What is Good Literature vs. Bad Literature?

While perusing Google Book Search, I found the above passage in a fascinating book entitled “The Heart of Oak Books,” by Charles Eliot Norton. (Copyright 1916) The break in the clipped passage is due to the fact that it spanned two pages of the book.

In context, the above passages relate to how literature for children should be chosen. According to Charles Eliot Norton, the love of literature and reading is something that must be cultivated in children. However, not only must love of literature be cultivated, but love of the right kind of literature must be cultivated.

Charles Eliot Norton differentiates between two different kinds of literature. On the one hand he says that there is “Good Literature,” and on the other hand there is “Bad Literature.” “Good Literature” is literature that meets the following specifications:

• It has been approved by long consent.
• It has merit in literary form.
• It possesses general human interest.
• It cultures the imagination.

I think that it is interesting to compare this 1916 view of “good literature” with today’s methodology of choosing good literature.

First of all, most good literature these days rises to the top very fast. “Long consent” is not as much of a factor in this time. Recently there has been considerable media attention about the fact that President Obama has made several books bestsellers simply by being seen reading them. Recently, the President was seen reading a book, and the publishers immediately start reprinting it, looking forward to increased sales even before indications showed that the public wanted to buy the book.

In addition, many books are rigorously advertised in an effort to make them popular. Many books are also made into movies. In this way a book can gain a following within months, rather than the years that it used to take for a book to be accepted.

Unfortunately, this also means that many books also loose their followings when the next, better book comes along. There are many fine pieces of literature out there that are never noticed because of media hype about other books like “Twilight” or “Harry Potter.”

The second definition of “Good Literature” according to Charles Eliot Norton was that it have merit in literary form. Basically this means that the book’s language and style should be exceptional and well structured.

In recent times literature has been exploring different literary forms. Many books are aimed to capture the language or spirit of the language used by their characters. In some cases this includes “ghetto talk,” use of the word “ain’t,” or use of vulgar obscenities. These are regarded as making the book more realistic.

The raw power of realistic language is an excellent thing for a writer to tap into, but I wonder where the line is crossed, and literary form is sacrificed?

The third ingredient was human interest. According to one dictionary human interest is “the aspect of a story that interests people because it describes the experiences or emotions of individuals.”

I feel that to some extent human interest is being captured even better in newer literature than it was in older literature. In many older books the characters appear stiff or cliched. Perhaps this is due to changing human personalities and characteristics. Perhaps modern readers connect better to modern book characters, whereas older readers would view modern book characters as flamboyant and showy.

I think that to some extent film has taught authors to inject extra emotion into their written scenes. New books of today have that cinematic finish, that extra polish to make them as vivid and bright as possible.

It is the last qualification of “Good Literature” that interests me most of all. Charles Eliot Norton says that “Good Literature” cultures the imagination.

This is a very fascinating statement. In biology “culturing” is the process of maintaining an organism in conditions suitable for growth. In this way biologists grow colonies of bacteria.

A good book, therefore, cultures the imagination, causing children to think more, and imagine more. Books differ from movies or video games in this respect, because they require a much more active participation. Books, movies, and video games guide the user through a carefully designed flow of events, but books require the most amount of user thought.

The child has to visualize the scenes in their mind. I think that this greatly expands the child’s mental ability and creativity, especially if they are exposed to books and reading at an early age.

All in all, I agree with Charles Eliot Norton’s evaluation of “Good Literature.” Books For Sale employs its own rating system which attempts to separate “Good Literature” from “Bad Literature.” It shares some major similarities with Charles Eliot Norton’s measure of “Good Literature.”

Book Calendar, a blogging librarian, wrote in response to this article:

“Good Literature” is the literature which can be accepted to purchase because it has been labeled as things which the public should read. It does not mean that they want to read it, but there is some “merit” attached to it because of either status or literary merit. There is a difference between a book having prestige and status because of an author and having literary merit.

Bad literature is often used as an excuse to not buy things which people want to read in both bookstores and libraries. Sometimes people categorize all “science fiction” as bad literature or all “noire mysteries” as bad literature. It is used often as a way to “educate” tastes away from what people really want to read. Romance fiction is often viewed as “bad literature”. Romance is the most read category of books in many places. The latest bad literature might be urban fiction.

The second problem with the concept of “Good Literature” is that it does not promote truly excellent new authors, or obscure authors with superb literary merit. It is based around the concept of popularity, the test of time concept. I don’t complete accept the “long consent” ideology. It goes against the reading of newer more experimental modern literature, independent small press writers, and archival quality works with high literary merit but low readership like Dalkey Archive press.

It is why the classic section of the library or bookstore is packed with very old fashioned books which you are expected to hand to teenagers as the best possible book for them to read. Some of these are excellent like Hemingway, Jane Austen, or Arthur Conan Doyle but many are not so great as an incentive to make people read. They may be excellent literature but not good incentives to read.

Good books and good literature are two different concepts in my mind. The books in good literature are fine, the concept is problematic.

Book Calendar has a great point about how students are often turned away from reading because they don’t like the literature that they are forced to read.  Many modern good books are much more interesting, and their plots make more sense because they are expressed in modern terms.

Escapability is a major ingredient in modern literature, and it is something that readers have come to expect. They don’t want long, drawn out descriptions of court life, complex relationships, and other subjects discussed in classic literature. They want something filled with action, that takes them to another world or viewpoint.

But, I also feel that both “good books” and “good literature” have to have good meaning as well. Every book teaches something, even if it is a fiction book. If the message behind the book is a fundamentally flawed one, like “Stealing is alright as long as you get away with it,” or “The answer to conflict and problems is violence,” then that is not a “good message.” That’s why we see banned books.

There are some banned books that I don’t agree with, as the books are perfectly fine, but there are others, including a few that I’ve seen recently banned, that I wholehearted agree with, because they contained discussions of sex and masturbation in a book for elementary school readers. Why introduce such books to young readers so soon?

That is “bad literature” or “bad books.” It is the job of parents and educators to help children find “good literature” and “good books” to cultivate their reading taste. If after that, they want to read other books, they will. Children are always going to be attracted to some books, like the Harry Potter series, or Twilight. But if they just focus on these mass media, magic and sex books then they’ll miss out on a lot of really deep meaningful books available.

What do you think? Is there a difference between “Good Literature” and “Bad Literature”? Is so, how do you measure “Good Literature”?