high-brow, low-brow, no-brow
I really like the image from this Washington Post article about established literary writers (however you define them) walling themselves inside the canonical castle while "torch-toters, best-selling barbarians" like Stephen King bang on the gates and demand to be let in. I've been thinking about the whole debate since they announced the National Book Awards for this year, and certainly since I read the speeches at the dinner, which unquestionably pitted King and Shirley Hazzard against each other in a really dramatic way. [They are here and here if you so desire.]

But really, it's not that much of a fight. The National Book Award is pretty populist -- "Three Junes" won last year, and that was entertaining but not exactly fine lit -- and it's a little nonsensical to have the popular vs. high-brow debate in that context.

Let me preface this by admitting freely that I don't like Stephen King's books and I do like Shirley Hazzard's. I know. I'm sorry. If you're the guy who responded to one of my book reviews last year by telling me that I am "illiterate" and "have a hole in [my] head," I'm extra sorry. Not really. But I do think Stephen King should have won that award. He's a smart guy, and very talented, and sometimes a lot of people are right about things -- I can see that even though I don't personally like his books. And I wish that everyone would stop demonizing "literature," because it doesn't automatically mean "overintellectual" or "hard to read" or "if you like it, you're a terrible snob who should be burned at the stake for not complying with what the editorial 'we' think popular books should be."

Things can be both popular and good. Lots of good things are not popular (Elizabeth Bowen, Roddy Doyle, eating cottage cheese and apple butter together); lots of popular things are not good (Ms. Steele, Jan Karon, Star Wars novels). But they don't automatically preclude each other (Alice Sebold, Anne Lamott, David Sedaris). And I'm going to read "The DaVinci Code" one of these days, really.