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Commercial work vs. Intellectual work?
Posted by Dave on 18/2/2002, 3:40:21
I enjoy the writings of the late Irish/Canadian writer Brian Moore, and just this evening finished yet another of his books. In doing some research for a review of the book I came across an interesting statement he once made, concerning bestsellers. It seems that back in 1955, Moore explained that he raised the money to live on while writing his first "real" novel, The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne, by writing six "pocket books" - thrillers published in cheap format paperbacks - "which sold nearly 800,000 copies." He considered Canada to be "a good place to get a start," adding that "In Europe you starve to death doing literary reviews and so on while working on a book. Here [in Canada] there is a mass of commercial work that you can live from while the big one is in gestation."
In other words, he felt that the production of pot-boilers, written to an editor's formula, were a restriction of what he himself wanted to do in the way of blending genres and styles. But these books kept him in bread & butter for a while, to the tune of 800,000 copies, while he was pregnant with the good stuff. The following statement is the one I thought worthy of some discussion amongst us readers. He said, "The best-seller is the day-dream which leads us into a happy fantasy and, rather like the books we read when we were boys and girls, books of adventure, we know we're never going to be let down. ...Books which lead people to re-evaluate their position intellectually are not popular."
I'm wondering how true this is today? Are commercially successful books necessarily trite or banal, or (I'm not sure what the word for un-intellectual is)...? I'm wracking my brain trying to think of anything recently that was a bestseller AND also intellectually stretching. I'm realizing that a lot of the books I enjoy are actually NOT very popular amongst the masses when I think of it. So it seems like there is still much truth to Moore's 50-year old statement. Often I need to special order books I want because they are not on the shelf. This must be because no one else wants them right?
What do you think? Who are some authors out there who are beyond the "bread and butter" stage of their career and putting out books that are not only commercially successful but are intellectually stimulating? I'm stumped.
Re: Commercial work vs. Intellectual work?
Posted by Michael Sympson on 18/2/2002, 18:48:08, in reply to "Commercial work vs. Intellectual work?"
Deserves certainly some more consideration - because from my end there is really no reason to see, why intellectually satisfying fare has to be so badly written, that no publisher cares to muscle in his PR machine and create a "best-seller."
To look at the extreme end of the spectrum: writing poetry, and nothing but poetry, is the surest way to starvation an author possibly could find. What's wrong with writing good with popular appeal? I mean, it can be done. The former American poet laureate Richard Wilbur is a good example for writing good and appealing without caving in on the standards.
Or the "martian movement" in Britain. The book: "A Martian sends a Postcard home" was the last poetry book I remember, that became a best-seller, and sold 19,000 copies in the first 2 or 3 weeks. This kind of success came completely unexpected, and is living testimony, that there must be something wrong with the publishing policies of the big publishing houses. But then, when had these global factories for fast food literature not been wrong?
I don't know Dave, but there are 2 sides to the story: bad (aka "commercially sound") attitude on the publisher's part (and it doesn't look as if it is going to be any better soon) and unjustified snobbery on the author's side. He wants to write a more demanding piece of literature - fine! But the taste is in the pudding, and the success of a book in the delivery. There is available middle ground, which to enter does not imply compromises on the standards or economical success.
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Re: Commercial work vs. Intellectual work?
Posted by Lale on 19/2/2002, 0:25:05, in reply to "Re: Commercial work vs. Intellectual work?"
It was different in the olden days. In the beginning, it was verse and verse only. What happened?
Maybe the dissappearance of rhyme killed poetry. In the past, people loved those sing-song styles, everything rhyming and scanning, having a melody. It was all verse, plays and all.
Moliere couldn't have been so popular if it wasn't for the rhymes.
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Re: Commercial work vs. Intellectual work?
Posted by Michael Sympson on 19/2/2002, 3:44:39, in reply to "Re: Commercial work vs. Intellectual work?"
Well Lale, that depends how far back we go. Roman and Greek didn't rhyme, and from the beginning of its introduction rhyme was received with mixed feelings, as a kind of vulgarization by its critics. Some of these had great names in English poetry.
Thomas Campion (1567-1620) and John Milton are two of the greatest talents who in theory and practice opposed rhyme in English prosody. Doing poetry myself, and translating poetry, I soon found out that it is not the rhyming but the rhythm that is all-important. That's the first thing a true poet is doing, before he even thinks of phrasing and rhyming: establishing a rhythmic pattern.
But your reference to Moliere expresses another truth I had to find out on my own before: in this blessed age of ours, rhyme is most at ease as a means of humor. And if you think of it, some of Britain's greatest rhyme-masters (and some of her worst) are great humorists like Moliere's contemporaries Dryden and Pope.
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Re: Commercial work vs. Intellectual work?
Posted by Dave on 19/2/2002, 3:31:25, in reply to "Re: Commercial work vs. Intellectual work?"
I like that term Michael, "fast-food literature"... I'll have to remember that one. As we know, a steady diet of 100% fast-food will lead to various degrees of malnutrition. And yet, and yet... I have always believed that to read almost ANYTHING is better than to have not read at all. But to read thoughtfully means that the reader will mature, and become more and more selective. Your comment on the "extreme" of poetry is very apropos. If a writer is interested in cash returns, he ought to stay away from working in verse nowadays. [There is always the enigma though, like Charles Bukowski, whose verse, in my opinion, is not worthy of being birdcage liner, and yet he has a cult following and his stuff is everywhere. What gives there?] But generally, it shows that a writer is a true artist with guts if he can devote his writing time to verse. For instance, Vikram Seth put out "Golden Gate" in 1986, a novel about San Francisco written entirely in verse. 690 sonnets worth, rhyming in a-b-a-b-c-c-d-d-e-f-f-e-g-g. Vikram, I raise me Guinness to ye! But best-seller? Who has ever heard of Golden Gate? I applaud his aplomb!
Lale, you're right. Things never used to be this way. There was a time when verse was loved and appreciated. But who would have three minutes for a Hart Crane or a Walt Whitman if these guys were writing their poetry today? You ask the question, "What happened?" Let me offer a very simplistic, and non-exhaustive answer to that...
I think that T.V. has changed the way we read, and the way we think (actually THINK) more than any other single factor. There are other factors, but this is the biggest "single" factor. This is only an opinion, but I believe that television has radically narrowed the attention span of mankind.
I was thinking more about this whole issue of bestsellers, and popularity, and lesser-known literature. Something Alexander Solzhenitsyn once said comes to mind: "A great writer is, so to speak, a second government in his country. And for that reason no regime has ever loved great writers, only minor ones." Of course, he was then writing in a context of extreme censorship etc., but I wonder if shreds of truth in that statement apply to us today.
Re: Commercial work vs. Intellectual work?
Posted by Dave on 27/2/2002, 2:26:52, in reply to "Re: Commercial work vs. Intellectual work?"
...A little addendum to my own comments about the influence of television. I just came across this piece called "How the Talking Box Changed a Village" by Associated Press writer Todd Lewan in the March 2001 issue of Catholic Digest. His article examined the impact of television on one of America's most remote communities. The Alaskan village was home to ninety-six members of the Gwich'in people in 1980, when television was introduced there. Until then, the native peoples lived as their ancestors had, their lives circumscribed by the hunt for caribou and telling stories about their culture. Two decades later, Lewan reported, every cabin had at least one television, consumerism had invaded the village, and storytelling was nearly extinct. "Old legends told around campfires could not hold [the children] when Bart Simpson was talking."
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Re: Commercial work vs. Intellectual work?
Posted by Michael Kamleiter on 19/2/2002, 14:49:01, in reply to "Re: Commercial work vs. Intellectual work?"
In addition to the already said, we should also consider how the smart sound bite and verbal nursery doodle from our commercial breaks has affected attention span and expectations of prospective readers. The rhythmic refinement can be considerable - piggybacked with skin-care and KFC as message.
I was already beyond that age where one could claim to have "grown up" with Sesame Street. But I still like Kermit - he would have made a better president, than the sorry characters who actually occupied the Oval Office. However I sometimes wonder about the damage done by Sesame Street to groom the future reader and prepare him for poetry. From that perspective, most adults will look back with embarrassment and swear never to open a poetry book.