Manchester via California with an acquaintance stuck in between
18 August 2009
It’s ironic that I feel vindicated when a respected author* shares the same opinion: Ruiz Zafón dismisses divide between high and low art as ‘cultural fraud’.
One of the world’s most popular authors has entered the debate over high and low art, saying that there is no such thing as good literature, only good writing.
…
“I’m not interested in having a snobby thought police that would tell me what is good, what is bad, that I cannot listen to a Britney Spears record if I feel like it or I cannot read Dan Brown or whatever. I think we all have a brain between our ears and we can find our own way.”
I can’t bear it when people get all sniffy about things being lowbrow or middlebrow — what counts is it has an impact on you and gets you to think about things from a different point of view, rather than being so obscure and impenetrable that only the author and their closest friends understand it, and the ‘literary set’ simply pretending to get it in order to look smart.
Good writing is good writing. It’s subjective because authors’ styles are different and will appeal to different people. The only people who don’t or won’t comprehend this are those who are insecure!
* Not that I’ve read any of his work… but I’m happy to perpetuate the fallacy of appealing to authority any day in this case.
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