Stop this harmful hierarchy

On a recent foray back home to the Yorkshire Dales, I was tasked with clearing out attic boxes. Among childhood clutter I found a homemade book report made when I was 10 years old.  In it I had written reviews of Dodie Smith’s The Hundred and One Dalmatians and The Starlight Barking alongside Johanna Spyri’s Heidi, Angie Sage’s Septimus Heap fantasy series and Garth Nix’s Old Kingdom series. Of Abhorsen, the third book in Nix’s series, I wrote: “As soon as I finished it, I wanted to start all over again! Excellent "tesion" (sic)! I was engrossed straight-away. WELL DONE GARTH NIX!”

Not only was I surprised I knew the word “engrossed”, although that achievement is slightly mitigated by the misspelling of “tension”, but reading the report truly brought home how much reading has shaped my life and how, be it talking dogs or magical bells which put the dead back to rest, the fantastical has always shone through.

Like many students who proclaim "reading as their passion", I went on to study English literature at university. I soon became well attuned with the makings of the traditional English literary canon from Chaucer, Charles Dickens, Joseph Conrad, Katherine Mansfield, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce et al. While I discovered new literary loves, I also intuited a social reading hierarchy.

While studying for my GCSEs and beyond, I treated reading as an indicator of taste and therefore viewed my science-fiction and fantasy books as a kind of guilty pleasure

I don’t believe I’m alone in this. It is old news that ageing comes with an increased awareness of social pressures and it is curious how this came to shape my reading decisions beyond the age of 10. While studying for my GCSEs and beyond, I treated reading as an indicator of taste and therefore viewed my science-fiction and fantasy books as a kind of guilty pleasure. I thought that to be taken seriously I should be a purveyor of the classics, of experimental and literary fiction. And so, during my academic studies my reading shifted toward mandated books and other writings of the that ilk—books which have been institutionally affirmed as worthy of study and indicators of appropriate levels of intelligence.

I lost, for a while, the jubilant joy of my childhood. While some may argue that this is the nature of growing up, I believe it is something more. It is the awareness that comes with judgement.

James Marriott recently wrote a comment piece for the Times entitled “TikTok is a threat to our intellectual health” where, as well as prophesying the death of “literary culture”, he implies how our intellectual health is under threat from reading the wrong types of books. Although Marriott outlines how the reading “material does not have to be intimidatingly highbrow”, he then cites a professor lamenting the lack of interest in George Eliot’s Middlemarch. While use of “highbrow” already undermines his argument, suggesting a grading system of reading taste where literary fiction sits at the pinnacle, Marriott is drawing a clear link between declining interest in canonical works and, rather dramatically, the end of a literary culture.

The freedom of being able to read according to personal preference is a powerful thing, it is agency in a very pure form

I don’t believe Marriott’s implication exists in isolation but is a symptom of a belief that some writing is simply “better”. While there is not enough space here to dive into the specifics of this subjectivity, it is enough to say that is inherently damaging, and marginalising, to extoll the virtues of some books, and thus their readers, over others.

This is not to say that we should not praise and continue to teach the classics and canonical writings, but it is to say that we should embrace flexibility. Surely, in a literary culture which is predicated on widespread literacy, the primary focus should be on if people are reading and not what they are reading.

It needs to start, as Julie Andrews says, at the very beginning. School curriculums need to change to be inclusive of different genres, not just those which have been canonically validated. Yes, we should be taught the classics, but Dickens isn’t accessible to all readers and children shouldn’t be punished as a result and risk being alienated from reading. A multi-genre curriculum would help all young readers see their taste as something to be proud of and minimise the implied difference between “highbrow” and “lowbrow” work.

Journalists, broadsheet papers and magazines have a duty to widen their coverage, to review and write about all books not just the literary, niche non-fiction titles. Whether a book is reviewed or featured, for good or bad, implies that this book is worthy of note, this book was worthy of editorial space. Making a conscious effort to widen book coverage is a win-win situation, inviting readers in, establishing a larger audience, rather than pushing them away. Visibility is supreme and the media, and journalists, are key in upholding this principle.

The publishing industry loves an adjective, a tagline and categorisation. The issue is with categorisation, especially regarding fiction and the designations “literary fiction” and “commercial fiction”. The Cambridge dictionary defines “literary” as “literature (=written artistic works, especially those with a high and lasting artistic value)” whereas “commercial” is defined as “related to making money by buying and selling things”. The synonyms for “literary” include “learned”, “intellectual”, “academic” and “erudite” whereas for “commercial” they include “corporate”, “marketable”, “mass-market” and “saleable”. It is impossible that a valuation is not then inherent in the marketing of said book and the reader. Admittedly, this is one example but an important one. The way we talk about, market and write about books confers value and this value should not become an objective marker of worth, the value should be subjective to the reader. The publishing industry is a business built on the effect of words and so the words it uses should be equally important.

The freedom of being able to read according to personal preference is a powerful thing, it is agency in a very pure form. The appetite for reading and books is as strong as ever — according to Nielsen data, “fiction returned its biggest ever haul (since records began), and its largest ever slice of the market (26%)” in 2022, wrote The Bookseller’s Philip Jones. This is a sign of people not only exercising their choice to read but to read widely.

Reading is a subjective activity, bound by personal taste, and it is also an intimate one. Invading this space with prejudice and snobbery corrupts the choice in such a matter. Whether something is “highbrow” or “lowbrow” should not be an issue and these labels ought to be made redundant; it is if books are being picked up, freely, that matters.