Sandstone Press

Intellectual Snobbery Works Both Ways

Posted by Ron McMillan on 4th September 2009

Independent Scottish publisher Two Ravens Press does an admirable job of keeping a topical book-related blog well stoked, and last week it turned to the never-ending grudge match that is Literary Fiction vs. Genre Fiction. This was prompted by a well-timed and fiery outburst in the Herald newspaper from Scotsman James Kelman, one of the great names in British literary fiction today, bemoaning what the Herald called “a commercialised literary scene in thrall to Harry Potter and Rebus”.

So far as Kelman is concerned, the ‘Scottish literary establishment’ - however the hell that may be defined - is obsessed with what he terms ‘mediocre’ writing, and by which I gather he means the work of authors such as J.K. Rowling, Ian Rankin and Denise Mina, whose books not only have the gall to fit neatly into popular pigeon holes such as fantasy and crime fiction, but which commit the further crime of being redolent of all things middle-class.

My immediate impulse is to take a swing at that line of thought - not with any inherent presumption of status allowing me to argue with Booker-Prize-winning Kelman, but as an avid reader and part-time writer. Why should his personal prejudices hold much water?

Then I step back and think of my own views and tastes and consider how they reflect upon me. I enjoy and have infinite respect for the work of Ian Rankin and Denise Mina and myriad other Scots authors who might find themselves tarred (I feel, in the main unjustifiably) with that ‘mediocre’ brush, but at the same time I also reserve the right to look down my nose at other, even more popular, authors. Moving away from Scottish writers for a moment - since surely this is not only about Scots - consider for example the turgid mono-dimensional output of Dan ‘Da Vinci Code’ Brown and his competitors on the best-seller lists. If I was stuck on a desert island, a few copies of Brown’s titles would be saved from fire kindling duty only by their suitability for addressing even more, ahem, basic functions.

And the same goes for the Scottish tabloid newspapers. I ought not to make assumptions about Mr Kelman’s views on the red-tops, but I would be surprised if he does not vociferously defend the working man’s right to the comfort-zone reading carefully crafted for him by middle-class, university-educated tabloid writers and editors, consciously and cynically lowering their tone to suit their less-educated readership. But while I bristle at defenders of literary fiction spouting contempt at mainstream or genre fiction, all that a daily delivery of tabloids to my desert island might do for me would be to divert some Dan Browns and a few Archers to campfire fuel duty, their other function taken over by unread, and to me near-as-dammit unreadable, ‘news’papers.

Mr Kelman’s writing pedigree is beyond question, as is his reputation as a champion of all things working class, but his insistence that the work of his elitist literary cabal is somehow inherently ‘better’ than that of middle-class authors whose work is in far greater demand is nothing more than intellectual snobbery.

As for me, I have no more excuse for my own prejudices than he has. Intellectual snobbery works both ways.