"I keep waiting for you to get really resentful that these books are so popular," my mother said the other day. "Resent them?" I cried. "They give me hope!"
I see the phenomenon differently. I've only skimmed Twilight. The actual sentence structure sent me fleeing. The series' popularity demand means there will be products marketed to a lesser common denominator reading level. It's not just that the author writes with a lack of sophistication; some of her readership may be comfortable at that level. Therefore, publishers of that subgenre will pass on manuscripts with more complex prose.
I was once told by my ex-agent that novels should be written so that even a seventh-grader could understand what was going on. Well, that means Jane Eyre should be off the shelves, any time now -- even if a lot of people read it voluntarily around seventh-grade age. I tried reading the Traveling Pants series, but the prose is so: "She was a girl. She had friends. They shared a special pair of pants."
There should be a variety of target audiences for different books. I know some people read just for story events, ignoring the prose as they might ignore acting over a great character at the core. I love the Harry Potter novels, but I have to ignore the overpowering use of ellipses in lieu of actual suspense or tension through word choice; and the passive voice ("In the room was a very interesting thing") means the movie designers have free reign to fill in the blanks.
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I see the phenomenon differently. I've only skimmed Twilight. The actual sentence structure sent me fleeing. The series' popularity demand means there will be products marketed to a lesser common denominator reading level. It's not just that the author writes with a lack of sophistication; some of her readership may be comfortable at that level. Therefore, publishers of that subgenre will pass on manuscripts with more complex prose.
I was once told by my ex-agent that novels should be written so that even a seventh-grader could understand what was going on. Well, that means Jane Eyre should be off the shelves, any time now -- even if a lot of people read it voluntarily around seventh-grade age. I tried reading the Traveling Pants series, but the prose is so: "She was a girl. She had friends. They shared a special pair of pants."
There should be a variety of target audiences for different books. I know some people read just for story events, ignoring the prose as they might ignore acting over a great character at the core. I love the Harry Potter novels, but I have to ignore the overpowering use of ellipses in lieu of actual suspense or tension through word choice; and the passive voice ("In the room was a very interesting thing") means the movie designers have free reign to fill in the blanks.