Reading Snobbery, Part 3

Continuing the theme of the first and second parts, I submit without comment this excerpt from Grumpy Old Bookman:

…it is a fundamental error, with moral implications, to think of fiction as a hierarchy, a sort of tower block, if you will, with literary fiction at the top and the ‘lower’ types of fiction tucked away in the basement. That is a concept which has no intellectual validity.

The correct way to think of the various genres of fiction is as a street of many bookshops; and in this street there are no prime sites. Each shop pays the same business taxes as any other: all shops are equal. And the smart customer places her business in different shops at different times; to the advantage of everyone, most importantly herself.

[Via]

Filed under: Books

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