In Defense of Lowbrow Literature

Last month, the announcement of the 2024 winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature sparked a bit of discussion in my office’s Literature Lovers online chat. The winner was “South Korean author Han Kang, ‘for her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.’” Most people in the online chat hadn’t read Kang, myself included, but one member of the group commented that her novel “The Vegetarian” was “an upsetting read, very much psychological horror.”

Curious, I skimmed the Nobel website to see what kinds of things were being said about other recent winners of the literature prize. Last year, Norwegian author Jon Fosse received the award “for his innovative plays and prose which give voice to the unsayable.” In 2021, it was Tanzania’s Abdulrazak Gurnah who won, “for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gap between cultures and continents.” Back in 2017, Britain’s Kazuo Ishiguro was honored for his novels that “uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world.”

I’m not attempting to comment on the merits of these specific writers—I’m sure they’re all wonderfully talented and deserving of the praise they’ve received, though I’ve never read anything by most of them. (Exceptions are Ishiguro’s “The Remains of the Day” and “Never Let Me Go,” both of which I loved.) But is it just me, or do those descriptions of their work sound a little ... depressing?

The Nobel Prize in Literature winners seem to me to illustrate a broader trend in the way many people view fiction today. There are highbrow, critically acclaimed “literary” novels that win awards and get chosen for book clubs. And then there are lowbrow “genre” books with their uninspired prose and cliched, predictable plots. The latter may be popular—and a quick review of the current New York Times Best Sellers list for hardcover fiction confirms this, showing crime and romance novels (particularly those lauded by BookTok) dominating the top 10—but few people want to admit they actually read it.

This disdain of popular, lowbrow literature is nothing new. A 1792 treatise on “The Evils of Adultery and Prostitution” specifically attacks novels as a source of moral corruption: One “cause of the profligacy of the present age, is that mass of novels and romances which people of all ranks and ages do so greedily devour. ... Despising that kind of reading which conveys knowledge and improvement, they attend only to that kind which deludes and amuses.” Even then, when the modern novel as an art form was just getting off the ground, it was already being criticized for entertaining rather than teaching.

Criticism of the novel was so widespread by Jane Austen’s day that she undertook a spirited defense of the genre in her own first novel, “Northanger Abbey.” There she describes novels as “work[s] in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language.” Ironically, Austen’s works are now widely perceived as among the highest of highbrow classics.

Because of the general and long-standing perception of lowbrow fiction as “trashy” or a “guilty pleasure,” I often find it difficult to admit that I actually enjoy it—even though my reading diet consists primarily of detective fiction, fantasy and romance novels. When people ask me what I’m reading, I’ll dismissively say something like, “Oh, just a historical romance,” and change the subject—or rack my brain to remember the last respectable book I read.

Why does this dismissive attitude toward lowbrow fiction persist? I suspect the traditional happy ending is a sticking point for many. Genre fiction often (though by no means always) ends on a positive note: The detective solves the mystery, the fantasy hero completes the quest and saves the world, the romance protagonists live happily ever after. By contrast, literary fiction, such as that described on the Nobel Prize in Literature website, often features extremely unpleasant people struggling with (and usually failing to overcome) deeply tragic circumstances. Nothing much happens, but when it does, it’s terrible. The likable characters and satisfying resolutions of lowbrow fiction seem simplistic by comparison.

Further, I think we as a society are a bit suspicious of anything that’s too popular. If we see a book in an airport convenience store or on the shelves at Target, how good can it really be? This attitude seems to be especially common in people who read a lot, who tend to be intelligent and well-educated individuals. Among this group, it’s impressive to brag that you’ve read an award-winning, critically acclaimed novel, but admitting you devoured the latest viral BookTok obsession is more likely to lower your status among your peers than raise it.

These tensions between what’s acclaimed by the cultural elites and what’s actually enjoyed by ordinary people also pervade our politics. The recent U.S. election can be read as a struggle between populist demagoguery and out-of-touch cultural and economic snobbery. Sociologist Musa al-Gharbi recently pointed out in an interview on Discourse that the gap between elites and everyone else, in terms of both wealth and political beliefs, has widened significantly in the past several years. Similarly, in a recent article in Discourse, Michael C. Behrent observes a phenomenon he calls the “conservative left”: Progressive U.S. and European politicians are attempting to shed their elite images and appeal to working-class voters.

In literature—as, I’d argue, in politics—a breadth of perspectives and experiences should be the goal, so I’m certainly not trying to imply that literary fiction is bad or that it shouldn’t be read. I just want to point out that reading books, for most of us, is something we do in our leisure time. It shouldn’t feel like work, nor should it be about signaling to others that we’re part of the smart set. It should be a pleasure, pure and simple, no “guilty” modifier needed. So don’t feel bad for loving cozy mysteries or sci-fi epics or romance novels or comic books; just enjoy them for the adventure, excitement and sheer delight they bring you. And who knows, they may occasionally teach something important, too.

Meanwhile ...

What I’m reading: In the spirit of the above essay, I will admit that I’m currently in the middle of “Everyone This Christmas Has a Secret” by Benjamin Stevenson, the “holiday special” of his mystery series starring amateur sleuth Ernest Cunningham. Ernie loves Golden Age detective fiction and is a stickler for the “rules” governing the genre, so the series is a fun read for those of us who are likewise fans of Agatha Christie and her ilk—though I’m not quite sure Ernie always adheres to the rules of fair play! In this novella he’s confronted with some time-honored tropes of detective fiction, including a murder set in the theater world, a magic trick turned deadly and a death-defying final confrontation with the killer. The Australian setting and Ernie’s self-deprecating tone also appeal. If you’re interested, definitely start with the first book of the series, “Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone.”

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