A Slow-Books Manifesto

Maura Kelly wrote a piece in the Atlantic recently that has librarians in a tither.  Her Slow-Books Manifesto argues in favor of reading classics and good literature instead of potboiler thrillers and romance novels. It's hard to imagine this as controversial, but some of today's librarians are allergic to the very idea of good literature, and they certainly don't believe that a librarian's role is to promote quality over junk.

The librarians reacting against this piece present themselves as under siege by elitists, but really, the Atlantic piece is an outlier.  Our whole culture encourages us to read fast-moving genre books. On the other hand, people who read literature are generally mocked as elitist eggheads, same as it ever was. In my 20-year library career, I've never encountered flak from colleagues for reading mysteries or horror novels, but I was called a "literary snob" when I was caught reading Flaubert. On the Fiction-L listerv, the books that bring me joy were derided as a "slog," as "earnest" and "self-improving," and were contrasted unfavorably with genre books that are "fun."

What an odd notion, that literature is not fun. Anyone who believes that either has not read enough literature, or has not read it well enough.