Announcement

Reader, for several reasons that I will not get into here, I have not had the time or the energy to create material that can thusly be posted here. Maybe if/when things work out I'll be back in business.

However, I am currently updating two tumblr blogs that can always use suggestions and contributors.

http://musicalmagical.tumblr.com/

http://reviewsashaikus.tumblr.com/

If you're on Tumblr, follow me! Maybe I'll follow you in return. :)

Are Books For Hipsters?



This past weekend, I attended the Boston Book Festival, where writers, readers, and thinkers of all most stripes could convene and share thoughts and ideas; learn more about local bookstores, publishers, and nonprofits; and get free stuff. I left the festival with enough reading material to last me at least a month, plenty of free shit, and a lighter wallet. It was a great day, and I had a pretty good time.

But, I noticed something I had noticed at a different event last month (that being a Primus concert). But for some reason I'd never really noticed before.

Man, are these people white.

Courtesy of Hot Guys Reading Books

At the BBF, there were some Asians (both east and south), and maybe a couple black people. All of the presenters at the panels I attended were white (though some people of color presented at other events). And it wasn't just the whiteness that took my notice. It was the similarities between these people that you could identify what type of reader they were. Nonfictioners dressed conservatively, passing for mainstream professionals dressed casual, but not too casual. Most were probably older than 30, and made good money. Younger nonfiction readers (whom I saw plenty of in the line to Chuck Klosterman's book signing) were textbook hipsters, though many could pass for normal on a liberal-arts college campus. Klosterman himself looks kinda like that. I didn't really notice a significant male-female ratio disparity, but plenty of the younger guys had beards. Hipsters cross over into fiction, their favored genre being literary fiction. I'm kinda glad I didn't go to the Jennifer Egan panel (though I do want to read her book), because that was probably overrun with hipsters. There are also nerdy readers, who dress unconsciously and often sport facial imperfections; you find them more often in science-fiction and fantasy circles. There's also the artsy nerds, who pierce their bodies and dye their hair and wear black, and maybe cosplay (if they're more nerdy). These folks were at the graphic novel panel, and maybe at the Steampunk one, too. As for the other people over 30, they basically looked like regular people or professors (or regular professors). Maybe a smattering of artsy or nerdy--I imagine that most people tone down their look as they get older. One thing was for sure: a person wearing Abercrombie and Fitch or (Science forbid) Ecko would look out of place in this crowd.

The predictable makeup of this book-buying demogrphic speaks to the current limits of the written word--or at least, the marketing of it. Plenty of people of color write thought-provoking books, so why weren't more of them featured? Did the organizers of BBF realize they were inviting a whole lot more white people--or maybe other nonwhites theyasked were busy that weekend. Is it really just a symptom of a greater issue in publishing, where whites get all the attention?

I think it speaks to an even greater issue: education. The BBF is a showcase for writers and intellectuals, most of whom have at least a Master's Degree, and have little to no recognition among mainstream readers. Romance, thrillers, horror, and other trashy genres are not represented here. However, these genres (as well as YA, which actually has a place in "higher" literature) are the books most people read, and pay for the more intellectual and artistic ventures. In this way, higher literature is more of a subculture, with a small, concentrated demographic. Just like any other subculture, they adopt a certain way of dressing and talking to identify themselves. These people graduated from liberal arts colleges (or that part of the university), work in academia or publishing, vote Democrat, and hold corresponding liberal views. Obviously, there's a lot of overlap with the hipster population. Though I think the lack of radicals was because they're all at Occupy Boston.

So why are books largely considered to be the realm of the educated? Well, it takes education to read, and more to make sense out of what you read. It takes even more to talk about it in a reasonable, rational manner with others. And the thing is, most people don't get that education, whether it's because they're poor, received little encouragement at home, or are otherwise dissuaded from reading (eg. favoring the instant gratification of TV and video games over books). Most of the BBF attendees were of European or Asian descent, races that are often better-educated than blacks, (and so goes the earning potential) and liberal because, well, we're all smart, and truth has a "well-known liberal bias". Whites, moreso than other races, are encouraged to "follow their dreams," and therefore are more likely to pursue unlucrative artistic careers like writing. (disclosure: this is from personal experience only) Whites also make up the majority of faculty members at many univerisities.

This, of course, all boils down to economics: whites make up the majority of rich people in the US, and therefore are more educated, because they go to better schools and can afford a good college, and therefore are more likely to read for fun. The unfortunate effect is that reading is becoming an elitist activity, especially as the gap between the rich and poor widens, after-school programs get cut, and public libraries closed down. As they say, knowledge is power, and if knowledge becomes less accessible, the possessors of said knowledge grow more powerful. While I doubt that this avid book-reading demographic's going to take over America (money is more powerful), we have to get people interested in reading and writing again, if only to harness untapped critical thinking skills and open people's eyes to the injustices committed towards them and their community every day. Then we can make a change.

So, back to the original question: are books for hipsters? Yes. And everyone else, too.(There's way more non-hipster books out there, trust me) Literature has something for everyone, if you look hard enough.

Hibernation

It's been a long while since I've been on this blog, due to stuff like work and school taking up 100% of my time. But out of this I have some good news! For one, I'm graduating college! Yay for real life! And, more importantly, I've found a new direction--or just a direction--to take this blog!

So from now on, I'm sticking to review, critique, and analysis of one of three things: literature (my love), film, and pop culture (which basically covers all other forms of entertainment, but also news and media criticism). And to start of with this new format, I'll be doing a little series on postmodern literature, putting up the first post by sometime next week.

OK, back to hibernation.

Why Review the Classics?

Happy belated fourth, everyone! Hope y'all enjoyed some fireworks.
For my first July post, I'm going to begin with an introduction to a series of reviews that I will be doing over the next couple of weeks on books that you may have heard of: the Big Three novels by the Bronte sisters. Yes, there are three of them: Bronte sisters, that is. I didn't know of this fact myself until I stumbled across this gem almost two months ago:



You may wonder, "Why bother reviewing the Bronte sisters? Their books have been out for 200 years! The academics say that they're good, so while some of us will pick up and read them ourselves, most will either read them in school or never pick up a copy cuz they're just too long and boring."
Well I'm reading them just due to that latter group, to which I had belonged after struggling to stay awake while reading Pride and Prejudice (on my own perogative, no less). Only recently has my interest in reading novels by long-dead dudes and dudettes been renewed.

As to why I want to review them, it rings true for all the classics. For one, such works of literature that are considered a part of the classics canon should be put to the test of timelessness every few decades: a masterpiece may still resonate for hundreds, even thousands, of years after it was first written, but that resonance is likely to fade and eventually diminish over time. Very few great novels can last past the hundred-year mark, and fewer every century after that.
Another reason to evaluating classic works of literature decades after they've been declared classics is that times change. What seems great enough to be a classic one century may not be so the next. Just because students have read Homer and Shakespeare in school for over a hundred years doesn't mean that we should continue to study them in a hundred more years. Not least because literature curricula could stand to be more diverse in its perspective. And the presence of racism, classism, and misogyny, though not grounds for dismissal from the canon (especially not), should at least be pointed out. And as we learn more about specific time periods, we can better examine the classics through a historical lens and evaluate how progressive or influential it was in its time. Then we can ultimately decide whether this classic is worth reading by students and academics. (It's sad that anything over 100 years old is almost automatically relegated to the academic sphere, but that is another post.)

Lastly, just because a whole bunch of people say that something is so great it's a masterpiece, doesn't mean it is.

Next post, I will review the eldest, Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre.

What's so girly about reading?

Welcome to the first relevant post.

The other day I came across this article on Salon.com, asking the question, "why men don't read books". While it makes an interesting point about the publishing industry, like how lately, it's been female-dominated, the article fails at answering the question it asked in the first place. And the question worth asking is more like, "Why are fewer men reading books?" But that doesn't make a very catchy headline.

As a writing student, I've noticed that the vast majority of my classmates are female. Most of my male peers aren't exactly big readers. I find it strange that there's been such a gender gap (which is about 20 percent) in reading and writing, especially since that even into the twenty-first century, many of the most important and influential writers have been male: Kurt Vonnegut, Malcolm Gladwell, Chuck Palahniuk, Raymond Carver, David Foster Wallace...I could go on and on. A shortage of male writers or male-oriented literature is not the issue. And if anything, the overall decline of reading is much more troubling.
So, why this gap?

Like a lot of formerly male-dominated fields (psychology and art, for example), reading and writing are increasingly seen as a "girl's activity". The problem with that is that anything that's "for girls/women" tends to be de-valued and considered to be not as "important" as what is "for men". Just look at the women's movement: women have only gotten the rights they deserve by fitting themselves into "man's world", and that's a big reason why there's still so much more left to do. Men who pursue these "girly" activities, like dance, housework, fashion, and now reading, can be perceived as effeminate by their (sexist, closed-minded, ignorant) peers. And being "effeminate" is much worse than being perceived as "boyish" or "masculine" in our society.

Then there's the whole myth of film and TV being more lucrative creative professions. This may be true to an extent, but like all other creative endeavors, chances are that you won't get hugely rich or famous, especially if you're a writer. Most of us are in it for the love of storytelling, not to make mad moolah.

So why are fewer men reading books - and especially fiction books? Possibly because they think that fewer men are reading (and writing) books. Self-fulfilling prophecy.