[HPFGU-OTChatter] What a snob!

[P. Alexis Nguyen]

md:
> can someone post a link that works? This one won't for me.

Ali:
Try this:  http://www.good.is/post/the-dan-brown-diversion/

I don't know if it'll work better, but it's worth the shot.

Frankly, I think the author has a valid point beneath that thick layer
of snobbery.  Coverage of the Dan Brown, Stephanie Meyer, JRK, etc.
books of the world do overshadow the fact that there are tons of great
books being put out (the author citing Pynchon and Doctorow, both more
more accessible than the author's ivory tower/liberal arts veneer
might indicate).  It's not that the Brown/Meyer/etc books aren't
infinitely readable and accessible pop fiction (I own some of these
very books; heck, I have an entire over-flowing bookshelf dedicated to
romance novels) nor that the particular authors seems to have managed
to capture a giant reading audience in a time when everyone seems to
be bemoaning the fact that no one reads anymore, but it's hard to deny
that the coverage of them is at the cost of coverage of other books,
with names like Doctorow being relatively known without having the big
fame of a Dan Brown (though Doctorow is certainly a better writer than
Brown, that hack - and I read and liked Da Vinci Code).  Now, it's not
necessarily anyone's fault, but it doesn't make Anne Trubek (the
original article's author) any less valid, pretty much like we don't
go dismissing all the medical knowledge that came out of the Nazi
doctors' human experimentation just because said doctors were
terrible, wretched, horrible human beings (too many adjectives?).

And just to really cover myself, I do not mean pop fiction in any
denigrating way.  Both Shakespeare and Dumas, pere, were pop
phenomenons in their days, and I very much enjoy both their bodies of
work.  :)

~Ali