The Project

If you do literature at UEA you’ll be treated to an introductory lecture where you are asked "What is literature?" This is the biggie, the fought-over, thought-over question. What do we define as literature? What is merely fiction? How do we justify value? Is anything with a narrative, literature? In which case, why aren’t Ikea instructions literature? Or are they? There’s not one answer and, after some pondering, this question is put aside as an interesting philosophical morsel to be chewed upon when more palatable food runs out. We are without a definitive answer to what literature is, without any boundary or frame for what we are embracing, and yet literature has not come apart at the seams. So, why does it matter?

Literature with a little ‘l’ can mean almost anything: religious literature, tourist information literature, legal literature. Literature with a capital ‘L’ is a different matter. It has become almost inextricably linked with the idea of ‘classics’, allowing a division between Literature and fiction. This is essentially the division between high culture and low culture, and it works up to a point. For instance, Dickens’ works are acknowledged as Literature. The fact that they are also fiction doesn’t matter: you find them under the Classics section, a shelf that has become an embodiment of value judgements.

But it’s not that simple. James Bond has been released in the Penguin Modern Classics series, making it a classic and therefore, Literature. But, in these terms, it’s sneaky, subversive Literature, rogue Literature, because it wasn’t chosen by - please allow for generalising, inverse snobbery here - the dons of Oxford. Bond is ‘genre’, and ‘genre’, my dear Watson, is seldom permitted into the hallowed ranks. When Fleming wrote Bond, he was snubbed by his wife for not writing into high culture, and even asked by one radio interviewer if he wasn’t wasting his time. The transition then from low to high was a product of popularity and cultural impact, making James Bond Literature. But if the making of Literature really follows these two lines (works either lauded by critics or promoted over time by the public), is trying to answer the Big Question a vain attempt to categorise subjectivity of both the elite few and the ‘Every Man’, as it’s so patronisingly put?

The easy solution would be to say that we don’t need an answer. Goodbye to boundaries; usher in the Age of Books Without Borders; tear down the labels in Waterstone’s; riot in the streets; give Dan Brown the same covers and treatments as Dickens... ah. Ay, there’s the rub. When this was suggested in a lecture theatre, everybody laughed, agreeing without any discussion that Dan Brown was not Literature. We like having some boundaries. We want Literature to mean something, to be something. Perhaps this is our way of showing appreciation: Shakespeare’s Globe stands lit up on the banks of the Thames because we value his works, while Mills and Boon paperbacks are sold two for one at WH Smith because, well, we don’t. But if Literature is something of estimable value, by what measurements do we make the estimation, and who is We?

Wilde said "There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written. That is all." If we follow this, then Literature must surely be the well written. Does that make everything else badly written? Of course not. This is where the We becomes tricky. You, personally, might love crime writing - a famously undervalued genre - but We have decided, on the most part, that this is not Literature. Well, who is this We, and why don’t you get a say in it? Terry Eagleton, the famous Marxist critic, has written a whole book on this, but suffice to say that We is not - or at least not yet - Us. Value is personal and pleasure individual. The Complete Works of Shakespeare may be waiting, beautifully bound, for your reading pleasure, but, as P.G Wodehouse put it, "just as you have got Hamlet and Macbeth under your belt, and are preparing to read the stuffing out of Henry the Sixth, parts one, two and three, something of Agatha Christie’s catches your eye and you weaken". You read it once, you appreciate its beauty, you understand why it is Literature, but it does not grip you. So Literature is not universal, and its rules are like the rules five people who can’t play poker cobble together when given some cards. Then why do we keep it up?’

Maybe going back to the basics will help us: the building blocks of stories, the narrative, the syntax. Maybe anything that tells a story is Literature. In which case, See Spot Run automatically qualifies. Ginsberg, the American Beatnik poet, used to wander around shopping markets reading the backs of cans. They had a narrative, he said; they were Literature. But they don’t sell Heinz in Waterstone’s.

Words aren’t enough. They have to be assembled in a certain way, but this presents a red herring. For me, the assembly isn’t it; a Formalist analysis of the syllables in a line don’t tell me that what I’m reading is poetry. And, perhaps, that’s why we can’t seem to answer the Big Question. Literature is something intuitive: science students tease us for not having any definite answers, and we like it that way. I want poetry and fiction and plays to move me. I want something physical, I want inspiration. And when I find these things, I call it Literature. You might notice that almost every paragraph in this article has ended with a question mark. That’s because I’m skirting around giving you an answer and because, well, it’s not Literature.