It makes them angry. That’s the thing to remember. Something similar happens with music. An evolved human might listen to Coltrane or Scriabin, Miles Davis or Mozart. They might choose Sondheim or Cole Porter one day, Marianne Faithfull or Vedvik/Tillman the next. Perhaps a Puccini aria? Patsy Cline? A Mahler symphony? But such individuals are rare. Most subsist entirely on a musical diet of whatever pop songs are being aggressively marketed, and a substantial subset are fanatically devoted to particular performers or types of music – from bubblegum to thrash metal – and loathe everything else. Brought into contact with the unfamiliar, these folks are not merely uninterested. They’re furious.

Classical music is pretentious. Jazz is boring. Modern opera? Electronica? Are you kidding? It’s an outrage such things even exist.

This is not encouraging for artists of any sort.

And so we come to books...

So many fans of Horror despise everything else. And how many Romance readers ever deviate from their chosen genre? Science Fiction devotees? Mystery fans? This can grow even more specialized. Aficionados of NA MM Dystopian Paranormal Westerns apparently detest everything outside those parameters – it’s the Curse of Amazon. Millions of titles, countless categories. Literature as product. Books by the pound. Correction: by the ton.

By the megaton.

Sadly, we’ll see more of such attitudes. In the literary world, professional standards have largely ceased to exist. The proliferation of self-published novels, unblemished by grammar or punctuation, the popularity of Write Your Novel in Thirty Minutes events, the various supposed organizations for writers (which exist merely to persuade readers that they too must be published), all contribute to this decline. Even ancillary fields like literary criticism have largely been obliterated. What passes for book reviews these days reminds me of the sort of customer comments that once appeared on the Sears website about headphones or oven mitts. “I hate all that prose and literary stuff,” says a reviewer for one of my own novels on Amazon. Another complains bitterly about “descriptions” and “dialogue.” Still another resents “all those characters.” Yes, yes. Clearly, such elements have no place in fiction. What was I thinking? It’s amazing how these comments proliferate whenever my publisher holds one of their $1 sales. Possibly, people who exclusively buy .99¢ ebooks are simply more discerning than others.

Possibly, I am Ludwig of Bavaria.

But I don’t take it personally. No, really, I don’t. How could I? I’m in good company. Look around. Classics that once were hailed as works of genius are now routinely reviled. The literary landscape is no longer a fertile plain upon which talent flourishes… but a vast trash heap where writers scrabble for scraps. I’m sure the other 100,000+ authors on Goodreads have had similar experiences.

Don’t feel too bad. (Try to see it as a badge of honor.) The nice thing about the Internet is that it gives everyone a voice. The bad thing about the Internet is that it gives everyone a voice. Even the Old Masters have problems with trolls these days. Here’s a sampling of my favorite comments culled from Amazon and Goodreads. Marvel with me at the depth of insight.


THE ODYSSEY by Homer
Avoid this.

[I love the simplicity of that one.]


HAMLET by William Shakespeare
Ridiculously dull.

[Probably due to the absence of zombies.]


DON QUIXOTE by Miguel de Cervantes
Offensively stupid.

[I especially enjoy folks who seem to be striking back at classics they were forced to read in school.]



THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME by Victor Hugo
Not at all like the Disney movie.

[In case you were wondering.]


OLIVER TWIST by Charles Dickens
Encourages children to disrespectfulness!

[Fuck you.]


JANE EYRE by Charlotte Bronte
Way too many words.

[Particularly onerous in a novel.]



MADAME BOVARY by Gustave Flaubert
One of the very few novels that I have been unable to finish.

[I see this one everywhere, word for word.]



WAR AND PEACE by Leo Tolstoy
I do not recommend it to anyone.





ANNA KARENINA by Leo Tolstoy
I found it impossible to relate to any of the characters.




[I include two of Tolstoy’s novels because both reviews are so perfect in their combination of arrogance and ignorance. And don’t you love the assumption that a reader’s inability to “relate” is a failure on the author’s part? This one appears with depressing regularity, always regarding books that include characters who are black, queer, from other periods or cultures, or otherwise alien.]



THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN by Mark Twain
Whatever you do do not read this book. It is full of the N word.

[If they gave a Nobel Prize for cluelessness…]



SWANN'S WAY by Marcel Proust
This guy really likes the sound of his own voice.

[I'm sort of getting that.]



THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN by Thomas Mann
One of the most boringest books I have ever read.

[Anyone else have trouble believing that a person who uses the word “boringest” has read Thomas Mann?]



AS I LAY DYING by William Faulkner
This is definately one of the worse books I have read.

[But I enjoyed the spelling.]



THE DIARY OF A YOUNG GIRL by Anne Frank
Very very very very very very very very very boring.

[Can you even imagine this person’s level of consciousness? I spotted another just as boggling: “All the elements for a good story are there, but whiny Frank just can’t pull it together.”]



1984 by George Orwell
DO NOT READ THIS BOOK. And please for the love of God don't read that "Brave New World" book. It is twice as worse.


[I adore misspelled, ungrammatical sentence fragments that warn about bad prose, e.g., "TO MANY ABVERBS!!!" And why are they always in caps? It's like being shouted at by morons.]



THE CATCHER IN THE RYE by J. D. Salinger
Not sure why this is considered a literary masterpiece. Throughout the entire book, curse words were used. DON’T LET YOUR CHILDREN READ THIS!!! The publishers should take this book off the market.


[Note: this book should not exist – a recurrent motif. We should probably burn all the copies.]



LORD OF THE FLIES by William Golding
I am obsessed with Survivor, so I thought it would be fun. WRONG!!!

[Awesome.]



TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD by Harper Lee
I found this book so dull and uninspiring that I couldn’t finish it.

[It obviously needs sparkly vampires.]



SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE by Kurt Vonnegut
I have literally no idea what this book is about.

[Do tell.]



THE GRAPES OF WRATH by John Steinbeck
Terrible!!!!! I have read lots of books and this is the worst one ever.

[Another that shows up verbatim in a million places. What must those “lots of books” be like?]



BELOVED by Toni Morrison
1) Bad plot, bad writing.
2) DULL! DULL! DULL!!!!!!!
3) The content in this book is definitely R-rated or worse.
4) Highly regarded by the “highbrows.” I guess I am not in that class.

[You think? Sorry, but I couldn’t pick a winner here: they’re all so appalling. There must be fifty other reviews that complain about how “confusing” the book is… because if a person can’t read at an adult level, obviously the writer is at fault.]



ULYSSES by James Joyce
I honestly don't see how this book could ever get more than one star.

[Sigh.]


* * *

Real literary criticism – once an art form in its own right – celebrated erudition and interpretation. Does the current crop of crude remarks truly represent the contemporary reading public? They are to scholarship what Fox News is to journalism, achieving a level of near-mythic stupidity. No, I refuse to believe that these things exemplify the new normal. Perhaps they are the voice of some tiny but unduly verbal component – the sort of people who MUST trumpet their most boorish opinions. And invariably these attitudes are vigorously endorsed by others.

Or are they? Endorsed by others, I mean. The trolls and the sock puppets… couldn’t they all just be approving their own comments while pretending to be other people?

It remains something of a mystery. What is it they always say at the end of old horror movies?

“There are some things man is not meant to know.”