The Greatest Show on Earth - Richard Dawkins

"Which of the following statements comes closest to your views on the origin and development of human beings?", asks the question on Gallup's national poll. In each of the 9 times this poll has been conducted in America since 1981, the clear winner has been the response "God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so." The percentage of vote in 2008 - 44%.

Richard Dawkins is not a patient man. He is many things - reputed evolutionary biologist, author of some of the great popular science books of our time, an outspoken atheist, a lightening rod in debates about religion and science, a fellow of the British Royal Society as well as the Royal Society of Literature (I wonder how many people have that dual distinction). A man of many qualities. But he is not a patient man. His frustration with irrationality is all too apparant, never too far from the surface of The Greatest Show on Earth.

Dawkins has written nine books before this one, most of them on the broad theme of evolutionary biology. In The Greatest Show on Earth, he lays out for probably the first time in all his books, the real evidence behind evolution. For the first time, he sets out to convince readers that we were not all created in a week of really busy work, but evolved from a single organism over billions of years through a process of non-random natural selection.

Evolution is a fact. Beyond reasonable doubt, beyond serious doubt, beyond sane, informed, intelligent doubt, beyond doubt evolution is a fact. The evidence for evolution is at least as strong as the evidence for the Holocaust, even allowing for eye witnesses to the Holocaust. It is the plain truth that we are cousins of chimpanzees, somewhat more distant cousins of monkeys, more distant cousins still of aardvarrks and manatees, yet more distant cousins of bananas and turnips ... continue the list as long as desired. That didn't have to be true. It is not self-evidently, tautologically, obviously true, and there was a time when most people, even educated people, thought it wasn't. It didn't have to be true, but it is. We know this because a rising flood of evidence supports it. Evolution is a fact, and this book will demonstrate it. No reputable scientist disputes it, and no unbiased reader will close the book doubting it.

You get the point. Dawkins being who he is, the evidence he puts together is nothing short of spectacular. Below, I try to summarize the case he presents.

Note: This summary is more for deepening my own understanding of the story I just read. If this were a book of fiction, I would probably put a spoiler alert right about here. But of course, the very point of the book is that evolution is no fiction!

The case for evolution, as made by The Greatest Show on Earth

1. It is possible to create a wide diversity of plants and animals from common ancestor. Human breeders did it deliberately with the creation of 200+ breeds of wildly different breeds of dog, all 'hand sculpted' from the same parent, the wolf Canis lupus, over a span of just a few centuries.

2. Without deliberation, agents in nature often play the role of 'breeders' by creating an environment where one kind of characteristic in a species is preferred for reproduction and survival than another. A great example are insects that are attracted to a particular color more than others and hence preferentially pollinate certain flowers.

3. Many species have dramatically changed some of their more dominant features 'before our very eyes' in the last few decades because of clearly identifiable environmental changes that preferred the new features. Scientists have been doing it too in controlled experiments. The most dramatic form of this - the Lenski experiment. Lenski and his team at Michigan State have created, in a supremely controlled environment, 45,000 generations of E coli bacteria in separate flasks over the past two decades and more! The results are a thumping endorsement of every prediction that evolutionary bilogy would make. The Lenski experiment, which Dawkins explains in gory detail, is, I am pretty certain, the most beautiful scientific experiment I have ever heard of. Worth the price of the book just to read this chapter!

4. The fossil records are full of species that show partial transitions from one kind of animal to another. So many of these 'missing links' have now been found in fossilized form that there isn't much 'missing' in our understanding of the path evolution took.

5. No fossil has ever been found 'in the wrong geological stratum'. Not once has a single fossil been found of an animal that was supposed to have evolved after the time of that layer of earth.

6. The creation of a really compled organism from one cell happens every day, and all around us. It is called pregnancy!

7. The distribution of animals on different islands and continents is exactly as we would expect if they are all cousins evolved from shared ancestors.

8. Animals that are close cousins on the evolutionary tree have fundamental similarities in things like their skeletal structure that make it impossible to deny that they arise from similar recent parentage.

9. Animals all around us (including ourselves) have organs that serve no ostensible purpose. They remain vestigial reminders of a history long in the past when those organs were indeed useful, in a different evolutionary stage. Our evolutionary history, in other words, 'is written all over us'.

Each of the points above corresponds roughly to a chapter in The Greatest Show on Earth. And each is supported by some amazing pictures - I am sure a future release of the book will come out with a black and white version of the pictures to make the book cheaper. Take my word for it - buy the book with the color pictures.

There are two Richard Dawkins-es in The Greatest Show on Earth. One is the curmudgeonly, monomaniac who is forever belittling the creationists and the 'evolution-is-just-a-theory' brigade. While I get the point and can largely understand the frustration being expressed, this Dawkins started to get on my nerves after a while. But then there is the other Dawkins. The scientist whose pleasure in his subject is uplifting and infectious. The teacher who takes us on many, many digressions during the course of the story, each an exquisite ride. It is this Dawkins, the brainy, excited, goggle eyed one that I am a fan of. He is the guy who makes this book such a pleasure to read.

'There is grandeur in this view of life' says Dawkins, quoting Darwin. I could say the same about his book.

Two tickles to the funny bone

Appreciation of poetry isn't quite up my fairway. I have neither the ear for it nor the education. But occasionally, I come across verses that tickle a little something. This past week I came across two devilishly funny poems that made me jump up and down in sheer delight. See if you enjoy them too.

The first is a recommendation from Z, a regular at Brick and Rope. Much grateful Z! I couldn't agree more with Ogden Nash as the father of a little girl.

Song To Be Sung by the Father of Infant Female Children

My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky;
Contrariwise, my blood runs cold
When little boys go by.
For little boys as little boys,
No special hate I carry,
But now and then they grow to men,
And when they do, they marry.
No matter how they tarry,
Eventually they marry.
And, swine among the pearls,
They marry little girls.

Oh, somewhere, somewhere, an infant plays,
With parents who feed and clothe him.
Their lips are sticky with pride and praise,
But I have begun to loathe him.
Yes, I loathe with loathing shameless
This child who to me is nameless.
This bachelor child in his carriage
Gives never a thought to marriage,
But a person can hardly say knife
Before he will hunt him a wife.

I never see an infant (male),
A-sleeping in the sun,
Without I turn a trifle pale
And think is he the one?
Oh, first he'll want to crop his curls,
And then he'll want a pony,
And then he'll think of pretty girls,
And holy matrimony.
A cat without a mouse
Is he without a spouse.

Oh, somewhere he bubbles bubbles of milk,
And quietly sucks his thumbs.
His cheeks are roses painted on silk,
And his teeth are tucked in his gums.
But alas the teeth will begin to grow,
And the bubbles will cease to bubble;
Given a score of years or so,
The roses will turn to stubble.
He'll sell a bond, or he'll write a book,
And his eyes will get that acquisitive look,
And raging and ravenous for the kill,
He'll boldly ask for the hand of Jill.
This infant whose middle
Is diapered still
Will want to marry My daughter Jill.

Oh sweet be his slumber and moist his middle!
My dreams, I fear, are infanticiddle.
A fig for embryo Lohengrins!
I'll open all his safety pins,
I'll pepper his powder, and salt his bottle,
And give him readings from Aristotle.
Sand for his spinach I'll gladly bring,
And Tabasco sauce for his teething ring.
Then perhaps he'll struggle through fire and water
To marry somebody else's daughter.

Delightfully sweet! Wicked, rude, and oh-so-true!

The second poem I came across was in Richard Dawkins' The Greatest Show on Earth. (Who knew, the guy has a sense of humor too.) Dawkins of course is an evolutionary biologist, and by definition, a disbeliever of creationist dogma. He is also an avowed and outspoken atheist. All of which is useful in understanding his quoting of this poem below in his latest book on the evidence for evolution.

This is a parody of the hymn All Things Bright and Beautiful written by Cecil Alexander. This parody is written by Eric Idle and John du Prez and was performed by the inimitable Monty Python.

All Things Dull and Ugly

All things dull and ugly
All creatures short and squat
All things rude and nasty
The Lord God made the lot

Each little snake that poisons
Each little wasp that stings
He made their brutish venom
He made their horrid wings

All things sick and cancerous
All evil great and small
All things foul and dangerous
The Lord God made them all

Each nasty little hornet
Each beastly little squid
Who made the spiky urchin?
Who made the sharks? He did

All things scabbed and ulcerous
All pox both great and small
Putrid, foul and gangrenous
The Lord God made them all.

Amen.

I have said this before and I will say it again. I am a practicing believer. But I don't mean to be an ass about it. It is OK to laugh about 'the Lord God'. And admit it - All Things Dull and Ugly is hilarious.

Best writers of popular science

"I have a great recommendation for you", the acquaintance said to the much younger version of me. "I know you like science, and I know you like reading. You will love this."

The book was Shadows of the Mind by Roger Penrose. The identity of this well-meaning soul escapes me now. Which is probably for the better. For if it didn't, I might quite like to allow the face of my hand to get friendly with the back of his head. Shadows of the Mind was exactly the wrong sort of book for a novice science lover to read for pleasure. It was dense, jargon filled, way past my intellectual capabilities, and worst of all, long. It effectively convinced me that science reading for pleasure was not for me. If someone had gone about deliberately trying to get me off science books, they couldn't have done much better than recommending Penrose.

After years of assiduous avoidance, I was lured back to the fold by Simon Singh's superb book Fermat's Last Theorem. Now this was more like it. Science (or in this case, math) with attitude. Since then, I have been a regular reader of popular science books. At their best, popular science books can be illuminating, instructive, entertaining and in the hands of a special someone, even thrilling. So yes my dear wife, I do like reading them. And no, they are not a cure for insomnia.

The book I am reading right now is Richard Dawkins' The Greatest Show on Earth. More on that book in a different post. For now, I wanted to ask the question - Who are the best popular science writers out there? Or to be more precise, which popular science writers do I most enjoy reading? Here is the quick rundown.

1. Simon Singh: A science journalist rather than a practicing scientist himself, Simon Singh has written some of the popular science books I have most enjoyed. Consider Fermat's Last Theorem, The Code Book, and Big Bang. All immensely entertaining.
2. Brian Greene: Theoretical physicist and one of the better known string theorists around, Greene is also a great popularizer of complex subjects (need I say any more than 'string theory' and '11 dimensional space'?). Both of his prior books - The Elegant Universe and Fabric of the Cosmos - are gems worth reading. His most recent book tells the story of the Big Bang and beyond to young children and is called Icarus at the Edge of Time. While we are at it, can someone go ahead and give Greene the award for most evocatively titled books in science?
3. Richard Dawkins: I have crowed about Dawkins in the past on Brick and Rope. Clearly, he is the kind of scientist that gets on the nerves of religious conservatives out there. But when it comes to evolutionary biology, no one can beat Dawkins. Consider The God Delusion, clearly the best written argument for atheism that I (a practicing theist) have ever come across. Also The Blind Watchmaker and Climbing Mount Improbable. As I mentioned before, his latest is The Greatest Show on Earth which is turning out to be one heck of a book.
4. Neil DeGrasse Tyson: Astrophysicist and Director of the planetarium at American Museum of Natural History in New York. One of the most energetic and funny scientists you will come across. Consider Death by Black Hole and The Pluto Files. When it comes to using everyday metaphor to explain profound astrophysical truths, Tyson has few peers, except maybe ...
5. Richard Feynman: Quantum physicist, Nobel prize winner, creator of the Feyman diagrams, he of the 'brittle chalk' exposition of why space shuttle Challenger crashed, prankster, safe-cracker, brilliant, funny man and an irrepressibly enthusiastic writer of popular science. If there is one science book you will ever read for pleasure, let it be Surely You're Joking Mr.Feynman. The Pleasure of Finding Things Out, What do You Care What Other People Think? or any of his other books are all most worthy investments of your time.

These probably make my top five list in this category. But there are a bunch of other notable writers and scientists writing about science. Writers I have enjoyed a lot, though not read extensively.

Among the original greats, Stephen Jay Gould, Carl Sagan and Isaac Asimov are surely worth reading, though their works are truly numerous and one needs to be very selective. (By the way, I refer to the non-fiction science works of Asimov here. His science fiction and other works are classics in their own right, but purely on the dent of his writings about science, he is worthy of note in this context).

The one contemporary author that I hear is truly great but I haven't read yet is Carl Zimmer. He writes mostly about evolution, where Dawkins gives me as much as I can read, which is one of the reasons I haven't gotten to Zimmer yet. But the buzz surrounding him is immense and I absolutely have to read him. Zimmer is also the blogger at the popular blog The Loom. Which reminds me, the other person worth reading in the blogosphere, Ed Long at Not Exactly Rocket Science.

Any favorites of yours that I might have missed?

In Fed We Trust: David Wessel

David Wessel is a journalist. Not an economic theorist, not a market participant, not a regulator or policy wonk. A journalist. In Fed We Trust is a piece of journalism, not of analysis. It is the story of everything the Fed did to combat the economic collapse over the last two years. Actions that led to the emergence of the Fed as the fourth branch of government as the sub-sub-title of the book calls it. But you would be disappointed if you go in expecting in-depth analysis of why Bernanke chose certain paths over others, or whether his actions were right or wrong based on everything that was known at that point, the prevailing view of macro-economists and regulators across the world. In Fed We Trust is a story of what Bernanke did, not why, or indeed whether it was the right thing to do. Which is both the book's big strength, and its most serious shortcoming.

The protagonist of this story is Ben Bernanke. Wessel paints us a great picture of the man, his origins, his worldview, and in particular, his heartfelt desire to be different from his predecessor. A desire to not be, as President Bush called Greenspan at the then-maestro's farewell party at the Fed, "a rock star". Wessel takes us on the journey of how Bernanke tried to bring his new vision into the Fed, how he stuck with it in the face of early setbacks, and how in the end, he looks more like the big G than he would ever have liked. Some of these early chapters, where Wessel introduces us to the personality of Greenspan, to Bernanke and to how different they really are, are among the most powerful parts of the book. In Fed We Trust is not a Bernanke greatest-hits album, but it certainly does treat him with considerable respect.

The story of In Fed We Trust starts in earnest in August 2007, with the mortgage bubble fizzling out, liquidity starting to dry up from capital markets worldwide, the Bernanke Fed making an early call to not take it very seriously, leaving interest rates untouched, and then BNP Paribas closing three of their funds for withdrawals due to their heavy mortgage exposure. From there, the book turns into a blow-by-blow account. Wessel follows every twist and turn in the market till the spring of 2009. He does so always from the point of view of the Fed. Not the President, not Congress, not even the Treasury department. Always the Fed.

With his Wall Street Journal credentials, Wessel has clearly had great access to sources inside the Fed and the Treasury. They generate some wonderfully memorable personal touches in the book. Like Bernanke getting overwhelmed by events of a particularly strenuous day and not having the energy to walk over to his hotel room, crashing instead in the couch in his office. Like how Paulson doesn't do email, and doesn't have a blackberry (He did phone calls. Frequently.) Like how Geithner uses the word 'dimension' as a verb, and how Fed presidents made jokes about that in his farewell party when he got nominated to be Treasury Secretary. Like how Bernanke, Paulson and Geithner were frustrated by FDIC Chairperson Shiela Bair, finding her 'stubborn and myopic' for her singular focus on the viability of the FDIC fund with little regard for questions about the broader American financial system. That said, on the really important behind-the-scenes questions, In Fed We Trust offers no new clues. For instance, on the question of what actually happened in Bank of America's 'shotgun marriage' with Merrill Lynch, Wessel offers us a recap of publicly available information and congressional testimony, but little inside color.

The overwhelming sense one gets, in reading In Fed We Trust, is that of a Federal Reserve chairman falling behind the curve early on, and never being able to catch up. Bernanke realizes after the first few months of the crisis that he has been less aggressive than he should have been. Starting then, he comes up with one bizarrely creative extension of the Fed's powers after another. Each seems like an unnecessarily large extension of the role of the Fed, a massive overkill, but every time, events overtake the measure so rapidly that it is back to the drawing board. The chaos of the times is epitomized for me by an anecdote from the earliest part of this crisis, the Bear Stearns collapse. After working late into the night to come up with viable options for Bear to avoid filing for bankruptcy the next morning, Geithner (then the President of the New York Fed) schedules a conference call for a few hours later, at 6 AM. But events don't wait even those few hours, and at 4:45, the team is back working the phones, trying to keep Bear alive. Brutal stuff.

And in the midst of this chaos, there is farce. Like the tale of Fed board member Rick Mishkin during the Bear drama:

Mishkin and his wife had plans to see Sunday in the Park with George in New York on Sunday afternoon, and he went, anticipating that he would have to leave for a Fed board meeting. When the call came during the second act, Mishkin left the theater and took the call in his car, which he had parked nearby for this purpose.

This being New York, the driver of a passing car noticed him in the car and thought he'd spotted a choice parking space about to open up. He knocked on Mishkin's window.

"Go away!" Mishkin told him, gesticulating with one hand while holding his cell phone with the other. Eventually, the guy got the message. "We are bailing out Bear Stearns, and this guy is knocking on my damn window," he recalled. "It was like a Seinfeld episode."

So after reading In Fed We Trust, what do I feel about the Fed actions? What have I learnt? The sense I get is that of a group of really smart people working without a playbook. A series of fairly ad-hoc decisions being made with good intentions, but nothing in the way of a set of principles, a framework. I am not sure whether this is the shortcoming of the storyteller, or whether this is how the story itself played out. Based on Bernanke's own statements in the book, I tend to think the latter.

Is that ad-hoc, reactive, try-anything approach a good thing or a bad thing? Were there other alternatives? Would it have been better for Bernanke to stick with rigid ideologies (like 'market knows best') and let that ideology determine all actions he took? I am not qualified enough to know. But here is the sense I get from reading this book. Ben Bernanke is an extremely thoughtful and intellectual Fed chairman. He truly believed that we were on the verge of "Depression 2.0". He was late to grasp the magnitude of what he was dealing with. Once he saw how big it was, he pulled out all stops (and then some) to get the economy from crashing and burning. He worked his backside off, with little regard to personal fiefdom. But through it all, not subscribing to any specific brand of economic ideology, he never had the ideologue's certainty. That is what I get from the book.

And you know what? Maybe I am being naive about this, but I will take a thinker's doubts over an ideologue's certainty seven days a week.

Eating my broccoli - Balanced reading in 2009

This is my favorite time of the year. When the mercury seems weary by day and resigns to sinking post meridiem, my spirits tend to soar. It isn't all about the nip in the air either. It is the implied anticipation of the holiday season. The silent 'because' behind unspoken languor at work. The wait for year-end 'Best of 2009' lists.

This is also a time for stock-taking. Under two months of reading left in the year. So how balanced a reading diet have I been consuming.

My target is usually to read a mix of about 50/50 between non-fiction and fiction. I try to alternate so my balance remains close and the palate fresh. Somewhere in there, I also try to fit in books of the self-help / personal development variety. Books that I know are good for me, but often make for painfully boring reading. The reading equivalent, in other words, of eating my broccoli.

So where do I stand for the year? A quick scan of Brick and Rope posts and my bookshelf shows this:

In the first ten months of the year, I have been able to read about 40 books - 16 fiction, 17 non-fiction, 2 servings of broccoli, and about 5 genre books.

Quick side note: All my snootiness about genre novels not withstanding, I do tend to read and re-read a lot of Agatha Christie and P.G.Wodehouse. That is most of what ends up going into that last category.

A reader recently pointed out that in recent weeks, my reading has been fiction heavy. That is certainly true. September-October was quite a fiction dominated period, which has led me to a non-fiction as my current read (In Fed We Trust is what I am reading right now, alongside a serving of broccoli - The First 90 Days ... more on those in another post). That said, the overall fiction / non-fiction balance seems about where I would like it to be.

In the rest of this year I might get the time to read five, maybe six books. Which would make for a pretty good reading year. I consider it a good year if I get to read about 35 books. A great year would be 50, but that doesn't happen very often at all.

Now to the flip side of getting to this time of the year. My wife and I have an arrangement about my book buying . There are two parts to this arrangement - (1) I buy at the same rate as I read. No building of inventory, if you will. A good friend of Brick and Rope has a spousal arrangement to buy books at 'no more than 3 times' the reading rate. What a sweet deal! When I suggested that to my wife, she scoffed with a 'you wish'. (2) I work within a loose annual budget. That gives me the discipline to search for good deals and cut coupons where I might otherwise splurge .

Here is the thing about the arrangement - By the time I got to October, I was already out of budget. I have maybe two unread books at home. And another serving of broccoli that a friend kindly gifted me. After those? ... County Library, here I come!

How Fiction Works: James Wood

How is the pleasure of a particularly spectacular ballet movement affected by knowing that the movement was a combination of a plier, an etendre and a sauter?

How is a great jazz tune enhanced by noticing a cross-rhythm and an augmented 7th?

How is the appreciation of The Remains of the Day heightened by knowing the concepts of unreliable narrator and the free indirect style of narration?

If you are like most, you probably think that deconstruction destroys the magic. You might say that by analyzing the technical details of how an author achieves a particular effect, you are killing the effect. A joke, you might say, isn't funny in explanation. And you would be right too, in large part.

How Fiction Works is the latest in a series of books published in the last couple of years that delve into the technical aspects of how to appreciate a novel. The latest and, I am given to understand, the most accomplished. John Sutherland wrote The Novel: A User's Guide, and John Mullen wrote How Novels Work later that same year. As you can probably tell from the highly imaginative titles of these books and the James Wood book I am reviewing here, all these books are written by academics, professors of literature (in Wood's case Professor of the Practice of Literary Criticism, quite a mouthful there) - in other words, professional critics.

James Wood is widely considered to be the best in the literary criticism business. Heavyweights like Saul Bellow and Martin Amis have recognized him as the best literary critic of his generation. And that is high praise. Writers aren't known to be charitable about professional critics.

How Fiction Works is a guide to reading. A sort of book about books, a meta-book if you will. In a couple of hundred short pages, it explains Wood's view of narrative technique, characterization, dialogue, consciousness, metaphor and the like. Wood picks fictional works from the masters, picks out a short paragraph or a single sentence, or even a simple turn of phrase and breaks it down into why it really works. Some of these deconstruction passages are the very soul of the book. Talking about the free indirect style of narration, Wood quotes a paragraph from Henry James' What Maisie Knew. In those few sentences he shows where the author is speaking in his own voice, where he is speaking in Maisie's voice, and where he is actually speaking in the voice of the adults that occupy Maisie's life. He demonstrates how the reader is taken on a journey of intimate understanding by these shifting voices. And he shows how Henry James achieves all of this seamlessly, without having to specifically 'flag' it to the reader. I read the paragraph the first time and I thought it was a well-written but by no means extraordinary piece of writing. Then, after reading Wood's breakdown, I read it again. Ahhhhh!

What makes Wood truly marvelous is his finely tuned ear, trained over years of reading the literary heavies. Very early in How Fiction Works, you realize how effortlessly he can spot off-key notes in writing, how fluid his own expressions are, how elegant and graceful. (All of which make his last name a delicious little irony!)

The other source of strength for the book comes from the sheer pleasure that Wood draws from his reading. The enthusiasm and energy that he brings is truly infectious. As one reviewer said "He transmits his enthusiasms so stirringly, it's practically a form of intellectual erotica". You read Wood referring to a book with great passion and admiration, and feel the itch to go read the book yourself. Any work that can do that is already a winner in my mind.

I take two issues with How Fiction Works -

First, that his sample is drawn exclusively from a different century. He lists a bibliography at the end that has about a hundred books that are referenced in How Fiction Works. The oldest of these was published in 1605 (Cervantes) and most of the books are by authors long dead. Wood's own language and sensitivities also seem frozen in an era long gone. In a way, it is as if Wood wrote the book in the 19th century, only to be released to an unsuspecting public two centuries later with minor updates. The only recent authors Wood refers to are Ishiguro, Ian McEwan, John Updike (in an unflattering note), Philip Roth, Saul Bellow and David Foster Wallace. And all references to these guys could fit into one page of the book. I really wish there was a more contemporary feel to the book, so I could relate more to the examples that Wood refers to.

Second, while most of the chapters in the book work really well, when Wood starts discussing realism in fiction, I fear that he loses his non-professional reader. Maybe the critic world is all a-tizzy about the question of 'Is realism real?' but frankly my dear, I don't give a damn.

A few years ago, a friend invited me to visit the National Gallery of Art with him. Not knowing the first thing about art, I was sceptical. I went anyway and it was a revelation. In every room in the gallery, my friend would spend a few minutes telling me a little bit about the way to look at a pieces from that era, the 'grammar' used in the art of that time. And it was like I was looking at the paintings for the first time.

Every art form has its own grammar. Learning that grammar might not be necessary for you to enjoy the art at some level. But once you do understand it, it adds a whole other dimension to your appreciation. It is like walking around with x-ray vision. How Fiction Works is x-ray vision for serious fiction readers.

"Why do I write this stuff?" - The literary vs genre fiction debate

On Sep 26, I spent the day at the National Book Festival in Washington DC.

(Yes, I know, that was about a month back. Which is one of the more liberating things about writing a book blog, as opposed to say a news or politics or sports blog. What I have to say isn't exactly time critical.)

The festival had great reader attendance, and a good many writers out in force working the audiences, signing books, and generally selling their stuff. There were tents where writers were making speeches and readers were following up with questions, townhall style. I saw the tent called 'Mystery and Thrillers' and was trying to give it a wide berth, muttering snootily to myself - "Boy, why does anyone write this stuff?" I would have crossed the spot, never to look back, had I not heard the writer of the moment ask rhetorically over the microphone - "So, why do I write this stuff?" How could I walk away from a question like that?

The speaker was S.J.Rozan, who described herself as a writer of the 'crime genre, private-eye sub-genre'. What she was doing right as I was walking by, was attempt to defend genre writing and writers against the 'snobbery of literary authors, critics and readers'. Since I consider myself to be one of those snobs that she was speaking against, I felt compelled to stay on and listen.

Before I go any further, let me state some definitions. To the majority of you who are no doubt already familiar, my apologies if this sounds pedantic. My intent is only to make sure we are all talking the same language through the rest of the post. The conversation here is about the merits or otherwise of genre fiction vs literary fiction. 'Genre fiction', or popular fiction, is fiction written intentionally within the norms and conventions of a particular kind of genre. Think of mysteries, thrillers, horror, romance, sci-fi, crime, vampire, whatever. Each of these genres has a dedicated fan base that the authors write for, a set of standard components they work with, and a sort of 'formula' that the fiction follows. Contrast this with 'Literary fiction', which is considerably more difficult to define. The best I can say is probably that literary fiction is precisely the type of fiction that does not fit into any of the standard genres. It is fiction that is more defined by character development, language, narrative style, psychological insight, social commentary and other such. Importantly, literary fiction does not lend itself to any specific 'formula' - each book, in other words, stands on its own merit.

Now, armed with those definitions, let us get back to S.J.Rozan, a proud genre writer, and her provocative question - "So, why do I write this stuff?" Rozan wants to tackle head-on what she (and all of her audience, based on all the head nodding I saw), calls the 'snobbery' of critics and literary readers. For all my identification with the group that she derides, I must admit I agree with a lot of what she says, and it is worth relaying to Brick and Rope readers.

'Where does the snobbery come from?', asks Rozan. Primarily from two drivers -

(1) 'There is a lot of crap published in the genres.' (Her words, not mine). This crap is what 'they' - meaning the literary guys - point to, to justify their snobbery. But that isn't
the real problem. Most of almost everything is 'crap'. What's special about genre fiction? The real problem the literary types have, in Rozan's view, is this: genre fiction is popular. Which gets us to -

(2) If something is so popular, it cannot, by definition, be high art. Because high art is defined by the rarity of the people that can appreciate it.

Now, that sounds reasonable enough, though I must say it is an awfully defensive line of argument for Ms.Rozan to take. But again, I am with her. I agree entirely that so much of genre fiction is 'crap' that it is hardly worth one's time to read that stuff. I also agree with her pique that when indeed there is work of high literary value that comes out of the genres, literary types are quick to say how the book 'transcends the genre' and is actually literary. John Le Carre comes to mind. Or Charlotte Bronte (Jane Eyre). It seems fair to me that genre writers cry foul when the best among them are highjacked by literary fiction as its own.

Rozan goes from here to ask an even more interesting question. Why, she asks, continuing her earlier thought, is so much 'crap' written in the genres in the first place? She lays the blame not on the writers, but on the publishers, and ultimately, on the readers. Every genre novel, she says, works under an overarching story (an 'uber story') that is common to the genre. For example, the uber story structure of whodunnits might be - Setting > murder > detective > misleading clues > danger > 'he done it'. Every reader already knows that uber story, and knows exactly what to expect. In fact, readers like those uber stories so much that they would buy and read those books even if they have no other literary value. It is not that these readers don't know the difference between good writing and bad writing, they just don't care! All they want is the story they expect from the genre, and literary value be damned.

Importantly, publishers know this about the readers! They know that these books will sell even if they are 'crap'. So they apply no filter before deciding what gets published and what doesn't. Why would they?

Literary fiction, on the other hand, has no uber stories. When readers start reading a piece of literary fiction, they don't know exactly what they are going to get. And there is no place for bad writing to hide. Readers spot it, and publishers know they will spot it. So all the 'crap' in literary fiction dies its deservedly silent death in the unopened drawers of college sophomores and trash cans of publishers unlucky enough to attract such 'talent'. Or maybe, in the new world, it gets a public burial as a self-published, internet-only novel.

So there you have it. The Literary vs Genre fiction debate, through the lens of one S.J.Rozan. I empathize with many of Ms.Rozan's positions and sentiments, though not all. I am not, for instance, sure of her assertion that all readers know good writing from bad writing. I also get the feeling that there is an element of patience that literary fiction demands, and genre doesn't - and I believe this demand for patience has a role to play in the popularity of genre.

Anyway, a few hours later, I am walking by the same tent again and find on the microphone James Patterson, the multi-bestseller thriller writer of such masterpieces as '1st to die', '2nd chance', '3rd degree' and so on till his latest 'The 8th confession'. A reader has just asked him what he himself reads and quite seriously he says 'Dickens, Tolstoy ...'. I am struck for a moment, and wonder whether I have underestimated the guy. The audience clearly knows better, because they burst out laughing. Turns out he actually reads Grisham. Oh well, what was I thinking?