Thanks to Michelle Kerns at the Examiner
So, last week Mr. Lev Grossman had a piece — a literary manifesto, really — in the Wall Street Journal in which he championed the return of the plot in literary novels. He eloquently expounded his belief that plot and literary intelligence aren’t mutually exclusive and that the 21st century novel would be heralded by the exoneration and rehabilitation of plot in fiction.
In the past several days, Mr. Grossman has been accused of misunderstanding and mislabelling the Modernists, of lacking in literary knowledge and logic, and of being “temple-clutchingly ridiculous.” He’s been called condescending, clueless, and a shameless self-promoter, with a few digs on his novel, The Magicians, thrown in just for kicks.
It’s a shame that Mr. Grossman should be treated in this manner, particularly when everything he contends in the Wall Street Journal article is perfectly correct.
1. People are drawn to books with strong, energetic plots.
2. Modernist writers felt the need to break with the “orderly, complacent, optimistic” novels of their Victorian predecessors in response to the disjointed nature of their changing world.
3. This break resulted in heavily literary, esoteric writing that required an encyclopedia, a Master’s Degree in English, a compass, and a trained guide to navigate. Readers became conditioned to equate difficult, heavy writing with quality, and dynamic, plot-driven writing with literary trash.
Read more here
I happen to agree with Grossman. There are a lot of books out there that people read just so they can say they’ve read them. They’re written in a way that reading them requires an enormous effort, and while they’re called Modernist, they border on Elitist. They can be good, but there is no guarantee. I can understand the draw; Modernist books fall in with “Art for Art’s sake” rather than art for pleasure or meaning. But reading is a leisure activity for most people, and that requires plot driven novels.
What do you think of the arguements? Which type of book do you prefer?
