The Bran Theory of Literature

One of the unpleasant things about being in the literary field is the snobbery that surrounds the definition of ‘literature’. There are people who seem to think that if a novel is accessible, fun, and exciting with a gripping story and vivid characters, it’s bound to be bad literature–shudder, entertainment only; and that if a novel is dull, obscure, bloodless, with tortured metaphors, unpleasant or blank characters, laden with an abstract message and no story to speak of, it’s bound to be, Emperor’s New Clothes style, good literature, to be celebrated in every journal and praised by every nervous reviewer. Certain people set themselves up as arbiters of what is mere ‘fiction’ and what may be elevated into ‘literature’. Like old-time puritans, they obsessively scour books for their literary purity, damning most, elevating a few. ‘This book is good for you, and that one will rot your mind,’ is the message behind their fulminations. I call it the Bran Theory of Literature.

The Bran Theory of Literature affects–or rather, afflicts– what is called adult ‘literary fiction’ to an unsettling extent. I happen to think ‘literary fiction’ is a nonsense tag, when used in the manner in which critics like Peter Craven use it (he is snobbily obsessed with dividing books into ‘highbrow’ and ‘enjoyable trash’–the criterion seeming to be that anything that sweeps him along in its story can’t possibly be intelligent or profound). Of course there is such a thing as literary style–the plain, the ornamented, the rich, the stark, and so on. All of these styles can be the framework for great literature which is also great page-turning stuff. But it’s fatal, in my view, if style is the be-all and end-all. There’s got to be more, much more. There’s got to be heart–and mind–and soul. And also the realisation that we are mere sensual humans, not pure ethereal spirits existing in some rarefied intellectual vaccuum. Too much style, too much twiddling of image and metaphor and idea is fatal to the novel’s lifeblood. Not enough, and it feels rather sketchy and unsatisfying too. But the modern Bran Theorists focus almost exclusively on style, to the detriment of everything else. That’s because style is the easiest thing to analyse; the secret of a novel’s emotional effect on readers seems too hard for these critics to quantify and dissect and score.
The Bran Theory of Literature is not new, and nor is its modern emphasis of style over story, though at various times, it’s been expressed differently, often in terms of morals as well, or ‘right thinking’. (‘Right thinking’ is certainly not absent from modern Bran Theorists’ frameworks, either). The immensely popular twelfth-century Romance, with its exciting,stories of love, adventure, magic, humour and mysticism, was damned by many contemporary Bran Theorists as not being good literature because they were based on old wives’ tales, barbarian fantasy and women’s dreams, which stopped readers from reading the right kind of improving stuff. What’s more, shock horror, they were written exuberantly in the ‘vulgar’ tongue, or ‘romance’ tongues, rather than in classical, restrained Latin. In the eighteenth century, the philosophers’ thunderingly dull abstract novels of ideas were seen as a counterpoint to the frivolity of the popular forms, fairytales and ‘precieux’ ultra-romantic novels. In the nineteenth century, it was the moral at the heart of a story which led to critics belabouring certain writers. In all these cases, it is the ‘improving’ quality of our Bran Theorists’ favoured works that is the issue, and the naughty, sinful quality of those other books.
Since the rise and rise of the specialist literary academy though, with huge numbers of would-be literary critics all trying to make their mark on the world, and the ‘publish or perish’ mentality in many universities, the Bran Theorists have multiplied alarmingly. Often, when you’re reading reviews or essays or critical pieces about literature, especially in specialist literary journals, you get no sense that the author actually enjoys reading. You get no sense of the glorious feeling that is a wonderful book; you get no sense of just why it is some books are so loved that people will re-read them many times, or why a child might so love a book that she might carry it around with her, close to her (as I often did!) You get no feeling for the notion that most writers write because they have a story bursting within them, that they are drunk with the world and its beauties, horrors, joys and sorrows and desperately want to get it all down there, anchor it somehow, in this thing called a novel. You get no sense of the fact that writers will weep or laugh or scream in unison with their characters as they progress along in a book. You get no sense of the passion. None at all. And no sense of the fun, too. (Because of course if you have fun, then you’re not a serious writer, QED.)
So-called ‘genre’ novels–crime, romance, fantasy, adventure, thrillers, etc– often escape the Bran Theory of Literature because they are classified in ‘trash’ or at least ‘fiction’: not enough style, the theorists think, too much character, too much story. Or else they read them in secret–their naughty bit of chocolate–while choking on the bran they try to serve up to others as the only way of writing. Occasionally, though, some Bran Theorists do focus on ‘genre’ just to show how cool and with-it they are, especially if they’ve decided to ally themselves with postmodernism. (Which by the way I’m not against in general terms–it’s more of a trend than a theory, just as modernism was. And in many ways I much prefer the postmodern literary era, with its more open and curious attitude, and its links back to a more medieval cast of imagination, to the ultra-realism, often dun-coloured realism, of the modernist era. ) When Bran Theorists get hold of genre novels though, what happens is that they tend to dessicate that poor old novel’s appeal, to make it bloodless, to turn it from meringue or chocolate pudding or hot curry into well, bran.
The two fields I mostly work in–children’s books and fantasy–are two of the lowest areas in the Bran Theorists’ estimation, of course. And this despite the fact that children’s literature has probably provided more enduring classics in the twentieth century than adult fiction has; or that fantasy is a field of the exploration of ideas and metaphysics par excellence. Of course there are one or two Bran Theorists working in these fields too, most especially in children’s literature, which can suffer from the schoolmarm-morals sort of school of Bran Theory( we need improving literature to teach kids right-thinking too, you see, so you never give a fantasy, a comedy or an adventure novel a prize). I’m glad, very glad though that in general we’ve escaped the pats on the head and the ‘Best Improving Work’ badges handed out by the Bran Theorists, because it’s meant that we’ve been free to go on our merry way, to take risks in our own individual ways, to break rules, to have fun with style and character and idea and yet to always remember the traditional wisdom: It’s the Story, Stupid!