Note: This piece was written more than a year ago (late February 2004), as a short academic presentation. I posted about it here.
Literature does not need this defence. Literature will not disappear if a biography of Britney Spears sells better than the next Salman Rushdie novel. It is not an endangered species, because literary works are more than just commodities to be traded, although they are also that. Literature is art, and like all art, it plays more than one game.
It is common sense to suppose that a book will sell in large numbers if it appeals to a wide audience, and in a consumer culture like ours it is no great stretch to suppose that publishers and booksellers will make an effort to produce and sell such books as regularly as possible. Publishers and booksellers would like to make money, and I’m sure that no one begrudges them their daily bread. That a book appeals, or does not appeal, to a wide audience is in no way an acceptable means of determining if it is a work of literature or not. As Robertson Davies pointed out, “It is empty cynicism to say that the greatest success will result when the writer with a cabbage head and the heart of a sheep calls to readers similarly equipped” (“Spelunking” 310). That elusive thing that makes a book literature is something more than its level of popularity.
Jeanette Winterson has made some insightful comments on the relationship between the current state of the book market, and literature:
Art has been bundled away along with sport and entertainment and sometimes even charity, but it belongs by itself, a separate reality, a world apart. Readers who don’t like books that are not printed television, fast on thrills and feeling, soft on the brain, are not criticizing literature, they are missing it altogether. A work of fiction, a poem, that is literature, that is art, can only be itself, it can never substitute for anything else. Nor can anything else substitute for it. The serious writer cannot be in competition for sales and attention with the bewildering range of products from the ever expanding leisure industry. She can only offer what she has ever offered; an exceptional sensibility combined with an exceptional control over words (“Writer, Reader, Words” 35).
She is right about literature being a category apart; the problem is that the issue of books as commodities to be bought and sold cannot be ignored. The Robertson Davies essay that I quoted above stresses that not all best-sellers are what Winterson calls “printed television”, that literature not only makes it to the bookshelves, but that it also at times makes it to the bestseller lists. House of Anansi, Coach House Books, Penguin, Vintage International; these publishing houses all continue to release literature. They would not do so if there were no money to be had, if there was no market. There must be readers who wish to read literature, but why?
Harold Bloom has written that “Ultimately we read—as Bacon, Johnson, and Emerson agree—in order to strengthen the self, and to learn its authentic interests” (22). These are wise words, but what do they mean? I doubt that Bloom would suggest we read Don Quixote to discover if we have an interest in windmills, or Oliver Twist to discover an interest in porridge, although stranger things have happened. It means that we read, not just for pleasure (although no one would argue against it), but also to achieve a better comprehension of ourselves, and our needs, both intellectual and emotional. It is unfashionable now to think of the self as something more than a collection of social or biological pressures, because to do so is to place oneself in a difficult position. Our weaknesses become our own, as does the responsibility to overcome them. Such a concept of selfhood forces examinations of, among other things, our pleasures, and we must ask why we prefer some above others. Harold Bloom writes,
To read human sentiments in human language you must be able to read humanly, with all of you. You are more than an ideology, whatever your convictions, and Shakespeare speaks to as much of you as you can bring to him. That is to say: Shakespeare reads you more fully than you can read him, even after you have cleared your mind of cant (28).
Shakespeare is difficult, but then reading is “the search for a difficult pleasure” (Bloom 29), and as such is far better suited to the individual human than to the social or ideological product. But these are old ideas, and perhaps they are not suited to our “globalizing consumer culture.” Fair enough.
Arguments about the death of literature or the commodification of literature always seem tainted with the scent of despair and the sense that we have lost something. We have lost something; literature has lost nothing. We have lost our vital connection with art. Jeanette Winterson writes,
In the West, we avoid painful encounters with art by trivialising it, or by familiarising it. Our present obsession with the past has the double advantage of making new work seem raw and rough compared to the cosy patina of tradition, whilst refusing tradition its vital connection to what is happening now. By making islands of separation out of the unbreakable chain of human creativity, we are able to set up false comparisons, false expectations, all the while lamenting that the music, poetry, painting, prose, performance art of Now, fails to live up to the art of Then, which is why, we say, it does not affect us. In fact, we are no more moved by a past we are busy inventing, than by a present we are busy denying. If you love a Cézanne, you can love a Hockney, can love a Boyd, can love a Rao. If you love a Cézanne rather than lip-service it (“Art Objects” 11).
If we are to continue to see literature as relevant to our society, to ourselves, we must become better readers. We must “be able to read humanely, with all of [ourselves]” (Bloom 28). Art, while perhaps not the only means of achieving a kind of heightened emotional and intellectual self-awareness, is certainly an extremely powerful one. To lose it entirely would be horrific. We must regain our vital connection with art. If that is more difficult than accepting literature as simply a sociological phenomenon, then so be it.
In the late 1950s Robertson Davies wrote a book called, A Voice From the Attic: Essays on the Art of Reading in which he made a plea for the return of the clerisy:
The clerisy are those who read for pleasure, but not for idleness; who read for pastime but not to kill time; who love books, but do not live by books. As lately as a century ago the clerisy had the power to decide the success or failure of a book, and it could do so now. But the clerisy has been persuaded to abdicate its power by several groups, not themselves malign or consciously unfriendly to literature, which are part of the social and business organization of our time. These groups, though entrenched, are not impregnable; if the clerisy would arouse itself, it could regain sovereignty in the world of letters. For it is to the clerisy, even yet, that the authors, the publishers, and the booksellers make their principal appeal (“A Call” 7).
Today this language would be called phallogocentric, and it very probably is, but it should not be dismissed for all of that. Davies would have the clerisy unify, although he did not suggest how, in order that we may continue to think of literature as a serious art worthy of serious attention. He would have the clerisy united, so that not only may we become better readers, but also that our society may continue to perceive literature as the strong and fundamentally necessary art that it is. I do not believe unification is necessary: only self-awareness.
Readerly self-awareness is an issue for Winterson as well. She writes,
Art cannot be tamed, although our responses to it can be, and in relation to The Canon, our responses are conditioned from the moment we start school. The freshness which the everyday regular man or woman pride themselves upon; the untaught ‘I know what I like’ approach, now encouraged by the media, is neither fresh nor untaught. It is the half-baked sterility of the classroom washed down with liberal doses of popular culture.
[…]
The solid presence of art demands from us significant effort, an effort anathema to popular culture. Effort of time, effort of money, effort of study, effort of humility, effort of imagination have each been packed by the artist into the art. Is it so unreasonable to expect a percentage of that from us in return? I worry that to ask for effort is to imply élitism, and that the charge against art, that it is élitist, is too often the accuser’s defence against his or her own bafflement. It is quite close to the remark ‘Why can’t they all speak English?’ (“Art Objects” 15-16)
I have no qualms about implying élitism, because, most particularly in this day and age of “printed television”, readers who give a work of literature the attention it deserves are rare, and growing more so. (This is a recurrent theme in A Voice from the Attic as well.) I would argue that the relevance of literature to our society has never been in question; but if we are to ensure that we continue to perceive literature as relevant, we must be willing to make a serious effort, as readers, to understand not only what we read, but why, and how. Do you read to kill time, or simply because you are idle, rather than because you love literature, or wish to engage intellectually and emotionally with a book? It may appear harsh, but perhaps you should find other diversions, or re-examine your relationship with literature.
By now you have determined that I am not going to define literature, and I am not going to discuss why writers write, though I have danced around both issues for some pages. The reasons writers write are subjective, they are personal, and to either list them or to explain them away would be useless. As for defining literature: it should not be done; indeed, it cannot be done. “Art cannot be tamed” (“Art Objects” 15), says Jeanette Winterson, and she is right. To try and contain it with definitions is futile. You will not limit art; you will only limit yourself.
Works Cited
Bloom, Harold. How to Read and Why. New York: Touchstone, 2001.
Davies, Robertson. “A Call to the Clerisy.” A Voice From the Attic: Essays on the Art of Reading. Revised Edition. Markham: Penguin Books, 1990. 5-37.
Davies, Robertson. “Spelunking on Parnassus.” A Voice From the Attic: Essays on the Art of Reading. Revised Edition. Markham: Penguin Books, 1990. 273-333.
Winterson, Jeanette. “Art Objects.” Art Objects: Essays on Ecstasy and Effrontery. New York: Vintage International, 1995. 3-21.
Winterson, Jeanette. “Writer, Reader, Words.” Art Objects: Essays on Ecstasy and Effrontery. New York: Vintage International, 1995. 25-44.
