There is a controversy brewing right now in Britain about readability and excellence in literature. Apparently, being “readable” is no longer a compliment.
What’s Wrong with a Readable Book?
Defining American Writing
In TNR, Ruth Franklin attempts to debunk the “strangely antiquated definition of American writing” posited in Dalkey’s Best European Fiction anthology. (via)
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It’s just not the same, is it?
Don’t like the idea of reading e-books to your kids? Turns out you’re not alone — a new study reported in the Christian Science Monitor says (pdf) that seventy percent of parents who own iPads prefer to use print books when reading to their children. If you read these articles, you might have seen this coming.
Wolfe Goes Back to Wall Street
“We find ourselves in a swarm of fellow starstruck souls outside the Sheraton Hotel on Seventh Avenue in Manhattan, churning, squirming.” 25 years after the publication of Bonfire of the Vanities, Tom Wolfe returns to the subject of Wall Street. You can also check out my review of his most recent novel, Back to Blood, over here.
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Two Feet Bad
“Children have a keen sense of injustice, and this was the thing that upset me the most: the pigs were so unjust.” Margaret Atwood recalls an early love of George Orwell.
An excellent article and an apropos analogy. I see nothing wrong with a readable book and Julian Barnes was an excellent choice. There are many books that I have tried to read that were just too turgid in style to make the effort worthwhile. Many of them works of great acclaim, Molloy is one that stands out in my mind, and William Gass’s The Tower, and anything by David Foster Wallace. But then again, so is Dan Brown unreadable, in my opinion, because he writes for people with a taste for story but no taste for language. There is a very fine line between pure story telling and pure writing, somewhat akin to a tightrope, upon which literature exists. Getting the balance right is what makes all the difference.