Community: Real Life

Pompous prose


Rhian Williams

Rhian Williams is a freelance writer who partied, napped, sang, danced, dressed up and army rolled through her university life and is somehow a proud English Graduate. She believes in one more drink, a good book and living life to the full.

Since finishing her degree in English Literature, snobbery annoys Rhian more than ever. Writers of chick-lit are shunned in comparison to canonical writers who, in her view, nobody reads. People are seen as educated if they read Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice but not Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones.

"Tell me the last time you read a novel that made you cry," asked my professor. The whole room was silent yet I knew I'd read a Cecilia Ahern book, on the beach, which had brought a tear to my eye. This has to be one of the biggest sins an English student could commit against literature, so I was keeping my mouth shut. We all looked at each other, unable to summon a good enough answer. He wanted a profound title. It wasn't enough for Miss Ahern to have sold thousands upon thousands of copies, been nominated for awards and enjoyed success with all her books.  It wasn't classed as literature.

So who exactly are these people who are so self-important they feel able to deem books worthy of literary status? It infuriates me that seemingly educated people can't see past the works of Austen, Shakespeare, Hardy and Dickens, the 'canonical writers', and don't appreciate that in today's internet-obsessed society getting into the best seller lists is a great achievement! Instead, these novels are looked down upon as chick-lit. I'm totally sick and tired of a pretence which means we'd rather be seen reading Great Expectations than the more modern Bridget Jones' Diary. For me, sitting with a Dickens novel really means hard times.

Years in the education system hammered home the merits of good spelling, grammar and punctuation and suddenly at university this no longer seemed to apply: in the works we studied, a metaphor and a simile were the same thing and punctuation wasn't always necessary. In fact, the more awkward and 'out of the box' the style, the more ground breaking it seemed to be. However, who am I to say that it might just be too try-hard and tiring to read? A novel by James Joyce called Ulysses is a favourite among these literary types. It's written in a 'stream of consciousness', meaning there's no structure, no punctuation and certainly no explanation of what's going on. I wonder if I handed this in as an essay, would it be praised as an amazing work of originality, or a lazy excuse for a piece of writing. I would place my bets on the latter.

"We need to stop being so snobby about the books we keep on our shelves."

Shakespeare, a name that still sends shivers down the spines of many secondary school children, is, of course, highly respected in literary circles. As much as I love his works these days, we must remember that this man took other playwrights stories! He is what they conveniently call an 'adaptor'. His plays maddened me at school and exasperatingly we'd be made to sit reading lines of Othello with really no idea what was going on, because the language was old-fashioned to our ears. Teachers and students alike have to start accepting that novels, whatever the genre, are popular for all kinds of reasons and that narrowing our spectrum of books from an early age will not help promote reading to the next generation.

I think its time these stereotypes of what constitutes great literature moved on. We need to stop being so snobby about the books we keep on our shelves. After all, it's the dust-free ones which we should celebrate!

Angry? Submit a rant

Updated: 22/05/2009


  • Print this page
  • Share/Bookmark

Also on TheSite.org