The Myth of the Literary Elite

Gotta love a good literary rant. Matthew Cheney takes a break from packing for a move to rage against "all you sufferning science fiction readers" who feel scorned by "the literary establishment," as embodied by Jason Sanford's essay in the latest New York Review of Science Fiction, entitled "Dipping Their Toes in the Genre Pool: The U.S. Literary Establishment's Need-Hate Relationship with Speculative Fiction." Cheney hits the ground running, declares that he hasn't time for nuance or sources, and hurls himself into the fray:

The article that has caused me so much annoyance is by Jason Sanford and titled "Dipping Their Toes in the Genre Pool: The U.S. Literary Establishment's Need-Hate Relationship with Speculative Fiction". Even the title makes me want to scream.

If this article were anomalous, if it did not represent an argument that I have heard over and over again, it wouldn't bother me. Instead, it is simply a longer (and better written) version of what gets said again and again in book reviews in SF magazines, on the discussion boards for various SF groups, in conversations and panel discussions at SF conventions. And it is ignorant. Provincial, blind, idiotic, ridiculous, silly, simplistic. People making such an argument look like fools.

But the problem may be that the fray doesn't exist. A commentor to the thread quickly takes Cheney to task:

Sanford's essay isn't very well thought-out, I agree. It makes as much sense to talk about a "literary establishment" as it does to talk about, oh I don't know, "all you science fiction readers". Generalisations always fall down. But it's hardly unreasonable to be frustrated by the fact that reviews like this, filled with ignorant generalisations of their own -- "Michael Chabon has spent considerable energy trying to drag the decaying corpse of genre fiction out of the shallow grave where writers of serious literature abandoned it" -- appear so regularly in high-profile critical venues, nor is it unreasonable to criticise said venues for publishing such nonsense.

Cheney responds, the discussion grinds on, and all in all--despite the fact that I don't have much time, myself, to prove it here or to add my own thoughts--the whole discussion makes for an interesting read, if you're into these things. In brief, the discussion orbits around whether or not Cormac McCarthy and "literary elite" fans of The Road owe some debt of acknowledgment to "genre fiction" for whatever post-apocalyptic elements appear in the book.