Don’t Hate the Playa; Hate the Game: A Series in Three Parts

This is the first in my three-part series, Don’t Hate the Playa; Hate the Game (alternatively titled, What’s With All the Judgy-Judgy?). In this series I will explore the many ways that narrow-minded people try to make others feel small so they can feel superior.

Specifically, I will examine the self-righteous judgments some people make based on three factors: the books you read; whether or not you stay home with your kids; and finally, the amount of food you choose to snarf down on any given day. I have found people to be especially judgmental of others where these three things are concerned.

Today’s installment is about the odious practice of book snobbery.

I think there is a special place in hell for book snobs. I don’t mean people who happen to enjoy well-written, thoughtful, literary fiction. That is fine. Great. Good for them. I’m talking about people who make judgments about what sort of person you are based on what you read. For instance, there are those who assume if you read Jackie Collins, or Stephanie Meyer, or John Grisham, that you are somehow intellectually inferior to people who read Dave Eggers, Joan Didion, or Michael Chabon. Or worse yet, that Jackie Collins, or Stephanie Meyer, or John Grisham themselves are intellectually inferior to the Dave Eggers, Joan Didions, or Michael Chabons of the world. Which they may be. Or they may not be. But the fact that they choose to write plot-driven books about sexy vampires or lawyers, as opposed to the rich interior life of tortured souls, does not reflect on their intellectual status.

Some people read to learn more about the world around them; others read to escape it. Most of us like the advantages that both literary and commercial fiction have to offer. Neither has the moral high ground. The people who read nothing but gut-wrenching, tear-jerking, soul-crushing stories about genocide are no deeper, no more cerebral, no smarter than those who read about shoe sales. Reading is, like any other art form, completely subjective and should remain in a judgment-free zone.

Even more upsetting is when people inside the publishing industry proliferate these kind of snarky attitudes. As an aspiring author, I read a lot about the world of publishing and frankly, I am shocked that an industry faced with such an uncertain vicissitude would engage in such petty in-fighting. I read articles everyday about how this author or that book critic discounts the efforts of writers who choose to write “chick lit” or “mommy lit.” (The genre titles themselves are misogynistic and patronizing, but that is another post.) Critics say the same about  people who write mystery, horror, sci-fi, YA, etc. These critics suggest that authors who write books to entertain, and who are perhaps less focused on craft, are somehow “less than” those who write to enlighten the human condition with a precise and stalwart dedication to language. This kind of blatant snobbism is gross. It diminishes peoples experience of books – which is something the publishing industry can scarcely afford right now.

It would seem that people in the business of writing and selling books ought to stick together during this tumultuous time in the industry’s long history. It would seem that We, the Book People, in order to form a more perfect union between those of us who write books and those of us who read them, should establish literary justice, insure bookish tranquility, provide for the common imagination, promote the generally well-read, and secure the literary blessings of freedom to ourselves and our book-choices.

Reading is reading, folks. No matter what book you choose to pick up, it beats the hell out of playing Super Mario Bros. Not that there’s anything wrong with that…

Next post on 5/15: Working Moms vs. Moms Who Say at Home: You Pays Your Money, You Takes Your Chances.