punching down

This essay by J. Robert Lennon is, surely, less inflammatory and annoying than the headline that accompanies it. But it's still a profoundly useless piece of generalization, exactly as helpful or unhelpful as saying "Most of anything is bad." I also think that it shows a profound lack of perspective. There are tons and tons of people out there who already want to grind an ax against longform fiction and other kinds of challenging art, out of a resentment towards the implied judgment that they project onto those who like different things. I don't think that these people need more ammunition. Insecurity already conditions many to dislike traditional "high" culture.

Also: the world is full of writers who don't read, and they're terrible, and their particular terribleness is  bound up in the belief that allows them to think that they don't have to read to write, which is that they are the center of every universe and their lives are inherently interesting. Stop validating them. Their writing is bad and they should feel bad.

I wrote an essay last year about the total commercial and growing critical dominance of pop culture, in which I pointed out that everyone feels entitled to attack traditional art and culture, but attacking pop art will result in apoplexy and accusations of snobbery. I just want to point out: if I wrote an essay for Salon titled "Most comic books are terrible," the Internet would explode. I think your laptop would catch on fire if you opened it. Links to it would cause instant burn-in on your tablet. They'd sign me up for the sex offender registry. All of this, despite the fact that pop culture is commercially dominant and under absolutely no threat whatsoever, and literary fiction, like so many other artforms, is in danger of extinction. It just goes to show that there is no reality which a committed social group cannot twist to ensure its own self righteousness.