BR Myers's "A Reader's Manifesto"

[ajvenigalla]

A little capsule from last decade.

Some thing about this article has been troubling. It could be BR Myers's almost blanket condemnation of "literary" novels (though to be fair he does appreciate complex stuff like Moby-Dick, the writing of William Faulkner, the works of Balzac, and Joseph Conrad's fiction). It could be his tearing down of one of the greatest authors of all time, Cormac McCarthy (whose masterwork Blood Meridian I loved a lot). Or it may be the smug tone and expression of arrogance mixed with the sheen of populism (sort of like the anti-Harold Bloom, only with the snobbery kept intact)

When I did some research on this book, it turns out that, contrary to being as widely hated as I would expect it to be, it almost became a God-sent gospel for the haters of literary fiction. For example, the average rating of the book version on Amazon is 4.2 out of 5 stars.

From what I read, BR Myers's main thrust is that popular, plot-based fiction from authors like Somerset Maugham and Stephen King is unfairly maligned in favor of lesser literary fiction from the likes of Don DeLillo, Cormac McCarthy, and the like. Also, critics who praise these literary authors are evil enemies of the people and stuff like that. While it turns out that DeLillo, McCarthy, and the other "literary" authors are still acclaimed, Myers seems to have gotten a stronghold with regard to the minds of readers who already hated these authors and have found their champion in Myers.

Personally, I haven't read much of this manifesto or the works that Myers condemns (except for one of my own favorites, Blood Meridian). But what would you think of Myers's critique? And the best rebuttals to his critique? And Myers's own responses to these rebuttals?

[olechunkofcoal]

This Myers character has the literary taste of an ashtray and would not know good writing if it tapped him on the shoulder and spit in his mouth. Everything he says can be safely ignored. As for his Amazon followers they are simply proud philistines who have found an uppity champion for their narrow understanding of literature.

[ennison]

It may be the case that he is a philistine. I don't know because I haven't read him. There certainly are philistines about. Anyone who preaches books furrapepil! is going down the route of social realism and pretend populism. The real situation is that it isn't for most of us a one-or-the-other choice. I get as much pleasure out of Para Handy Tales as The Orchard Keeper. I like Grisham and Stockton. I can read biography travel and non-fiction in more than English. I don't have to read only best-sellers and especially nowadays neither does anyone else

[ajvenigalla]

Yeah, I find B. R. Myers philistinish. He hypocritically criticizes critics for pompously attacking genre writers, and yet he has a pompous attitude toward great literary authors and Hayes those who defend the authors.

And personally, the only one of the five authors I have read is Cormac McCarthy, and I am convinced that he is not only a genius of writing but also of storytelling (if not of the three-act, blockbuster style of storytelling)

[ajvenigalla]

Bump.

[Eiseabhal]

Stockton? The "modern" fairy tales? or that other fellow whose novel you lent me two years ago and I have not yet returned. It was a pity that the Donald Macleod was cut down by non-appearances this year. If you mean the other fellow is he not Stacton rather than Stockton?

[ennison]

Long time no post Eiseabhal. I've just come home from the moor and the gobhar-adhar whirring over my head reminding me this is April not Late October. Stacton I had completely forgotten about. I have acquired more of his books since then. Strange that you should remind me of him in this thread. If ever there was an author with a one foot in the poll and the other in gold then he was one. Yes the DM was curtailed but I enjoyed the format of the jig competition. Sorry I buzzed off quick - family emergency. All turned out ok though. I think I was referring to Frank Stockton when I typed that but I may have been thinking subconsciously of Stacton.

[ajvenigalla]

Bump. Let's talk about the article itself

[Lykren]

What's to talk about? Many people are reminded of their inability to handle complexity when they try to read a brilliant text, and those people have found a spokesman for their frustration.

[Eiseabhal]

If you were a little more alert you would realise we were responding to it.

[Pike Bishop]

,,,ouch

[ajvenigalla]

OK, just misunderstood it. I was expecting a little more direct criticism and all.

[Eiseabhal]

Yes I'm sure you were but Lykren has responded in a sufficiently direct way. Ennison has used his usual lateral thinking to dismiss the basic assumptions underlying the Myers' position (at least in the way you outline it) and what he and I were saying is basically that Myers doesn't matter - even if he was 100percent right it still wouldn't matter. There are many able writers who write at different levels and do so consciously. There are many writers who are able to criticize their own work quite severely while retaining the right to write for the "masses". There isn't really anything wrong with producing fourth grade/ middlebrow/ pulp entertainment. Some of it is not bad at all. I'd feel a bit suspicious of a bookshelf with only "Quality" post-modern fiction. It might even be that Myers makes some valid and entertaining points. But at best he's just another entertainer, not good enough to do better than play a bit-part

[ennison]

My "usual lateral thinking" I'm not sure I like that description of my Cerebreal processes. Crab-like scuttles to mind! But let me bypass for a moment writers like Greene and the fellow Stacton and look quickly at Lawrence Sanders. Who? An American writer of crime/thriller/sex books who managed to produce in The Tomorrow File one of the most memorable pieces of science-fiction I ever read. He was definitely writing for the mass market but still almost by accident produced that one brilliant text. I doubt if Sanders ever aspired to be a great writer but he did attempt to include up to the minute social commentary on American big-city life. He wore tweed and had the appearance and manner of a fellow who enjoyed the trappings of success. Why would I grudge him that. I would like a tweed suit too and when I retire I'm gonna buy me a three piece lightweight Borders tweed in canary yellow. Nor would I grudge such a garment to Jeff Koons or Mr Gass.

[Vota]

I've read texts that are far more complex than Blood Meridian. I felt that reading the book was like smothering myself in excrement, then tearing pages out of a bible and sticking them to my ****e covered self, and then dousing myself in holy fire. That was the experience I got from reading that book. Moving beyond the actual experience, I hated the way it was written and could give two ****s out of a rats *** about any of the characters - if you can even call them that. I can't speak for his other books, and I must admit that I have thoroughly enjoyed all the movies based on his work, but that book was just painful to read, and not in a good, hard sex kind of way. More like painful finding out your child is deformed kind of way.

I find the elitist comments pretty amusing. As if not liking the book has anything to do with intellectual capacity. It's like criticizing someone for laughing at **** art. I don't need to see the underlying reason for its being to know it's ****.

[ajvenigalla]

^ eh, I love Blood Meridian personally. The prose style is a thing of beauty. It has that perfect blend of the modern sparity of Hemingway and the full expansiveness that marked the works of Melville, Faulkner, Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, and others.

I understand the criticism that the characters aren't people one can care about. But for me, and for many readers, likability isn't the only criterion for good characterization. If it were, one would have to write out the bulk of characters from literature. Anyways, we have in McCarthy's masterpiece two of the greatest literary characters ever created — those being the Kid and Judge Holden. While the Kid doesn't seem as prominent as Judge Holden or the other folk, his flawed heroism (or anti-heroism) sets off an intriguing conflict between him and the Judge. For despite his own brutality and wickedness the Kid is interesting in how his blankness and his violent nature is still a far cry from the warlike religiosity of the Judge. And Judge Holden is one of the great literary characters of all literature. Anyone who says he's a badly written character is misunderstood, in my view.

Yes, the work is complex; yes it borders on the verbose at times. But it's such a dark and beautiful epic that's worthy of its high reputation as one of the greatest literary works of all time, on the same level as works like The Brothers Karamazov, Moby-Dick, the plays of Shakespeare, the novels of William Faulkner, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and Paradise Lost.

[Pike Bishop]

I've read texts that are far more complex than Blood Meridian. I felt that reading the book was like smothering myself in excrement, then tearing pages out of a bible and sticking them to my ****e covered self, and then dousing myself in holy fire. That was the experience I got from reading that book. Moving beyond the actual experience, I hated the way it was written and could give two ****s out of a rats *** about any of the characters - if you can even call them that. I can't speak for his other books, and I must admit that I have thoroughly enjoyed all the movies based on his work, but that book was just painful to read, and not in a good, hard sex kind of way. More like painful finding out your child is deformed kind of way.

I find the elitist comments pretty amusing. As if not liking the book has anything to do with intellectual capacity. It's like criticizing someone for laughing at **** art. I don't need to see the underlying reason for its being to know it's ****.

I must say, your phantasmic imagery of your reading experience is some of the most disturbingly scatological descriptions I have read. I had no idea anyone even knew what it was like to "smother (themselves) in excrement" and stick bible pages up their "****e covered self." You truly have my sympathies. And your giving two two "****s out of a rats *** about any of the characters" is certainly no reflection on the novel. It is only a reflection of your hyperbolic personal view and extremely non-comprehensive criticism of it.

As to "elitist comments," none have been more elitist than yours. Your calling the other posters posts' "elitist" without supporting such derogatory criticism of them puts yourself in a "superior" position without any justification for it. And if you're going to crudely and sophomorically claim any novel, particularly a brilliant novel like Blood Meridian, is ****, you do have to posit a reason and support for that reason; that's what grown-up critics do. I assume you don't want to just be one of the other kind.

[ajvenigalla]

^ exactiy Pike Bishop

[ladderandbucket]

I've read texts that are far more complex than Blood Meridian.

I don't know. Complex is not the same as difficult.

Blood Meridian is a pretty easy read if you just glide over the difficult parts. But asking questions and pulling on loose strings will unearth something incredibly intricate. The book is so self-referential, so thick with allusions, so thoroughly researched - there is just so much to think about, and there is a small industry of criticism devoted to it. There are people out there who are completely obsessed.

I can understand why someone wouldn't like Blood Meridian. McCarthy's writing can border on pastiche or self-parody. The violence (and possibly the thesis) is sickening. But in my opinion it is as complex, intelligent and rewarding a book as has been written in the last 50 years.

[ajvenigalla]

^ I would reference the wonderful Harold Bloom (and he is wonderful) on the greatness of Blood Meridian

http://www.avclub.com/article/harold-bloom-on-iblood-meridiani-29214

Also recommended is his introduction to the excellent Modern Library hardcover edition (my favorite edition of the book)

[ajvenigalla]

Let's get stlukesguild here. His perspective will be interesting

[whitenoise]

All right, I've been an on and off lurker on this site for a few months now, but it was this thread that compelled me to make an account so I could add my voice. It's hard for people to take literary readers seriously when we react to a perfectly thoughtful, in-depth and intelligent criticism of literary snobbery (and how empty it sometimes is) by dismissing Myers' great article by characterizing it as something it definitely isn't: some declaration that the literary establishment is "evil" (really?) or that he is arrogant and therefore anything he says is irrelevant. Logical fallacies shouldn't come so easily to this well-read crowd.

Myers showed the subject he was dissecting a lot of respect by carefully explaining how a lot of the books lauded as "literary" and therefore worthy of serious consideration actually commit plenty of cardinal writing mistakes: showing and not telling, or filling in with purple prose, making awkward transitions for the sole purpose of trying to be gimmicky, lingering overtly on characters that end up having no arcs to speak of whatsoever, overly-sentimental prose that borders on maudlin, and so on. These are actually the kind of mistakes that "genre" authors get scalped for by readers and editors. And some genre authors not only avoid these mistakes, but write incredibly intellectual books.

I also don't get the pouncing on how Myers treats Cormac McCarthy here, and this is coming from someone who is a big, big, big Cormac McCarthy fan. Myers actually points out a couple meaningful things.

It really sounds like people here either didn't read The Reader's Manifesto or else just had a huge reading comprehension fail while reading it, because Myers isn't lambasting the idea that a high standard should exist - he's saying that the way standards are drawn now do not create high quality fiction and actually leave out high quality writing on the basis of modern literary conventions that are extremely badly thought out.

As some who has been reading the likes of Nabokov, Anthony Burgess, JD Salinger and so on for years, underlining Joyce's prose in admiration and being taught the importance of reading by both parents, I think the stubbornness to see the points that Myers makes is a big mistake. It just reinforces how hollow this "literary" threshold has become, when you resort to logical fallacies and mischaracterizing Myers' essay so that you can ignore the pertinent points that he makes.

I like and respect what this forum does, but I see a big problem here. Feel free to flame me.

[ennison]

I guess you could feel a certain amount of self-indulgence in some of McCarthy's prose but it seems to me to be part of his artistic purpose. I am sure he is a great writer but sometimes you have that gut feeling from just one or two of a writer's books. There are very few things that he has had published that I haven't read. The main feeling I get is not just a man of marvelous ability but a fellow who is probing into the human creature in quite original ways. Some of the shorter novels do this succinctly: Outer Dark, The Orchard Keeper. The modern Irish writer Barry has in The Temporary Gentleman tried his hand at McCarthy-like passages. And they don't work because they intrude on an otherwise decent story. I kept thinking "Oh no, another slo-mo Peckinpah moment that adds dash all except irritation!" Now that is what I would class as showy self-indulgence but McCarthy no.