Commercial V. Literary -- Taking The Zen Approach 8/9/2008 7:17:25 AM
This blog is in response to the Commercial versus Literary Books posting at the link below.
Interesting blog and posts. Taking the Zen view...we all seem so quick so judge. Why is that? Get below the superficial and obvious and into the down deep and possibly even dark places Deb talked about. Do your reasons carry over into other aspects of your life? I know this is a literary (pardon the pun) exercise, and this discussion a highly germane one at that, however I find all this somewhat disappointing--though understandable coming from writers. Those who are so intimately aware and drenched in the craft of writing. But what I've noticed over my short span of existence on this planet this time around is that it really doesn't seem to matter how "good" a book is to sell well--or even get published. We can all espouse our thoughts on the matter (and I'm certainly not immune here) but there are many reasons why something gets published, and I'm not entirely sure it has much to do with how "good" a ms is. If one happens to be GOOD, great, icing on the cake, and promoting said can only help in selling said work. But to hammer each point of view about what is "better than the other," though academic and instructional at a WRITER'S level, gets in the way of the end result and may even be an entirely moot effort. SOMEONE published "it" for a reason. Things don't get published if no one reads "them," ergo...SOMEONE is reading "this stuff" (mystery, literary, romance, etc.). And are we taking one side or the other to make us feel better about ourselves and what it is WE write? Why must we feel the constant need to belittle one form of expression over an other?
Incidentally, I know our blogger is only conveying her preferences and not whether the target of her blog is “better or worse”; I’m just trying to expand upon the deeper issues that might be behind this line of thinking IN GENERAL (i.e., not just Theresa’s blog).
Again, continuing to exercise my Zen POV, I suggest a more tolerant view. We all like what we read for why we do and to constantly insert "vectors" of "this is bad because..." and "this is better because..." is an antagonistic approach to JUST GETTING PEOPLE TO READ. I guess this would kill the cool posting done by Theresa (which was well written--as were all the subsequent posts), but then that would just cause the authors to "stretch" more in finding a more tolerate approach to what to write about. Hey, I ain't perfect, neither (and may even occasionally violate some of my own “rules” over the years because I AM human), but I find that humans seem so intent on KNOCKING THINGS OFF PEDESTALS, no matter what pedestal it might be, and that--IMHO--carries over into every other aspect of one’s life, however subtle. Maybe I'm just being too esoteric and am in the wrong forum, perhaps even being a bit Goody Two Shoes (I’m not a fan of critics who publicly trash books; “if you got nuthin good to say, then keep your mouth shut,” was how I was raised), but why can't we just accept the fact that literary and commercial work both exist, there's enough out there for everyone and all their various shades of moods, and we read what we like and be done with it?
Well, the answer to that is that there would not have been this really cool exchange of ideas...so what do I know? :-]
