacher, the porno fan, and
the literary historian quite differently (119)), but they do influence our
expectations of the work. In the same way, these expectations also form
part of our evaluation of non-literary language acts, such as guest
speakers, w riters of letters to the editor, etc.
Obviously, all of these features also affect our expectations of
popular formula texts, but many of us assume (without much evidence)
th at the selection process for such works is less rigorous.
Consequently, th e level of quality we expect to find may be lower, and
our ultimate evaluation of such texts may be lower as well.
5) Tellability: P ratt emphasizes th at tellability (a use, not a type,
of language) is what causes the speech act to be worth making and
worth attending to. P ratt defines this quality as a "display-producing
relevance" which "must represent states of affairs th at are held to be
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170
unusual, contrary to expectations, or otherw ise problematic" (136).
Tellable assertions have a different purpose from informative assertions;
they are not only intended to produce belief in th e ir hearer but to
create "an imaginative and affective involvement in the state of affairs
[being represented] and an evaluative stance toward [that state of
affairs]" (136). P ratt posits th a t tellability is an aspect of the maxim of
relevance. If statem ents are not tellable, they are not directed toward
the point of the speech act, which is to create involvement on the p art
of the hearer.
In conversation, all such display texts reflect two characteristics
of the tellable: (a) detachability from immediate speech context (the fact
that something is tellable is sufficient reason to bring it up in a
conversation) and (b) susceptibility to elaboration. These
characteristics, P ratt writes, are also important to literature. Literary
texts do not depend on specific prior discourse to be understood
("except in special cases like sequels, parodies, or rejoinders"), nor
must they be connected to the immediate surrounding or personal
circumstance of the reader. In fact, the success of such works is
evaluated at least partly on the breadth of the audience, which relies on
the work’s being detachable. (This is even more tru e for genre works,
since the sacralization of literatu re has reduced th e value of a wide
audience for canonical literary texts.) Furtherm ore, literary works are
susceptible to elaboration, because the elaboration helps readers to
savor the narrative.
This concept of "tellability" explains why it would be counter
intuitive to assume th at people deliberately select formula texts because
they want to read the same thing over and over again. If it were the
case th at every new book in a genre provided more of the same, the
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171
narratives would not be tellable; they would violate th e maxim of
relevance.
There are some cases in which the tellability of a narrative
outweighs its redundancy, of course. W e might ask a friend to repeat a
favorite anecdote at a party, or a relative might recount some exciting
episode in family history, even though everyone present knows what
happened. However, in these situations the listeners have a more
participatory role than simply th at of a voluntary audience. The
listeners in these situations initiate the telling, and are more able to
stop the telling without being rude. ("Tell me again . . . what
happened? Oh yes, now I remember.") Furtherm ore, in the case of
family stories, all participants tend to join in the telling, and th e stories
are used not only as display texts, but as means for bringing the
participants closer together (Ochs). Because reading is constitutive, as
Burke makes clear (above), readers are always participating in any act
of reading a sto ry by making the required im plicatures (interpreting the
illocutions). But in these situations, the participation of the listeners is
of a different kind than th e participation of a reader. Therefore,
reading a genre novel is not analogous to speech situations which
involve listening to the same anecdote over and over again.
It is possible to think of a new genre text as an elaboration on
the generic formula, however. If we look at genres as being
constitutive of a larger (con)text, the tellability of a certain book will
depend on th e success of its new elaboration on the formula. The
difference between redundancy and elaboration is a fine one, both for
spoken and for w ritten narrative. In all cases, th e orientation of the
reader is decisive. If the reader perceives a familiar detail as being
supplied to enable her to savor the text, she will more easily tolerate it
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172
than if she perceives it as being supplied out of ineptitude. If the
balance tips too far toward redundancy, she will consider the maxim of
relevance to have been violated, and she may decide th at the
Cooperative Principle is no longer in force. The same thing can happen,
P ratt notes, in ordinary conversation.
6) A hyper protected Cooperative Principle (CP): Our knowledge of
th e literary context allows us to be more tolerant of deviance in
published works, however, because it "hyperprotects" the CP. Because
we understand books to have undergone a rigorous preparation and
selection process, we assume th at redundancy or other deviance from
Grice’s maxims occurs deliberately. As a result, readers will go to
extreme lengths to keep the CP in force. Does The Sound and the Fury
open with an almost incomprehensibly fragm ented narrative? Well, we
assume th at Faulkner has done this to make a special point, and rath er
than throw the book across the room, we study it in hopes of
deciphering his purpose. Does Tristram Shandy ramble on rath er than
presenting his narrative in a linear fashion? We assume th at Laurence
Sterne so stru ctu red his book for a reason, so we tolerate the
randomness and try to figure out how th e book coheres. And so forth.
This feature of the CP in literary contexts means that all deviance from
Grice’s maxims will be perceived as deliberate flouting of them, and
readers view this flouting with pleasure, as though it were a game, what
P ratt calls the game of "verbal jeopardy." This game is also played —
with as much pleasure—in other situations where the CP is similarly
hyper protected. For example, we enjoy being able to tease, and even to
insult, those relatives to whom we are so close th at we know they will
not in terp ret our speech acts as being anything but friendly.
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Ju st as "ordinary" literatu re provides its own context for
evaluating deviance, genre literatu re also creates its own context.
Deviance from a formula will be rehabilitated by th e reader, so th a t a
genre will tolerate almost any kind of violation of its own rules.
Romance novels may not end in marriage, or even a "happily ever after"
nonmarried relationship. Detective stories may not concern a crime, and
when they do, th e crime may not ever be solved. Speculative fiction
stories may not contain a single alien, spaceship, magical or paranormal
ability, time shift, or distant planet. This deviance may provoke
controversy (as did Agatha Christie’s The Murder o f Roger Ackroyd),
but it will not necessarily force a book out of its genre. To the
contrary, deviance from generic rules may increase a book’s tellability
in th at genre. In short, the existence of a genre provides an additional
level a t which author and reader can play the "game" of verbal
jeopardy. In this sense, th e enjoyment of reading formula fiction stems
from the activity’s increased complexity, not its reduced complexity, as
some literary scholars assume.
The main limitation of P ratt’s discussion for an investigation of
popular genres is th at she tre a ts th e context of literature, and generic
contexts, as if they were static. This is not a resu lt of
m isunderstanding, but ra th er of her need to limit the scope of her
argum ent. Obviously, no speech act theorist could accept a concept of
any kind of language use as being absolute or formalized. Similarly, in
order to understand how language works within a genre, we need to
create a stable understanding of genre.
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174
A Rhetorical Definition of Genre
Carolyn R. Miller’s article, "Genre as a Social Act," helps explain
how genre can be a stable means of classification without reducing
genre to taxonomy. Her aims are akin to Burke’s aims for his
dram atistic terminology: in order to be useful, term s describing
rhetorical action should be generative as well as explicative, and they
should be easy concepts to grasp, despite the complexity of their
implications. The classifying principle Miller seeks to establish for
genre is based on a Burkean understanding of rhetorical action, which
encompasses both substance and form, and which involves situation and
motive, "because human action, whether symbolic or otherwise, is
interpretable only against a context of situation and through the
attrib u tin g of motives" (Miller 152). This is in marked contrast to
literary classifications which are based solely on formal ra th e r than
pragmatic elements, and which tend to create a closed set, rath er than
an open set in which new elements are added as old ones decay. Still,
formal elements are im portant in th at they constitute p art of the
situation within which the act is interpreted.
Pointing out th at genres occur because situations recur, Miller
notes that:
inaugurals, eulogies, courtroom speeches, and the like
have conventional forms because they arise in situations
with similar stru c tu re s and elements and because rhetors
respond in similar ways, having learned from precedent
what is appropriate and what effects th eir actions are
likely to have on other people. (152)
In this way, formal classifications fuse with the intentions of the
speaker to produce a recognizable genre of discourse. This fusion of
formal and illocutionary elements occurs at many hierarchical levels of
meaning. Though Miller refers specifically to nonfiction genres which
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175
occur in spoken language, her discussion usefully illuminates popular
literary genres as well.
For any speech act, whether literary or not, meaning can be
in terpreted only within a specific context. Since context is hierarchical,
Miller points out, the substance of an utterance, and its context (form)
are relative concepts which occur at many levels. When substance and
form are fused at one level, they are then subject to formalization at a
higher level. In tu rn , th at higher level is subject to fu rth er
formalization, and so on.
W e can think of this process in term s of quilting. If the semantic
value of words (substance) are pieces of fabric, and the grammar for
using those words (form) equate to the rules for a quilt pattern (such
as log cabin or double wedding ring), we can attach those pieces
together to make a sentence. From then on, we can tre a t those
connected pieces, a complete sentence, as one fabric "block."
At the next level of discourse, we might take our newly
constructed sentence (a quilt block), and connect it to another sentence
according to the rules of speech act theory. At th is level, "substance"
is the sentence (or quilt block), "form" is the rules (or quilt pattern)
for attaching two sentences (or blocks), and a larger piece, a
conversational exchange (or bigger quilt block), is created from a fusion
of the two. These larger pieces, speech acts, can also be connected
according to the rules of a language game, and so on.
Genre, Miller proposes, occurs when constitutive rules (which tell
us how to fuse form and substance to make meaning) and regulative
rules (which tell us how the fusion itself is to be interpreted within its
context) coincide. For example, conventions of form and substance
combine under constitutive rules to create the eulogy, while regulative
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176
rules of religion or public affairs enable us to in terp ret the eulogy. At
the same time, genre may form the substance for higher-level forms and
contexts. For example, eulogies of Richard Nixon and other political
leaders may constitute a new genre, interpretable in the context of an
American history based on the belief th at history is created by "great
men" rath er than by groups of people who possess lower status.
Again, as Miller notes, the act of interpretation is fundamental to
our use of genre in discourse. While we rely on genres of discourse to
help us act in recu rren t situations, what recu rs is not the objective
circumstance, or even our subjective interpretation of it, but rath er "an
intersubjective phenomenon, a social occurrence" which "cannot be
understood on m aterialist terms" (156).
Miller tu rn s to Alfred Schutz’s concept of type to explain how this
is possible. Because our stock of knowledge is only useful insofar as it
can be brought to bear on new experience, we understand the new by
noting relevant similarities. These similarities become constituted as a
type, and new types are formed from previous typifications which are
not adequate to determine a new situation. Once a new type has proved
its usefulness in many new situations, we begin to use it routinely.
People share common types, Shutz notes, because types are created and
shared though communication: "[i]n short, the language can be
construed as the sedimentation of typical experiential schemata which
are typically relevant in a society" (Miller 157). What recu rs in a
situation, in other words, is our construal of a type, which has been
socially, not individually, created.
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177
Rhetorical Genres and Horizontal Reading
Once we understand how genre is a social act, we can better
appreciate how readers encounter popular genre texts. When genre is
incorrectly conceptualized as a static object, reading formula texts is
reduced to a passive activity, one which takes little mental effort.
Fredric Jameson, for example, considers literary genre to be analogous
to a formal contract between the w riter and a specific public which
forbids undesirable audience responses. Ideally, he argues, the w riter’s
performance controls th e reactions of the readers. However, in a
capitalist society, other institutions (of publishing, marketing, etc.)
"interfere" with both th e use of genre and th e production of literary
works. The resu lt of such interference is
the half-life of th e subliterary genres of mass culture,
transform ed into the d ru g sto re and airp o rt paperback
lines of gothics, mysteries, romances, bestsellers, and
popular biographies, where they await the resurrection
of th eir immemorial, archetypal resonance at the hands
of a Frye or a Bloch. (107)
Rather than the a rtist controlling the audience, in other words, the
forces of capitalism control the audience, forcing readers into a zombie
like existence.
Speech act theory, however, makes it clear th at no w riter can
permanently formalize a genre, or fix the meaning of an utterance,
because meaning is formed by action: the read ers’ fusion of form and
substance with context. This is especially significant for written
language, which can be transported from context to context.
Furtherm ore, readers have the option of continuing the process of
interpretation at higher levels of the hierarchy. This is what happens
with genre fiction. Readers approach a text, say, Sheri S. Tepper’s
Grass, with certain expectations about the novel’s context, which they
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could define as th e other books in the trilogy. After reading Grass
according to th at context, they could then in terp ret the trilogy in the
context of all of Tepper’s novels, or all of Tepper’s novels in the
context of all of speculative fiction—and in light of these expanded
contexts, re in te rp re t Grass, the trilogy, or Tepper’s oeuvre, or all three.
Miller posits that, in order to constitute a genre, any collection of
discourses must fit certain guidelines (163):
1. The collection should be based on a conventional category of
discourse based in large-scale typification of rhetorical action; as action,
the category or genre will acquire meaning from situation and from the
social context in which th a t situation arises.
2. As meaningful action, the discourses must be interpretable by
means of rules; genre rules occur at a relatively high level on a
hierarchy of rules for symbolic interaction.
3. The concept of genre for the collection of discourses must be
distinct from form. Form is the more general term used at all levels of
the hierarchy, while genre is a form at one particular level th a t is a
fusion of lower-level form and characteristic substance.
4. The discourses must be able to serve as th e substance of
forms at higher levels; as recu rren t p attern s of language use, genres
help constitute the substance of our cultural life.
5. The discourses must function as a rhetorical means for
mediating private intentions and social exigence; genre motivates by
connecting the private with the public, the singular with the recurrent.
Popular fictional genres fulfill all of these conditions. First,
genre texts do refer to a conventional category of discourse (the novel);
the meaning of specific novels is enhanced by knowledge of the genre
to which they belong. Second, they are interpretable by means of
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rules; with "hard" science fiction novels, for example, one rule is th at
all developments must be logical extensions of c u rre n t scientific
principles. Third, genre is distinct from form, which is why formal
analyses in the manner of stru ctu ralists ultimately prove unsatisfactory.
Fourth, a genre can serve as the substance of forms at higher
levels; the genre of detective story helps make up th e broader genre of
mystery, for example. Genres can also be mixed, as in the futuristic
detective story or fu tu ristic romance. And such genres can help us
in terp ret present-day events—cultural fascination with the celebrity
trial of the moment is no doubt enhanced by our familiarity with the
whodunnit. And fifth, the popular genre is a means for mediating
private intentions (the individual story) with social exigence; it connects
the individual story with similar stories, thereby enhancing its effect.
The Genre of Speculative Fiction
Miller’s explanation of genre as a social act helps explain the
genre of speculative fiction, which is notable for an absence of formula.
In fact, fans and scholars cannot even agree on how to define it. The
first edition in 1979 of the authoritative Encyclopedia o f Science Fiction
cited no less than 22 . . . definitions plus several
additional caveats, before summarizing (rath er feebly): "a
survey of the accounts of the genre quoted above
reveals two main expectations: th at a work of SF should
be concerned with the extension of scientific knowledge
and all manner of consequences thereof; and that it
should be imaginatively and intellectually adventurous;
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and even the former is not universally accepted." (qtd.
in Broderick 6)
The difficulty of definition is reflected in the numerous names for the
genre, which include science fiction, sci fi, science fantasy, SF, and
speculative fiction.*
That speculative fiction is not based on a formula is exemplified
by the novels Grass, Raising the Stones, and Sideshow by Tepper.
Though these books are understood to be a trilogy, each is exceedingly
complex in its own right, with plots and subplots impossible to
summarize completely in less than several paragraphs each. (The
difficulty of summarizing Tepper’s books is borne out by published
reviews, as well as scholarly articles; see, for example, pieces by Tom
Easton and Beverly Price.) The complexity of plot is increased by the
multiple perspectives in Tepper’s novels, each of which uses many
points of view from animal to human to spiritual.
Furtherm ore, each novel bears only a tangential relationship to
the others. They take place in the same universe, but on different
planets, at different times, and for the most part, with different
characters. Marjorie Westriding Y rariers, one of the protagonists of
Grass, is mentioned once at the end of Raising the Stones, by characters
who consider her to be a prophet. They spell her name, "Morgori
Oestrydingh," so readers who are not attentive might easily miss this
*The appropriateness of each term is hotly debated by the genre’s
fans. I have chosen to use both "speculative fiction," and "SF," which
seem to me to be the most inclusive, especially as "SF" can refer to
"science fiction," "sci fi," and "science fantasy," as well as speculative
fiction.
9
Consequently, I make no claims th at the descriptions which follow
completely summarize these novels; significant characters and events
have been omitted for the sake of clarity. The descriptions do,
however, give enough information about the novels for them to be
compared.
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181
connection. At the end of Sideshow, Marjorie appears with a character
from Raising the Stones, Samnasnier Girat. Here, they are named "Jory"
and "Asner," and they play only a small p art in the story. Aside from
these cameo appearances, no protagonists re tu rn from book to book.
Moreover, not even the central issues of the books stay the same
throughout the trilogy, except in the most general of ways. Grass takes
place mostly on th e planet Grass, where the Y rarier family has been
sent to secretly investigate the planet’s freedom from plague. Grass has
become home to other species besides humans, including the evil Hippae
(dangerously mistaken for horses), and th e good, but ineffectual, Arbai.
From th is point, Tepper weaves together many subplots, such as
Marjorie’s difficulties with her sexist husband and the policies of the
Catholic church, th e spread of plague to all civilized planets except
Grass, the desire of Sanctity (a fundam entalist religious order) to take
over the universe, the moral responsibilities of the Arbai in relation to
the Hippai, and the obligations of individuals who face such dilemmas.
Raising the Stones begins with an egalitarian society being
established on the planet of Hobbs Land. As the novel progresses,
Hobbs Lander Samnasnier Girat’s longing for his father is intertwined
with the dangerous consequences of belief in mythic heroes, the
psychoses of civilizations such as those of Voorstood or the High Baidee
(the latter accidentally created by Marjorie) which are based on hatred,
and the importance of collaborative effort, as opposed to individual
effort, toward social progress. On Hobbs Land, such collaboration is
finally secured by th e presence of gods who grow in the soil, and who
establish a psychic connection between all living entities on the planet.
The last member of the trilogy, Sideshow, takes place on the
planet Elsewhere, which has refused to admit the Hobbs Land gods.
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Academics on the planet have established an enclave of diversity, in
which every civilization is preserved, free from interference, by
Enforcers who forbid any deviation from established pattern (no matter
how primitively stom ach-churning th at pattern might be). Meanwhile,
Siamese twins from p resent-day Earth are accidentally transported to
this planet, where they play a crucial role in uncovering the answer to
th e Great Question of man’s destiny. This novel is about the results of
such cultural stagnation, the need for human connection, the importance
of individual action, and the impossibility of avoiding a moral stance no
matter how disinterested our academic ideologies might seem.
While certain broad questions, such as how to define moral
responsibility, how to balance free will with social commitment, and how
to avoid oppressive dogma without losing spiritual values, are central to
each volume in the trilogy, these questions are formulated differently in
each book. Furtherm ore, such issues are so broad th at they cannot be
used to delimit this trilogy, or indeed, the genre of speculative fiction.
After all, these concerns are central to many, if not all, literary novels.
What marks this trilogy as speculative fiction seems to be its lack of
formal unity—of time (not only do the novels tak e place at different
times, events do not happen in chronological order), of place (different
planets and different planes of existence), and of character (even of
species)—as opposed to the presence of a single formula which
circum scribes the books.
The "looseness" of the SF genre may heighten the intensity of its
fan culture. Fans may believe they have more opportunity to
participate in directing fu tu re SF developments, and they also see
themselves as constituting the context for SF through their activities.
On the other hand, some of the fiercest fan identifications have been
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centered on th e genre’s more formulaic texts, such as the Star Trek
television series, despite a high level of cultural disdain for them.
Perhaps this resu lts from the practical need to locate a site of
identification on which every participant can agree (in a genre with an
infinite array of possible symbols, for example, the shibboleth cannot be
too esoteric). Or perhaps the high level of fan participation provides
such a rich context for these texts th at it compensates for their
formulaic qualities. Either way, th e high level of fan involvement in SF
relates to the level of participation required to read in the genre.
Attempts to delineate speculative fiction without allowing for such
reader involvement have led to some rem arkably complicated
explanations. Among the more egregious are those definitions suggested
by SF author and critic Damien Broderick in his book, Reading b y
Starlight: Postmodern Science Fiction. Broderick uses several different
definitions, each of which enhances the others. F irst, he compares the
genre to a "phase space," which is a term in physics for a mathematical
space "’whose coordinates are given by the set of independent variables
characterising the state of a dynamical system ,’ and able to map onto
infinitely many dimensions" (23). Then he calls it a mode, by which he
means "an analytic device for understanding the moves in the game of
writing and reading, as negotiations in a social institution regulating the
term s of the contract between reader and writer" (39). The moves in
this game, according to Broderick, rely on metaphors, which provide
3
Even William Shatner, who materially benefits from the adoration of
Star Trek fans, criticized them in a famous Saturday Night Live sketch,
shouting, "Why don’t you morons get a life?" and hinting th at they were
mentally and sexually impaired. This sketch was w ritten as a comedy,
but Shatner makes no secret of th e fact th at he agrees with its basic
theme. Leonard Nimoy is reportedly even stronger in his views.
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maps on many dimensions, including "not simply the traditional
cartographic sense of spacial plots, but temporal mappings as well" (46).
Finally, Broderick incorporates the ideas of phase space and
metaphoric mode into "the interlocking web of fictive words [SF] has
constructed in rhetorical space," in short, the "mega-text." The mega
text works, says Broderick, "by embedding each new work, seen by [SF
author Samuel] Delaney as a self-stru ctu rin g web of non-mundane
signifiers and syntagms, in an even v aster web of interpenetrating
semantic and tropic givens or vectors" (59). Of the term "mega-text,"
which he has borrowed from Christine Brook-Rose, Broderick rem arks in
a footnote, "Perhaps ’hypertext’ would describe it better if the term had
not been appropriated by software designers" (167 n. 25).
Broderick’s attem pts a t definition lack the elegance of a rhetorical
approach based on speech act theory, though the connections are
obvious: Miller’s fusion of action and form to create substance/genre is
roughly analogous to Broderick’s fusion of mode and metaphor/map to
create a mega-text. However, the terms of Broderick’s discussion
suggest new metaphors by which we can understand what happens when
we read formula fiction.
Reading in Hypertext
Most im portant is Broderick’s association of "mega-text" with
"hypertext." His need for specificity led him to reject th e latter term,
but hypertext, as conceived of by software designers, provides a useful
model of th e way genre reading is performed.^ The term "hypertext"
In the discussion of hypertext th at follows, I'm indebted to George
P. Landow’s discussion and explanations in his book Hypertext: The
Convergence o f Contemporary Critical Theory and Technology.
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was coined in the 1960s by programmer Theodor H. Nelson, who defined
it as, "nonsequential writing—text th at branches and allows choices to
th e reader, best read at an interactive screen. As popularly conceived,
this is a series of text chunks connected by links which offer the
reader different pathways" (qtd. in Landow 4). In practice, hypertext
is perhaps best visualized as a text which has points of contact with
other texts. But rath e r than those points of contact being merely
referred to (as happens with allusions, quotes, footnotes, and other
scholarly or literary apparatus), these points of contact make the other
text instantly available.
So instead of following a superscripted reference number to a
footnote or endnote which tells us in minuscule p rin t th a t another text
bears on the discussion, the place where th at other text en ters the
conversation will be designated by an icon or by some other
typographic feature (e.g., bolded text) called a "link." If we activate
th at link (usually through touching the screen with a finger or light
pen, "pointing and clicking" with a mouse, or entering a control
character) the entire other text can be brought onto the screen.
In the same manner, we can create through hypertext points of
contact between p arts of the same text, or between th e second text and
any number of additional texts. The texts which a re linked in this way
do not have to be from the same discipline; they do not even have to be
of the same kind. W e could ju s t as easily find links between poetry
and nonfiction statistical reports, or between words and pictures or
sounds. In many hypertext environments, the reader has the
opportunity to create new links between parts ("nodes") of th e text, and
even between the original text and the read er’s research notes or other
commentary.
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To read hypertext, readers begin at any point, proceed along any
combination of links, and finish when they believe they have read
enough. Often, some kind of visual map of th e nodes and links remains
onscreen throughout the process to help orient them.
W e can locate many significant points of difference between a
traditional text and a hypertext. For one thing, the stru ctu re of a
hypertext eliminates the hierarchy of stru ctu re. In a network, th ere is
no top or bottom; th ere is no absolute beginning or end. The beginning
occurs not in a place, but in an action; in Edward Said’s words, "The
beginning . . . is the first step in the intentional production of
meaning" (qtd. in Landow 58. Said was not specifically referrin g to
hypertext, but his words provide an apt description of it.) And the
ending is not only the last step in the read er’s production of meaning;
it may be located outside the original hypertext altogether, because
readers can "continue to add to the text, to extend it, to make it more
than it was when they began to read" (58). In short, hypertext not
only makes locating a beginning or end impossible; it makes completion
impossible.
In the same way, the insides and outsides of a hypertext are
blurred—we cannot pinpoint what belongs "in" the text and what is
merely extraneous commentary upon it. Even research notes become
experientially different in a hypertext; they have the same physical
statu re as the text itself.
This blurring occurs outside of hypertext, of course, in the
difficulty of locating a canon, or even of defining an author’s oeuvre.
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Michel Foucault has commented on the latter in Language, Counter
memory, Practice:
If we wish to publish the complete works of
Nietzsche . . . where do we draw the line? . . . We will,
of course, include everything th a t Nietzsche himself
published, along with the drafts of his works, his
marginal notations and corrections. But what if, in a
notebook filled with aphorisms, we find a reference, a
rem inder of an appointment, an address, or a laundry
bill, should th is be included in his works? Why
not? . . . If some have found it convenient to bypass
th e individuality of th e writer or his statu s as an
author to concentrate on a work, they have failed to
appreciate th e equally problematic nature of the word
"work" and the unity it designates. (118-19; this
passage is also qtd. in Landow 74)
At the same time, however, hypertext "emphasiz[es] intertextuality in a
way th at page-bound text in books cannot" (Landow 10). Obviously, all
texts refer to other texts, either implicitly (through word connotations,
allusions, etc.) or explicitly (through quotes, footnotes, etc.). But
hypertext does not allow for the hierarchies between one text and
another th at p rin t conventions create.
In print, for example, notes are generally located in a less
important place a t the bottom of the page or at the end of the chapter
or book; they are also usually in a smaller font. This leaves no
question as to which text is most important, and which texts
"supplement" or "enhance" the main text. With hypertext, the
"secondary" texts are ju s t as present, and spatially ju s t as important,
as th e "main" text.
The same featu res th at emphasize intertextuality refuse to permit
univocality, to use Bakhtin’s term. All of the voices which constitute
and provide a context for the hypertext are present at once, with no
one voice forever drowning out the others. The "voice" of a hypertext
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"is always th a t distilled from the combined experience of the momentary
focus" (Landow 11). Hypertext is dialogue in form, as well as in theory.
The multiplicity of texts and voices interferes with linearity of
reading, dispersing or even atomizing th e experience. As a reader
negotiates a hypertext, she might decide th at one node w ritten by
Foucault has stronger connections to nodes w ritten by Landow or
Derrida than to other nodes by Foucault. At the same time, she might
fail to see any connections between nodes w ritten by Derrida,
experiencing his writing as fragmented pieces rath e r than a coherent
whole. And this experience might be completely different the second
time she reads the hypertext, especially if she chooses to follow
different links. In this sense, even those hypertexts which do not allow
one to add links or nodes eschew fixity; they are constantly variable,
depending on the actions of the reader.
The act of reading hypertext, in other words, makes the text
infinitely de-centerable and re-centerable by the reader. All hypertext
system s allow readers to choose their own focus of investigation, rath er
than dictating a certain path or central organizing principle. This
presence of multiple reading paths shifts the balance between reader
and w riter, in the process creating a text th at exists far less
independently of commentary, analogues, and traditions than most
printed texts (23). The de-centerable n atu re of hypertext downplays
th e influence of historical evolution, without disallowing it; it
reconfigures our experience of authorial property, and of authority
itself.
After all, by forging new paths through the hypertext, the reader
takes on the role of the author, constructing meaning from the
connections between various nodes. The increase in reader control
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parallels the decrease of perceived textual autonomy, which reduces the
statu s of the author. If we associate th e author with the organization
of a text, th a t author disappears as hypertext accommodates infinite
reorganization. If we associate th e author with the creation of a text,
th at author disappears as hypertext becomes constituted by connections
between one text and another, and as the concept of text becomes
expanded and dispersed. This is not, however, simply a nasty
byproduct of a new technology, as George P. Landow notes in Hypertext:
The Convergence o f Contemporary Critical Theory and Technology.
[A lthough Western thought long held such notions of
th e unitary self in a privileged position, texts from
Homer to Freud have steadily argued the contrary
position. Divine or demonic possession, inspiration,
humors, moods, dreams, the unconscious—all these
devices th a t serve to explain how human beings act
better, worse, or ju s t different from their usual
behavior argue against the unitary conception of the
self so central to moral, criminal, and copyright law.
(77)
Hypertext may fu rth e r a paradigm shift which will yield new insights
about what it means to use language.
Formula Fiction and Hypertext
A new paradigm can explain phenomena which were observed yet
not satisfactorily explained under th e old paradigm. One phenomenon
which can be illuminated by th e network paradigm is th a t of reading
formula fiction. When considered as a genre, such fiction bears many
resemblances to hypertext:
1) Genres are fundamentally intertextual; they are entirely
constituted by perceived relationships between texts.
2) Genres are fundamentally multivocal, for the same reason.
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3) A genre has no fixed top or bottom, beginning or end; because
it depends on the read er’s perception of it, it begins with the first text
read and has no determined ending. New nodes/texts in a genre are
constantly being created, so th ere is no unitary genre
4) The insides and outsides of a genre are blurred. Is
Frankenstein a speculative fiction text? Is Dr. Faustus?
5) The texts in a genre can become dispersed, or atomized. Isaac
Asimov’s "Helen O’Loy" may seem more closely related to a futuristic
romance novel. Tepper’s The Gate to Women’ s Country may seem more
closely connected to other feminist utopias than to her Grass.
6) Genres are infinitely de-centerable and re-centerable. One
reader may choose to focus on hard SF, eschewing fantasy to the point
of excluding it from her definition of the genre. Another reader may
emphasize the Tolkienesque creation of new worlds, disdaining the
"space opera" texts which focus on guns and warships.
7) In a genre, authority shifts from the author, to the genre, to
the read er’s choices within th e genre. As a resu lt of this dispersal of
autonomy, the author is incorporated into the genre in the same way as
a text. Robert Heinlein can be in terpreted much as his novels are
interpreted; fans such as F orrest J. Ackerman similarly help constitute
the experience of the genre for other fans.
8) Most importantly, the process of reading in a genre echoes the
process of reading hypertext. The sense of being involved in a network
never disappears; th e re st of the genre forms an inescapable context for
the reading. However, this inescapable context is always changing,
always able to accept new elements, always willing to accommodate new
links. In this sense, the context will never be ultimately determinative.
Furtherm ore, this context is constituted by th e choices a reader makes
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191
as she negotiates the g enre/hypertext. She chooses the elements which
will be incorporated into it, she establishes the content and sequence of
th e links between those elements, and she can choose different elements
and establish different links a t any point. Any critic who wishes to
make the case th a t a read er of hypertext is more active than a reader
of print ought certainly to take into account the actions of a reader of
popular genres.
Formula Fiction and Rereading
To appreciate the multiple perspectives and infinite possibilities of
hypertext, the work must be read more than once. In this way, the
positive aspects of hypertext, as well as those of genre reading, depend
on the much older practice of rereading, which Matei Calinescu reminds
us is at least as old as the activity of writing. (In fact, he suggests, it
may be older. The earliest w ritten narratives were actually
transcriptions of previous oral texts, making the first act of writing also
an act of rereading.) When we reread a book, we know what will
happen and in what order. Therefore we are freed to appreciate the
aesthetics of th e text, perceiving the elements of the text in relation to
the stru c tu re of th e work as a whole. This practice is often described
by means of spatial metaphors, rath e r than temporal ones (e.g., themes
are woven through the fabric of the book, the novel is carefully
constructed in th re e separate sections, etc.); hypertext is also described
by the spatial metaphors of "network" or "web."
In his book, Rereading, Calinescu makes it clear th at the
distinction between reading and rereading is as artificial as it is
unavoidable. W e have no way of approaching a text free from
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preconceptions about what it contains. "Even before I decide to read a
book," he writes,
I have not only certain expectations, shaped by my
generic acquaintance with the kind of book I have
selected from a g reat many available books, but quite
probably some more specific assumptions about the
chosen book itself. This is obvious in the case of
classic works. . . . [But even when I read a book which
is not a classic,] I most likely already know something
about it: I may have been advised by a friend or a
review er to read it, or perhaps forbidden to read it by
an authority figure or censor; I may have been given
reasons why I should, or perhaps should not, read it; or
I may have simply heard it mentioned informally as an
enjoyable book, or as being original, topical, scandalous,
etc. . . . Even when I pick a new book by an unknown
author on a whim, I am b etter informed about it than I
might suspect. (42)
Information about a new book is derived from where it is sold, from the
books th a t immediately surround it, from the title, from the book jacket,
and from an impression gained by flipping rapidly through the pages
(42).
Even if we define the difference between reading and rereading
as a difference in th e attention paid by the reader, these distinctions
are artificial. If reading is defined as linear attention, and rereading as
spatial attention, both processes can be (and often are) performed at
the same time, without diminishing the pleasure of forging a path
through the text. And if we define reading and rereading as processes,
with the goal of interpreting a work from new vantage points, the
processes are still circular: "Here I do not read or reread in order to
interpret; I in terp ret (among many other things) in order to read and
reread and understand (re)reading" (16).
Calinescu’s discussion bears on genre reading, in th at readers are
already familiar with the basic formula, or at least the basic elements of
a formula, upon which a genre is based. This accounts for the often
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heard comment th at "reading a genre text is like rereading a literary
text." What Calinescu calls, "Nabokov’s paradox"—"One cannot read a
book: one can only reread it" (20)—is closer to being resolved for genre
texts. Nabokov’s paradox is a witty restatem ent of the "hermeneutic
circle," which says th at in order to understand a whole we must have a
prior understanding of its parts, but in order to understand each part
we must understand the whole. Since readers create th e concept of
genre from their experiences of individual texts, each new p art changes
the whole by which it is understood. In th at sense, th ere is no
paradox.
Nabokov’s paradox is centered around assum ptions about reading
which became widespread, and became considered to be "natural," as
recently as the nineteenth century. This "classical" concept of reading
(as illustrated by Roman Ingarden) assumes the primacy of the first
reading. Calinescu lists Ingarden’s assumptions as follows: 1) the
reader is presented with a work th at is complete or in a definitive
state; 2) the work is w ritten in the native language of the reader; 3)
the language of the work is contemporary with the reading and is
thoroughly mastered by the reader; 4) the reading of the work is
"solitary" (i.e., free of external influence, including any knowledge by
the reader of existing interpretations or critical opinions about the
text); 5) the reading is linear, irreversible, and uninterrupted; 6) the
work is short enough to be read in its en tirety during a single act of
reading; and 7) the speed of reading is uniform.
None of these assumptions holds tru e for reading by genre.
Works are constantly being added to, and th erefore changing the
conception of, a genre, so the work is never complete or definitive; the
reading is never of uniform speed, linear or uninterrupted, and the
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194
reading can never be finished at all, much less be finished during a
single act of reading. Furtherm ore, the open-ended nature of genres
means th at works may not be w ritten in the native language of the
reader, or contemporary with the reader. Jules Verne is a case in point
for th e genre of SF. None of these assum ptions holds tru e for reading
hypertext, either, which suggests th at both genre fiction and hypertext
essentially depend on rereading, rath er than reading. (Interestingly,
these classical assum ptions about reading give prim ary control to the
text, which fits into th e rubric, described in Chapter II, th at connects
the sacralization of literatu re to the loss of reader autonomy since the
American Civil War.)
Ingarden’s rationale for these assum ptions is apparently based on
the newness of never-before-read texts. But even newness is a relative
concept. As Calinescu asks, "[D]oes not a sense of newness, of a
perhaps more unsuspected and paradoxical newness, also appear in the
act of rereading tru ly great texts? And is not th is second newness,
this su rp rise in recognition, this revelation of difference in sameness,
the finest reward of rereading?" (37) Similarly, a sense of newness,
perhaps a more "unsuspected and paradoxical newness," can also appear
in the act of reading formula fiction.
Roland Barthes, by contrast, privileges rereading in his ideal
(structuralist) model. A text, he stipulates, should be read "as if it had
already been read" (qtd. in Calinescu 51). B arthes’s operational rules
for rereading, outlined by Calinescu, are as follows:
1) the purpose of rereading is to produce "a mobile
stru ctu ratio n of the text"; 2) reading should proceed "as
slowly as necessary," with th e reader "stopping as often
as [he] must," and 3) the reader should not try to
locate and classify all the meanings of th e tex t—this
"would be impossible, for the text is open ad infinitum."
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195
Instead, the read er should try to locate and classify
"the forms, the codes which make meaning possible."
(51)
Barthes also comments on the circularity of time when reading, in which
a novel w ritten before another novel by Marcel P roust nevertheless
seems Proustian. This occurrence depends on an intertextual
understanding of reading.
Obviously, B arthes’s ideal model of (re)reading fits both genre
reading and hypertext reading, though neither model, by itself, is
complete; reading and rereading are dialectical processes. Furtherm ore,
Calinescu points out th a t our appreciation of literatu re is dependent
upon this dialectical process. The readability of a text encourages its
rereading, and once it has been reread enough times to create multiple
interpretations, it becomes a classic. However, at any given point, the
readability of a classic is a function of the scholarship which creates a
compelling interpretation. Whenever a classic becomes so readable that
only one controlling in terpretation is produced, we begin to consider it
naive or simplistic, and exclude it from the canon of classic texts.
Similarly, whenever a popular text becomes readable by many people, it
can develop its own rereadability and become a classic. In this sense,
the distinction between reading and rereading is reflected in the split
between "high" and "popular" literatu re (78).
How Genre Fiction Can Be Evaluated
Which leaves us with the same question about popular genre texts
th at we started with: "But are they any good?" Any attem pt to answer
this question, to evaluate formula fiction, must take into account not
only the generic context but also the process by which the texts are
read. A model can be found in Susan K. H arris’s article, "’But is it any
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196
good?’: Evaluating Nineteenth-Century American Women’s Fiction." Like
genre fiction, nineteenth-century American women’s fiction has been
pushed to th e bottom of our evaluative hierarchy. And like genre
fiction, this has happened in p art because it was a "weird case"; "the
evaluative modes most of us were taught devalue th is literature a
priori" (263). Furtherm ore, the intellectual moves involved in
conceptualizing a genre are analogous in many ways to the moves
involved in conceptualizing gender, as Mary G erhart has pointed out in
her book, Genre Choices, Gender Questions. So the method by which
Harris proposes to evaluate nineteenth-century American women’s fiction
might quite likely be useful in evaluating genre fiction as well.
Noting th at imaginative literature is "both reactive and creative,"
Harris suggests th a t we
examine the ways th at it springs from, reacts against, or
responds to th e plots, themes, languages in the
discoursive arena th at engendered it at the same time
th at it creates new possibilities for th a t arena by
reshaping old words into new ones. (263-64)
This type of "process analysis" requires th a t we examine why we are
trying to evaluate such texts. Are we looking for timeless tru th s? Or
are we looking for the texts to be "reactive and creative" with regard
to ideology or genre?
Once we clarify our motives, we can figure out how earlier works
contribute to our p resent and how our present can contribute to our
future. Although specific analytical tasks (pursuing metaphors, for
instance) may look the same as always, Harris points out th at "the final
mosaic produced by process analysis looks very different because it has
shifted the herm eneutic and evaluative projects into a far more complex
socio-temporal scheme" (264-65). Furtherm ore, she insists "unlike
traditional Anglo-American criticism, process analysis foregrounds the
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197
relationship of the literary-critical task to the critic’s stance in her own
time" (265).
Clearly, historical context plays a major role in H arris’s analysis,
and it would not be unim portant to genre analysis either. However, as
with hypertext, a genre can be read in any order, so history is not
necessarily central to evaluation. Instead, a process analysis of genre
will focus on how a book changes the shape of genre. This does not
preclude our asking how a book reflects or interacts with its historical
context, though we might well argue th a t generic considerations can
take precedence over historical considerations, at least on th e level of
pleasure reading.
Harris notes th at nineteenth-century American women’s novels
once thought to be "confused" actually contain dialogic p atterns which
echo the debates of the time. In o rd er to evaluate such novels,
therefore, we must be familiar with th e debates in which they
participate. W e especially need to understand the impact of ideological
practices on market forces, because these affect the possibilities of a
book’s being read. Authors had to satisfy booksellers, reviewers, and
critics, many of whom had restrictiv e views about what was good for
women. So any literary elements th at opposed these views had to be
slipped into the books under cover of conventional beliefs.
With formula texts, we also must understand the debates in which
the novels participate in order to fully appreciate them (although what
appears at first "confused" may be the genre as opposed to the
individual novel). And market forces influence how a genre text is
selected, produced, advertised, etc. Fortunately, genre novels are more
likely to sell than many other kinds of books. Still, for a book to be
successful in a genre, it must fulfill re a d e rs’ expectations for that
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genre, and editors, publishers, etc. are unlikely to risk their
credibility—and the marketability of fu tu re genre texts—on a book
which does not fit its generic niche. Furtherm ore, if a book departs too
radically from generic expectations, readers may not look past the cover.
For formula books also, then, authors must sneak new elements past the
gatekeepers.
At the same time, the development of subgenres (such as feminist
utopias) shows th a t books which deviate from generic expectations can
change th e fu tu re of the genre. Readers can read critically for what is
new, or even for what might be new, without needing explicit
instruction. H arris’s example of a multi-leveled reading by a woman in
1848 shows how th is critical reading took place among nineteenth-
century women readers:
I had read Jane Eyre before you had the kindness to
send a copy. I was perfectly carried away with it. I
sat up all night long to finish it. I do not at all agree
with the critics who pronounce Rochester unloveable. I
could have loved him with my whole heart. . . . [She
describes changes she’d wanted to make in th e story.]
I am glad the book represents Jane as refusing to tru s t
him; for in the present disorderly state of th e world, it
would not be well for public morality to rep resen t it
otherwise. But my private opinion is, th at a real living
Jane Eyre, placed in similar circum stances, would have
obeyed an inward law, higher and b etter than outward
conventional scruples. (267-68)
This kind of multi-leveled reading is similar to th at which a reader
undertakes when dealing with detective novel in which th e crime is not
solved (contrary to generic expectations). This is also the kind of
reading undertaken when evaluating a romance novel with an
unyieldingly formulaic ending—the story outweighs the ending. Readers
can, in the process of reading, make more of a text than inheres in the
words. Furtherm ore, Harris suggests, the elements of the book which
such a reading emphasizes (the new or tellable elements) may be the
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199
longest remembered. So, some of the questions we might ask in order
to evaluate women’s fiction and genre fiction will focus on the functions
such novels serve for th eir audiences: What effects do their stru ctu res
have on th eir theme or themes? What kinds of discrepancies between
genre/convention and text might exist, and how might readers respond
to them (Harris 270)?
W e also should address the language of popular novels. Like
nineteenth-century sentim ental texts, the language of genre texts is
often singled out for special derision. This is tru e especially of
romances, but it is also tru e of detective novels, with their outrageous
metaphors ("Even on Central Avenue, not the quietest dressed stree t in
the world, he looked about as inconspicuous as a taran tu la on a slice of
angel food" (Chandler 1)), and speculative fiction novels, with th eir
invented words ("The cauchemars sweated resin, th e orreries clicked
and shifted like bone carousels, the trochards pumped away, the
rorshachs lifted symmetrical platelets to the burning sun" (Terry
Dowling, Blue Dyson, qtd. in Broderick 16)). For sentim ental texts,
according to Harris, the language is the site of ideological battles about
women. For genre texts, the language is the site of conversation about
genre. Evaluative questions which focus on language might include: How
effectively does it reflect the genre? What, exactly, does the figurative
language do (Harris 273)?
For both sentim ental and formula texts, answering these questions
requires an analysis of how deliberately linguistic figures are employed.
In all of these cases, critics have assumed th at this language is
unselfconsciously borrowed from other (better) texts. Most w riters,
however, insist th at they choose their language deliberately. Our
conclusions about how deliberately language is chosen will affect our
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200
evaluation of th e language, ju st as th e definitive and pre-selected
nature of published writing affects the evaluation of literature.
Though stru c tu re and language are th e two areas on which
process analysis must focus, each area demands th ree levels of study,
as Harris points out. The first level is contextual, looking at th e text
within its own time (or genre); the second is rhetorical, looking at
n arrato r/n arra te e contracts and the ways in which the text plays with
cultural (generic) significances, and the third is retrospective, searching
for traces of changing consciousness and locating materials for building
an ideologically (generically) self-conscious literary history (genre).
Taken together, these levels "offer a paradigm th at produces evaluative
as well as investigative questions," Harris notes (275).
I have argued throughout th is dissertation th at th e "goodness" or
"badness" of popular genre texts is based on 1) a recently (since the
Civil War) developed bias against th e popular audience (especially
women), which has 2) warped our understanding of how literary texts
are/should be read, and in tu rn has 3) warped our understanding of
how genre texts are/should be read. Any evaluative questions must
examine how a text fits into the genre, and how it fu rth ers the
development of th a t genre. However, the development of a genre is not
necessarily historical. It can also be analyzed as a personal
development either on the level of the individual reader, or on the level
of th e genre’s participants (fans, w riters, editors, review ers, etc.).
At the same time, this investigation does not preclude a historic,
thematic, or ideological approach. After all, such debates occur within
genre fiction as much as they occur within other kinds of literatu re or
within society. Genre texts can be feminist, for example, so feminists
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201
might want to apply H arris’s questions to Grass as well as to The Wide,
Wide World.
As a result, many of the questions which Harris proposes for an
analysis of nineteenth-century American women’s novels need not be
changed a t all when they are applied to genre fiction:
1. What is the tex t’s degree of consciousness of participation in
genre? How does the author dem onstrate her participation, via what
thematic, narrative, and aesthetic choices?
2. What modes (thematic, narrative, linguistic) does the author
employ to balance the new p arts of her story with the generically
dictated expectations of the readers?
3. How does the text embody th e linguistic debate; th at is, what
discourses are brought into conjunction or confrontation?
4. What functions do the characters serve and what means has
the individual author used to "mark" her characters for her readers?
Harris comments th at characters can have names which are resonant for
feminists (for example Susan Warner’s character, Fortune Emerson).
Names in genre novels can be similarly resonant of other novels in the
genre at the same time th at they rev erberate for feminists, classicists,
or other readers.
5. What stylistic devices does the author choose and how
skillfully and appropriately does she employ them to embody the issues
with which she is concerned?
6. What were the marketing conditions under which the novel was
produced (including serialization), and how well does the author juggle
the marketing demands and her artistic and thematic requirem ents?
7. What is the intertextual gestalt of the novel? From what other
texts does it take its premises? How does it transform these premises
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202
to fit its own peculiar needs? How appropriate is its rereading, or its
misreading, of th e earlier texts?
8. What later ideological or political debate does it anticipate?
Reading retrospectively, what textual trace-m arkers can we detect that
could have helped change th e shape of later novels in th e genre? How
useful is this text as a precursor of th at debate?
Many of th e above questions are unchanged, or changed only
slightly, from H arris’s list. But I would add one more question which is
vital for a process analysis of genre:
9. How well does the text help readers gain a new or more
complete understanding of th e genre? This last question is important
because it is th e only way we can explain the importance of a book to a
genre. However, it might be argued th at th is question is not
answerable in a scholarly context because it relies too much on personal
response. And this is exactly the point.
It is our personal investm ent in and response to genre which
helps us understand and evaluate generic texts. To preclude questions
about this personal involvement would be to establish control over what
has always been a reader-based phenomenon. W e might as well try to
evaluate the success of a node of hypertext without reference to the
purpose of an individual reader.
True, personal response forms p art of the context for every
scholarly evaluation of art, and critics have excluded it from their
evaluations nonetheless. But this critical stance is responsible for our
warped understanding of genre fiction. Unless we participate in genre
fiction, and base our evaluation on our participation, it will forever
remain a "weird case," incomprehensible to us, and our understanding of
traditional literatu re will also remain impoverished.
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203
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Creator Young, Beth Rapp (author)

Core Title But are they any good? Women readers, formula fiction, and the sacralization of the literary canon.

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag Literature, Modern,OAI-PMH Harvest,Recreation,women's studies

Language English

Contributor Digitized by ProQuest (provenance)

Advisor Winterowd, Ross W. (committee chair), Gottesman, Ronald (committee member), Richlin, Amy (committee member)

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c17-479467

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Rights Young, Beth Rapp

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the au...

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