My Reading Manifesto
I just read an interview yesterday of the author of "A Reader's Manifesto". The premise of the book is the downward surge in quality of the literary fiction that is being generated at present - along with many swipes at the famous Don DeLillo and other popular authors. Usually my eyes glaze over as I read the wistful nostalgia of people who always complain that the present eschews the quality of the past - I find enough mainframe programmers eager to recant stories about how much better "big iron" was than "this web stuff". But B.R. Myers, the author, is an interesting man and his point is accurate in a few observable regards.
First, the author offers a unique perspective - he is far removed from the coctail parties and New York evenings that seem part and parcel of the modern literary world. He is not a professional reviewer for a newspaper or magazine - he isn't, point in fact, even a professor of literature. He is an academic but he teaches North Korean studies at Korea University outside of Seoul.
In other words, he is like me in the sense that he is a person who simply reads for pleasure in a topical conquest that is outside his profession.
Second, he is accurate (and I base this wholly on the interview I read, not the book) when he speaks of the literary community being an establishment. It was only recently that I began to realize that my Sunday L.A. Times' book reviews section was saturated with books that were written by staff writers and reviewers for the same newspaper! This was especially the case when they picked their "best books" at the end of the year. There is also this incestuous level of authors in circles patting each other's backs - "write me a good review and I'll write one for you" is the modus operandi many a time. It sometimes reminds me of when MTV does a documentary about itself and features as "experts" its various (unintelligent) anchors.
Finally, who can argue with certain remarks?
...Many people want to set themselves off from the Grisham-reading herd, but they don't want to read a classic because they're afraid someone will say "Bleak House? God, I did that back in college." And they know thy'll get even less cachet from reading an old novel like Caleb Williams that no one's heard of. So they buy the latest prize-winner, which is easily recognized in the office and subway as the "better" kind of book, and then they read it, secure in the knowledge that thousands of the "better" people across the country are reading it at about the same time. I'm sure they genuinely enjoy this sense of intellectual community, even if they don't enjoy the actual book. But remember: they don't have to enjoy it. They're allowed to say that it isn't their cup of tea, or that they found it heavy going. What they mustn't do is differ with the "better" consensus and dismiss the book as bad. Only philistines like me do that.
Later he says:
...I feel a little uncomfortable recommending things, because my whole message is that readers are better off disregarding all received opinion... [finding good books is work that requires your own personal initiative]
I'm not excited enough to put the book on my radar but it was some good food for thought. I've been known occasionally to be bludgeoned by exquisite prose only to realize that what I was reading was trash when I'd already wasted a lot of time on a book (and then finish it with disgust because I was too far to discard it). Emotionally Wierd taught me that as did The Archivist.
7:03:46 PM 
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