Ashley LaFramboise: You Call This Literature? The Re-mix!

Looking through the "Literature" section and expecting to find articles on Woolf and Morrison, I was disgusted to see "Dan Brown" littered all over the place like candy wrappers in a field, and realized that this is in fact what we have come to. Although Brown’s earth-shattering theory is not even his own, and his writing is generally quite uninspired, what I find appalling is how a best-seller, based on a plot everyone loves to believe, is what defines what we talk about; it defines what we think we ought to read.
Fine literature is being overlooked by so many of us, to the point that Chapters now has candles, calendars, journals and pens at the front of the store, and we have to go to the back to see what it’s really selling. Moreover, on the tables nearest the entrance are shiny, colourful, hard-covered best-sellers, and anything with Oprah's Book Club's seal of approval sticker. In fact, it took William Faulkner almost an entire century to finally be recognized as a valuable writer, until Oprah recommended a three-volume set of his "best" work. It seems that we want what someone thinks is "best," without having to dig through piles of books. Rather, we gather bits and pieces, caring only to read the books that the New York Times deems "Brilliant" and "Dazzlingly unique."
For the people who want to read more of an author's work, we would be hard pressed to find anything else by that author in the same store.A few of us haven't even heard of some Canadian writers, and have never read anything by Atwood or Munro. No, it seems some would rather read up on astrology, while picking up mini Positive Thinking cards while we're at it. Everyone wants to read for "enjoyment," to dissolve into a world of predictable plots and happy endings, but it may seem at times that we don't want to look around us, and read about things that matter. If what we're reading is mass-market, best selling, cliched plot-driven books, I'm concerned about what that says about where humanity is headed.