Literary vs Commercial?

Books and other things mentioned:
- Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant is completely Fine
- Joanna Cannon, Three Things About Elsie

Find me elsewhere:

By the way:

I also wrote some books:

as Britta Bolt (together with writer Rodney Bolt), The Posthumus Mysteries:
- Lonely Graves (2014)
- Lives Lost (2015)
- Deadly Secrets (June 2016)

and for German readers:
- Das Büro der einsamen Toten (2015)
- Das Haus der verlorenen Seelen (2016)
- Der Tote im fremden Mantel (February 2017)

[RovingReader]

How beautiful to be able to disagree without being disagreeable. We need more of this!

[InsertLiteraryPunHere]

You stated all of my own thoughts and qualms about Simon's take (which I also really enjoyed) so much better than I could have! Thank you for this great video

[LiaMahony]

Britta. I love how you put your “lawyers hat” on to clearly and directly argue your case. It is so wonderful to see a discussion where you oppose the view of another booktuber articulated clearly and respectfully. So much more valuable than a rant reply. A total class act. Brava.

[mementomoriadam]

Yeah.. what you said!

I think my problem with this line of discussion is that it is being framed around the topic of BOOK PRIZES which are so convoluted and janky to begin with that to use them as the foundation of a meaty topic such as literary/accessible fiction is a bit goofy. Either way, I cosign what you say :D

[lyddie]

My favourite aspect of booktube! The discussion videos. C: Your example of Shakespeare is so, so on-point and I love it. Looking forward to more responses from everyone, and want to form my own. Time to ponder a lot of points.

[browngirlreading]

This is an interesting topic. However his is one of the reason I'm slowly but surely going off literary prizes because of how they choose the winner. If it was up to me to choose the best book, I'd go on how well the book is written and how well the author successfully develops the premise of her book. I think those two things are the most important but as you know that's not only the way the winners are chosen. Often the political climate at the moment plays an important role in who is chosen the winner. It's difficult, but that's why I'm not so obsessed with them the way I used to be when I was in college.

[shawnbreathesbooks]

Britta, this was wonderfully thought provoking! I’m going to rewatch Simon’s original and yours over the next few days before I respond. I may have to do a discussion video of my own!

[thefrancophilereader]

This was very well-organized and clear. I came away from the « cotton candy » video thinking that you were upset about the poor quality of the books, not that they’re commercial. Simon revealed a lot about how the Costa was judged, which was really interesting. I’m starting to think that’s how other prize winners are chosen too (the Man Booker etc).

I don’t know what criteria I would choose to judge a prize winner because I don’t read enough new releases. But I wouldn’t consider audience. I wonder how the long lists are chosen for these prizes because there are thousands of books published every year. In any case, I wouldn’t consider a book good just because it has a potentially wide audience or because if deals with important issues.

Finally, your video got me thinking about the Newbery Medal for children’s literature in the United States. The biggest critics of the prize argue that the judges don’t consider whether children would actually want to read the books on the list. But I don’t think that should be considered for a children’s literary prize. Many of the winners have been assigned in schools not because they’re necessarily « popular » but because they have literary merit. Otherwise, the bestselling children’s book of the past year should automatically win the Newbery Medal, which I think misses the point of a literary prize.

[helenejeppesen]

Interesting discussion! I’m still not completely sure what literary fiction really is - and I’ve been too lazy to really look into it. However, I do find it interesting how we love to put order to everything by putting things into boxes. For instance, I teach my students about genres and what we can expect from certain genres (just like you were talking about when it comes to commercial fiction). But why is it that a crime novel has to follow a certain structure? I guess it’s for the same reason that newspaper articles are formated in a certain way so that we get the necessary information first and know what to expect when we open the pages/the book. But I’ve often wondered why culture has developed in this way and who started the trend and who perfected it. I personally love it when an author manages to turn everything upside down while still stilling to the genre. Anyways, I hope this makes somewhat sense 🙂

[juliae.]

I think you make some good points and I agree with what you say. I also think that more difficult reads, literary reads, need the bump that literary prizes give them because they are not easily accessible and people tend to not look for those books or if they begin reading them they may give up too soon and a literary prize says ‘yes, the payoff for this is worth the struggle ‘. Now having said that there aren’t good literary pieces worth a prize written every year and I think finding a worthy commercial writing is better than awarding bad attempts at being ‘literary ‘. Anyway, my 2 cents worth. Good discussion : ).

[SavidgeReads]

Oooh how exciting a reaction video. Eek. And looking forward to seeing where we agree and disagree. (I’m commenting as I watch. Ha.) I don’t think commercial is just genre fiction I think genre fiction can be literally and commercial. I think I meant fiction full stop just used prizes as an example haha. I will be doing a redux and use some of your points too. I haven’t seen your video on the Cannon and the Honeyman, Cotton Candy, love that title. Ha. The criteria is for all the categories not just the debut. I think you took it in a slightly different way than I meant it but I loved your points and will use some of them in my redux. How lovely to get this discussion going further. Ha.

[alnsubuga]

Really interesting to hear your thoughts on this topic. I'm interested in book prizes as they give me a heads-up on new releases, but I've always felt they either come across as elitist (this is 'proper' literature that the masses don't understand) or sale-oriented (let's promote titles that will shift the most copies). However the internet (and social media specifically) have given me a much wider and more diverse pool of recommendations to draw from thanks to people like you. I'm finding that I'm making better-informed choices in terms of what I'll read, and that I've become more confident in using my own views and opinions on genres, authors, topics etc. to select my books. I'm actually paying less attention to book prizes now.

[newbooksmell]

This video helped me clarify some issues I had regarding this discussion but I wasn't able to articulate, so thank you very much for that :)

Up to now I haven't thought about putting those two opposites regarding accessibility in contrast with one another - "if it's an easy read, does it mean it's good?" x "if it's hard to get through, does it mean it's good?" - and I heavily agree with you here: the answer to both questions is obviously "no".

I do see the point on accessibility being a huge criteria to the Costa Awards, though. I guess they took on as a mission to put a spotlight on books that "average readers" would be interested in, and the prize is as a counterpoint to literary prizes that can be more intimidating to said "average reader". It's an interesting and valid premisse, but it shouldn't be used in isolation to everything else (good writing/character development, etc) or else it becomes simply an excuse. That said, I still understand Eleanor Olliphant winning the Costa (I think it matches their goals and criteria, even though I'm not 100% on board with these criteria per se), but I'm troubled by this book being pointed as one of the best fiction written by women in the past year (I. just. can't. even. argh).

[mcs-books]

Britta, this was fantastic, I really enjoyed the fact that you gave a whole other perspective to the conversation which gave a lot of depth. I'm still personally stewing on this topic, I have a lot of opinions, as always, but don't feel ready yet to quite articulate them. I loved listening to your side of this argument though, so thanks for this food for thought!

[Gabrielcezar]

Literature should aim to be of high quality. If it ends up appealing to a large public that's just a consequence, it shouldn't be the main concern while writing a book. Rather, the concern should be with artistic integrity. So in Literary prizes I should expect high quality books, whether or not they will attract a large public. I don't like when the jury deliberately try to bring accessibility, or readability as they say, to the foreground, like in the man booker Life of Pi's year...

[browngirlreading]

Ok I just watched Simon's video. I think I understood what he was trying to say. It's true that the idea of using titles like commercial and literary give off a certain impression to regular readers like us. It would be better if people didn't over judge a commercial book by saying that it doesn't have any literary merit or that literary fiction has all the literary merit. I think most of us know this. What we want is to read a damn good book that's written well and brings to life some wonderful characters and maybe even say something interesting and/or important. Simon doesn't like the snobbery/judgement that's involved sometimes with avid readers. He might be right about it being difficult to write a book that appeals to the masses, whereas writing a niche book might be easier because it's for a very small group.

[nicolaspoblete]

As always thought-provoking, Britta. This discussion is so relevant, especially today, where the market is able to satisfy everyone's needs, thus that horrible example of a book that can be deposited in everybody's hand, meaning, sales, sales, sales. Shakespeare is a great example, but I was thinking of the Latin American tradition with writers like García Márquez, whose novel "100 years of solitude", is a bestseller and at the same time quite experimental with its use of Magical realism. Regarding awards, I think the Nobel Prize is the most radical because it looks for quality/vision rather than quantity/easily digested reads, and has promoted translations of unique writers, some of them not read today, like Claude Simon, Dario Fo or (in very small circles) Elfriede Jelinek...

[Reading_Tamishly]

I would like to read both and just deal with it 😄

[marianryan]

I'm definitely prone to agree with your point of view! I don't think Simon's comments meant that any accessible book is a good book but I too was given pause by the criterion that a contender for the Costa be something that could be given to virtually any reader. (That almost seems like throwing up your hands, and nullifying the whole idea of selection of any kind.) It seems like a fool's errand to say you'll find such a unicorn of a book. What I think may be missing from the discussion so far is audience. The first thing an apprentice writer learns to be aware of is who's the audience? Also what every marketing department wants to know. I'm not the audience for every book out there and I don't think the reverse is true either, that a single book can be pleasing or satisfying to everyone--the Costa standard. The underlying assumption is a sameness among readers, among humanity, that just does not exist. People are different; readers are different. That doesn't bother me in the least. If I find a book difficult to read because of the style/form or its ideas, I don't feet "talked down to"; I just feel I'm not the audience for that book, at least not at that particular time. Not every book is for everybody, and from where I sit that's not only fine, it's as it should be.

[DaeronK]

I agree with your sentiments. You have said what I found hard to put into cohesive words.