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— Brittney MacDonald, Life & Style Editor —

THE MYTH OF ACADEMIC FICTION

BREAKING DOWN PERCEPTIONS OF VALUE IN LITERATURE

love reading. As a painfully shy child who grew

into an, at times, depressive adult with high

anxiety, there is a certain solace I find in books.

‘This adoration led me to pursue a degree in
English literature, through which I was able to
discover countless titles, genres, and authors I would
have otherwise never been exposed to. However,
as anyone who meets me soon comes to learn, I
will read almost anything. Comic books, graphics
novels, popular fiction, young adult, novels filled with
highbrow symbolism, biographies, classical plays,
trashy romance novels—if it’s on paper or available
on Kindle, Pll probably read it. This breadth has
given me an impressive kaleidoscope of mental _
literary references because, to me, all of these varied
works are of equal merit. y

I look at and judge material by Marjorie Liu
(Monstress, Black Widow Vol. 4, and Dark Wolverine #75).
in the same way I would Salman Rushdie (Shame, The
Satanic Verses, and The Golden House). 1 do not mean —
to say that I like all that I read, or that I believe that
all of these creative works are at the same leyel in
terms of ease of comprehension. I mean that I do
not automatically dismiss a work of fiction simply.

because I believe it is beneath me. Though it sounds -

silly, you would be surprised how many people

believe that they are too old or too well educated
to stoop to reading popular fiction. I usually, blame

something I call the “myth of a

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What is “academic fiction”? It is ‘the ype of.

__ fiction you associate with having to study in school.

Think titles by authors like William Shakespeare and
George Orwell. These are the types of books that a

~ you imagine the stereotypical PhD graduate ¢ enjoying

after a long day of debating whether or not the blue
drapes in that one scene of that one highbrow book
signify the author’s depression or their desire to —
be free of worldly possessions. ‘They are the books

_ that intimidate, terrify, or bore most of the general

population. Somehow, over the course of the many
years that the oral tradition of storytelling has been —
fe by the written Wore | little elitistidea

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beneath the boot of the classical literary masters.
However, I never subscribed to that belief—or
maybe I did at some point but quickly thought better
of it. Popular fiction is no more or less valuable than
classical fiction. In fact, many literary classics have
humble or common beginnings.

Charles Dickens, author of many exceptional
works including A Tale of Two Cities, Olwer Twist,
A Chnsimas Carol, and Great Expectations, is widely
regarded as one of the greatest novelists to come
out of the Victorian Age (1837 to 1901). However,
during his time Dickens was not seen as some
sophisticated wordsmith. Dickens pioneered the idea
of story serialization because his novels began as
excerpts published in magazines and newspapers.
Only later were the pieces combined into novels.
This is why a lot of Dickens’ work is often self-
referential and at times repetitive—Dickens had
to remind his original audience of what occurred
in previous chapters because they were sometimes
published, and subsequently read, months apart.

_ These newspapers and magazines were not meant
for high society, which would have been the educated
' public. Instead they were aimed at the working class,

which made up the majority of the population. In
short, they were popular fiction.
similarly, William Shakespeare’s work was

‘notoriously performed in his play company’s own

Globe Theatre. One key feature of the Globe
Theatre is that it accommodated everyone, from
nobility and royalty to the peasant class—people
who were usually illiterate. This was mostly due

to the fact that theatre and performance went
back and forth in terms of legality, thanks to both
religious disagreements and fears of plague. ‘The
Globe thus couldn’t afford to turn away customers,
so Shakespeare had to create plays that not only
appealed to educated blue bloods but also to the
uneducated masses. ‘his makes works like Romeo and

Juliet the very epitome of popular fiction long before

they were ever the classroom staples that we now
know them to be.

MF 4
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