There has always
been a perceived divide, and even a sort of rivalry, between lowbrow bestsellers and highbrow literature.
Novelist Graham
Greene even separated his own works into those he considered serious
literature and what he referred to as his “entertainments.” Two events in the
book world last week highlighted that
chasm.
On Thursday it was announced that Chinese novelist Mo Yan won
the 2012 Nobel Prize for Literature, beating out heavyweight competitors like Haruki Murakami, Thomas Pynchon and Bob
Dylan (yes, Bob Dylan). Besides the obvious prestige, the award also bestows a
$1.2 million purse upon the winner. Sweet.
But not nearly as
sweet as the publisher’s advance won earlier in the week by HBO’s Girls creator Lena Dunham. The twenty-something Dunham will be
cashing a check from Random House for $3.7 million for her first book,
tentatively titled Not That Kind of Girl:
A Young Woman Tells You What She's Learned. Mo Yan’s prize, by contrast, is
for his entire oeuvre (I always swore
I would never use “oeuvre” in a
sentence, but it just slipped out). Her book will supposedly be in the style of
comedienne Tina Fey, whose own advance for Bossypants was a staggering $5 million.
Maybe so, but for
better or worse, Random House is in the business of nurturing bestsellers, not
great literature (even though the latter sells very well in the longer run).
The most wildly successful writers of recent years – perhaps of any year – have raked in riches from
works that have earned more critical disdain than acclaim: J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, for example, or Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight books, or most recently, EL James, who just sold the movie rights to her Fifty
Shades of Grey
erotica for $5 million. That’s on top of having already sold 40 million copies
of it worldwide. Alexander Nazaryan at the Page Views book blog, who seems to
share editor Spillman’s contempt for trashier fare, grumbles that the popularity of such books is a
disheartening sign that “we are becoming a nation of illiterates.”
But not everyone
dismissed Dunham so quickly. Slate’s
Alyssa Rosenberg leapt to her defense with an interesting
perspective:
Dunham's work on television and in
the movies may not appeal to everyone, aiming as it does for humiliating, raw
experiences. But part of what's interesting about her book project… is
that it appears to be about turning that grueling embarrassment and those
profound fuckups into the kind of wisdom
that can move a girl from flailing disaster into dignified success. [emphasis added]
Great literature, both fiction and non-, has the power to entertain,
move, teach, inspire, enlighten. But critics often underestimate how books that
are, shall we say, less challenging sometimes
unexpectedly have that power as well (okay, maybe not Fifty Shades of Grey). Wisdom is where you find it, and
if Rosenberg and others like her find it in Lena Dunham’s raw, profane memoir,
then more power to her.
(This article originally appeared here on Acculturated, 10/19/12)
