I’m dragging myself through an “award-winning” “best-selling” “recommended” book I got from the library and wishing I hadn’t. (Yes I know those phrases mean little and I can stop, though I’m nearing the end after hoping it would stop being so hopeless. Yes I can be naively optimistic ;) .) The characters and story are all stereotypes and clichés. It’s not realistic or slice of life.
The Korean drama I’m watching is top rated on MyDramaList and is well done but it also tells a sad story every episode. I’m halfway through and I don’t think it’s that much better than some lower rated ones with more moments of happiness.
Anyway, this has me thinking about whether there’s a general trend to regard books - stories of any kind really, including real life ones - as “better” if they upset us.
Among a certain demographic in the US, there’s a lingering concept of adulthood which suggests that anything people actually enjoy and that makes us happy is childish; that, beyond a few, specific, pre-approved hobbies, our lives are not sufficiently “adult” if we’re not constantly miserable.
I kind of feel like this thing you’ve noticed about books is in the same ballpark. Reading is not one of those “approved” hobbies, so the best books are the books that make us sad, upset, or otherwise disgruntled. If they don’t, they’re not serious and adult enough. Which is why various parties did a Big Concern back in the late 90s when Harry Potter first got popular and a ton of, gasp, adults were reading it. Local news stations bemoaned the phenomenon as evidence of all sorts of uncouth things, from taking stabs at the adult literacy rate to pondering what factors made people not want to “grow up”. Anecdotally, I endured similar complaints from multiple people in my own life, including older co-workers and my ex-wife (this pattern being one of the first times I noticed a generation-based values divide).
Considering that the top literature reviewers, publication editors, literature professors, and award committees are more likely to belong to the same demographic, it’s not surprising that sad, “serious” books get all the good press and books that are actually fun to read get panned.
“When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.” -C. S. Lewis
It wasn’t a literary novel which inspired my post. Reading not an “approved” hobby? I suppose they wouldn’t approve of Oscar Wilde or even Jane Austen then.
All of this about a “certain demographic in the US” feels very culture war and it’s drive towards the negative so I’d best stay schtum rather than walk into one of those.
I tried to be as oblique as possible, given that my sample size, no matter how big it seems to me, is very small; only 40-50 people out of 350,000,000, though a large number of local news broadcasts back in the day decrying the trend of adults reading “children’s books” in their spare time may mean something (or it may not).
But yes, you’re right: The complaints/disdain have come exclusively from one specific generational demographic (if the bit about my ex-wife was confusing, she’s more than a decade older than me). Maybe I just haven’t met the Gen Zs who are actively upset that grown-ups are reading novels other than “the classics”, period pieces (specifically romances), and westerns. They very well could be out there in incredible, unfathomable numbers, spoiling the pattern that I believe I have seen based on my limited worldview.
So please, feel free to offer your own competing explanation for why fanciful and enjoyable books are so frequently snubbed by reviewers, etc., and why the “best” books are the ones that range from super sad to borderline unreadable experiments in frustrating your publisher’s typesetter.
I don’t have a “competing explanation”, except that it’s not likely to be as simple as laying it on a particular demographic or certain professions. Very little ever is.
Read back, I asked a question - is there a trend/tendency towards. Everyone who’s responded has gone straight to reasons why.
I’m also not inclined towards your snarky extremes, equating fanciful and enjoyable and setting them against the saddest and hardest to read.