Why We Read Fiction

We seem to have a deep-seated impulse to categorize cultural objects like music and books of fiction. In the 1950s, books were classified as highbrow, middlebrow, and low brow, as if these categories signaled something you must know before buying or borrowing a book. Somewhat later the dazzling poet Ed Sissman split reading into “good bad books and bad good books.” The good bad books pulled you along with speed and flourishes. The bad good books challenged your code-breaking abilities; there weren’t very many of those. In the latter 20^th century there appeared fiction writers — mostly male,  Pynchon, Gaddis,  and Robert Stone for example — who produced  sentences so dense and contorted that  the reader was forced to either skip them or read them over and over again to make sure who threw the bomb or who got caught screwing  whose wife.

Here’s an example of what I mean. It’s a passage from  Ian McEwen’s 2025 novel “What We Know Now.” “Now he turned to talk to Francis, who smiled as he  replied and placed a hand on Graham’s forearm. If he had shared her heightened moment of joyous possibility he would have been incapable of light remarks.” Come again? (Hemingway is spinning in his grave).

Here’s where, after a long lifetime of reading books, talking about them, and even teaching them, I have landed. There is no dictionary term for what Sissman would probably call “good bad books.” These books are known simply as “page-turners.” Their narratives pull you along. Your I.Q dozes while your imagination and emotions soar. I’m also suggesting that just because a text is hard to parse doesn’t mean it’s more worthy of smart people’s attention — or is more worthy of being reviewed by the NY Times than a neatly told tale like, for instance, “Jane Eyre,” or Bobbi Ann Mason’s “In Country” –- a fast read of almost unbelievable power.

I’m going to stick my ancient neck out: fiction writers who force you to rely on your I.Q are literary snobs.  A depressing number of these men and women have landed top jobs, in the recent past in newspapers and magazine, and lately on web sites. They are single-minded arbiters of reading — and a lot of them are convinced that the more sluggish the prose, the better.

My prejudice against contorted prose coincides with my conviction that a story   with a strong narrative engine, that focuses on action rather than ideas or “feelings,” is the best gift a novelist can bestow on their readers.

I hope my readers won’t assume that I’m recommending so-called ”bodice rippers” and their ilk. Bad writing is still bad writing, cliché-ridden, obvious, unsurprising, and tedious.

Should you wish to try writing the kind of fiction I admire, read “True Grit”; “Black Tickets,” “Regeneration” and hundreds of other books written with precision and economy. Imitate them.