Book Shaming: ‘You Don’t Read *That*, Do You?’
A: Hey, what are you reading?
B: It’s called The Screaming Girls and it’s a thriller about a serial killer who horribly tortures pregnant women to death and then nails their uteruses to the wall. He’s called The Virginia Woolf Killer because he’s creating a womb of his own. I’m really enjoying it. What about you?
A: It’s about two people who fall in love.
B: God, I don’t know how you can read that stuff.
Or, as George Moore said, “I wonder why murder is considered less immoral than fornication in literature.” That was in 1888 and nothing’s changed.
The world is full of people ready to tell you what you should be reading. You should be reading plotless lapidary prose about the slow decline of an aristocratic family in pre-war Hungary. You should be reading books written 150 years ago, at least. You should be reading the genre I like, the ones with the good covers. Scandinavian crime in translation, not cosy mysteries. Thrillers > sci fi > fantasy > romance > erotica. You certainly shouldn’t be reading books for children. Reading the wrong books is just wasting your time. God, you don’t read that, do you? I thought you had to be an idiot/pervert/nerd/pretentious jerk to read that stuff. You actually like that? What’s wrong with you?
And it’s worse as a writer, a thousand times worse, because now it’s not just your interests being attacked but your abilities and imagination. Especially if you write either romance or children’s, both of which are frequently regarded with a sneer. (Hmm, which gender is heavily associated with those two genres of writing? Oh, what a coincidence.) When are you going to write a proper book? Don’t you want to write something more challenging? Aren’t you good enough?
The excellent children’s writer Jenny Alexander blogged about being made to feel lesser in ‘Are you a Proper Author?’
The group was made up of successful authors from every area of writing – medical books, Black Lace, children’s fiction, ELT, poetry… Without exception – well, except me; I wanted to have a go at poetry – they all harboured a secret ambition to write a literary novel. They said they wouldn’t feel like a proper writer unless they could achieve it.
Well, I’m an experienced editor, published author and holder of a degree in English Literature. I’m entitled to judge ‘proper writing’. And to anyone who tells me what to write or read, I am now summoning up all my well-honed literary powers to say: Get stuffed.
I write romance, fantasy, thrillers, blogs, sticker storybooks. I do all of those things to the best of my ability. If I feel the urge to write a villanelle, literary novel about the futility of existence in fin de siècle Paris, history of the Victorian transport network or YA zombie apocalypse space opera, I will do that to the best of my ability too. I will keep writing, and I will try to keep getting better at it, and if you want more than that from me, then get in the goddamn queue, because I’m busy.
I’m not talking about being undiscriminating. There are plenty of books I think badly written, plotted or edited, or all three; lots of genres I don’t care for; lots of subjects I find repellent. I don’t have to read them; I don’t have to be nice about them. But nor do I get to say that you’re wrong, stupid or lesser if you love a book I loathe, or read a genre that strikes me as absurd. All I can say is, you saw something good where I didn’t. It’s even possible that if I ask you what you saw, I might learn something.
Matt Haig’s tremendous piece on book snobs deserves a complete read but I’m just going to quote my favourite bit here:
The greatest stories appeal to our deepest selves, the parts of us snobbery can’t reach, the parts that connect the child to the adult and the brain to the heart and reality to dreams. Stories, at their essence, are enemies of snobbery. And a book snob is the enemy of the book.
Read the books you love, love the books you read. If you write, then write the best book you can, about whatever you want. Do what you want, as long as you put your heart into it. And don’t presume to tell anyone else what they ought to be reading or writing. That’s their heart.
I agree with all of this. Although I’m afraid I make honourable exceptions for people whose favourite books are Twilight and 50 Shades…
PS not out loud obviously, just secretly – in my head…
Thank you for the lovely mention – nice article!
Reblogged this on Writing in the House of Dreams and commented:
Write what you want to write! Otherwise, really, what’s the point?
Yes, yes, YES! There’s way too much shame in the world already without people making us afraid to admit what we read! My favorite new genre? UFO/ET stories. Try mentioning THAT at a dinner party!
Sci-fi shaming is such a thing. I still feel aggrieved at Margaret Atwood’s insistence she doesn’t write it. Pah.
That’s true, too, but I should have made myself clearer: I’m talking about UFO/ET stories that claim to be TRUE!
🙂 As long as it gives you pleasure! (When I went to get my US tax number from the American embassy, the guy behind the desk gave me a ten-minute speech about his various UFO sightings, while casually hanging on to my passport. That was…unusual for a tax office.)
🙂 I wish I could get some of that at the DMV…that would make the long wait worth it!
Wild cheering from this ‘children’s writer’! Yes, yes, yes! You are so right. I’m currently reading the third book of the Game of Thrones series – it’s brilliantly plotted, imagined and characterised. Yet I’ve already been sneered at by at least three people for reading ‘that stuff.’ Well, to those people, I say: I love that stuff. I’m not asking you to read it. Get stuffed!