Hello dear readers,
I’m Anna, one of the interns at Beaufort Books this fall. Following in the footsteps of the great interns before me who have incorporated “beau” into their blogging nom-de-plumes, I have elected to call myself Scarlett Beau’Hara from now on.
When I first picked up Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind four years ago, I was prepared to despise that novel. I’d watched the movie one sick day at about age eight and had been bored beyond belief. More importantly, however, Gone with the Wind — both the film and the novel — had always represented to me cultural artifacts of mass appeal. Being something of a closet hipster who tries to avoid bandwagons, I didn’t care to ever pick up the novel. But when two good literary-minded friends of mine independently recommended Gone with the Wind to me within the span of a few months, I knew the time had arrived to at least take a peek at the book.
And I am so glad that I did. Because — to mis-paraphrase the dashing Rhett Butler — frankly, my dear readers, I now do give a damn about this novel. So many damns.
Likely you are all familiar with the basic story of Gone with the Wind, so I feel it unnecessary to provide a summary. Let me for now say that the novel is a wonderfully accurate and frequently uncomfortable glimpse of our country’s past, a romantic tour de force, and a masterpiece that contains of one of the most unlikable and yet compelling heroines in literature. A heroine whom I’ve decided to pay tribute to with my blogging name.
It pains me now to think that, four years ago, I refused to read what is now one of my favorite novels simply because I’d decided that too many people in the world already liked it. And so this leads into my topic for today: literary bandwagons. Gone with the Wind was not the first book I decided not to read because of its cultural popularity, and it was certainly not the last, either. I’ve noticed this is not an uncommon problem among bookworms. In my case, while I take personal recommendations seriously, I become skeptical when the whole world gets excited about the book in question.
Why this reluctance to jump upon literary bandwagons? I don’t want to make a blanket statement about all readers, but I think it often has to do with a book’s perceived literary merit. In the case of Gone with the Wind, I expected a frivolous and overly-long bodice-ripping-romance with only a thinly excuse of a plot. There is no reason to believe that just because something is popular, it also has no plot, character development, thoughtful prose or themes, etc, but such is the way my mind works.
And that really ought to stop. Because while I shall never stop lauding the value of my less-acclaimed favorites (Eleanor Updale’s Montmorency series, for instance, or T. Greenwood’s novel Undressing the Moon), neither should I feel the need to apologize for adoring Gone with the Wind or any other popular book. It’s highly gratifying to see that this divide between popular books and literary books is not as tidy as it used to be — gratifying to see, for instance, Frank Herbert’s science-fiction novel Dune being taught in schools, or critical essays being written about Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games (I highly recommend The Girl Who Was On Fire, a collection of essays about this fantastic and smart YA series by authors and scholars, by the way). I don’t think this tension over bandwagon books will end anytime soon, but I do hope that I — and other readers who share my mental block when it comes to popular books — can begin to stop assuming that being popular equates with having no literary value.
Well, that’s all I’ve to say for now. Until next time then, dear readers,
~Scarlett Beau’Hara
