Bestsellers – a research field for literary, cultural and gender-related studies with a national and international perspective.
Lars Handesten
University of Southern Denmark
Abstract
This article explores some aspects of the phenomenon of the fiction bestseller in Denmark, and thus deals with a literature that is largely neglected by literary research. Initially, it defines some essential features and functions of the bestseller. The bestseller is not merely a mirror of its time but offers a vision of a new order of life as well. The sensationalstory ofYahyaHassan’spoetry collectionYahyaHassan(2013) shows how a modernbestseller can emerge andoperate and how even poetry is able to set a political agenda. Two other examples of the bestseller’s ideological importance are the contribution of women’sliteraturetothe formation ofa femaleself-awarenessover thelast30-40 years, and how bestsellers have servedas a forum formoral educationandpolitical debate. Finally, the article examines the relationshipbetweenthe local and theexoticin bestsellingliteratureand combines a national and an international perspective.
Keywords
Literary sociology, bestsellers, genre, gender studies, local and global literature, cultural history
Research into bestsellers
The bestseller is looked down on by literati and writers in Denmark.[i] There is broad agreement that quantity and quality are basically diametrically opposed to each other and, until the converse is proved, a bestseller is artistically disqualified, because in order to appeal to a wide audience it has to be mainstream and therefore aesthetically uninteresting. For there is something fundamentally suspicious about books and authors that sell well. If Danish writers also start to sell abroad in large numbers, the whole thing becomes even more suspect.[ii] Authors such as Peter Høeg and Jens Christian Grøndahl have both been subject to harsh criticism after making their international breakthrough. [iii] Criticism of their works can of course be aesthetically justified, but it ranges far more widely than that, often also including criticism of the environments the writers describe and the attitudes to which the novels gives expression. Without more ado, the author is criticised as a person, with everything from physical appearance to clothing being mixed into the critique. And then the books are even criticised for their audience. There is widespread disdain for middle-aged female readers from the middle class, who make up the largest reading audience. Whatever they read cannot possibly be any good. When it comes to the assessment of bestsellers and their authors, criticism is often far-removed from literary ideals about sticking to the text. [iv]
If one takes a look at the bestseller lists over the years, some of these prejudices have been put to shame. For it is noteworthy that some of the best-selling Danish writers are also regarded as being key authors by the literary establishment and are included in traditional literary histories. Benny Andersen and Kirsten Thorup, for example, are both highly regarded writers in the circulation of special literature and popular literature.[v] Benny Andersen is even a lyric poet, but also a musician and a sort of national poet. Their names confound the subtle distinction between high-brow and low-brow literature, and disprove the prejudice that quality and quantity cannot go hand in hand.
A bestseller is of course a broad concept, one that initially is solely defined on the basis of quantitative criteria. Determining such quantities, however, is not all that simple. Publishers only issues sales figures sporadically, and the number of books sold in supermarkets is kept secret for reasons of competition. This leaves the bestseller lists, drawn up by bookshop chains with their own interests, which does not make them all that reliable.[vi] These lists can, however, be used with a certain degree of caution and judiciousness as indicators of what has sold well over a period of time. But they are not based on absolute figures for the total Danish market, and it is meaningless to compile one’s own statistics with them as one’s point of departure.
Criticism of bestsellers deals, among other things, with the so-called bestsellerism that are becoming increasingly influential in the book market. In a market where the book is competing sharply with other media, there has been a tendency towards larger and fewer publishing firms, and for these firms to be less interested in cultivating literary diversity and quality literature than in earning money from bestsellers. The Danish market is no longer controlled by fixed book prices, and supermarkets and Internet trading cater for large segments of the sale of bestsellers.[vii] This means that smaller bookshops have to close down, and that those remaining have to concentrate on the titles that sell well. Which in turn means that there is less room for the narrow quality literature segment, which public libraries also do not buy as many copies as previously.[viii] Libraries are also subject to quantitative criteria, since their success is measured by the number of users and books borrowed, and not on what they have standing on the shelves.[ix] So they naturally also choose to concentrate on bestsellers.
Connected to the disqualification of the bestseller en bloc is the fact that it has not been a particularly widespread subject for literary research. The disdain of the material has also led to a lack of research into it, especially when it comes to recent and highly topical literature. Or, to be more precise: Research has not been interested in popular literature with Danish names such as Jane Aamund, Helle Stangerup and Hanne-Vibeke Holst or in such foreign names as Jean M. Auel, Régine Deforges and Dan Brown, whereas the popular crime novel has attracted particular attention over the past few decades.[x] Literary research has been preoccupied with what one could call the aesthetically relevant, and when research has dealt with authors who have sold well, it has not been in the light of the popularity of the authors in question. Researchers have written about Jens Christian Grøndahl, Carsten Jensen and Morten Sabroe, for example, but not because they appeal to a large audience.[xi] It is narrow literature and classics that have been richly represented in both research and teaching at Danish universities, and there has been a broad consensus about which works are to be included in this canon. If one compares three recent presentations of Danish literature – Danske digtere i det 20. århundrede (Danish writers in the 20th century, 2000-02), Hovedsporet (The Main Track, 2005) and Dansk litteraturs historie 1960-2000 (The history of Danish literature 1960-2000, 2007), there is no difference in names worth mentioning.
Recent literary tendencies and methods have not changed this consensus much. It is obvious that new-criticism critics and deconstructive readings have sought that which is aesthetically refined, but it is on the other hand more difficult to understand that queer and post-colonial readings as well as new historicism and book history have also failed to deal with contemporary bestseller literature. This, however, has partly to do with tradition. For while a certain conservatism reigns within literary studies as regards the material, this does not apply to the recent media science, which is not bound by tradition. Here one is just as happy to analyse bottom-rung TV series as one is complex works by Lars von Trier. Within comparative literary history, the ideologically motivated studies of pulp fiction and popular literature are merely a parenthesis. Since then, attempts have been made to open up third-world literature, as David Damrosch (2003), among others, has suggested – and as post-colonial research has also done. But this still does not have anything particularly to do with the literature that sells in large quantities on a worldwide market. Both national and global bestsellers are, however, worth investigating – if not for their aesthetic value, then at least for their contribution to a history of mentality and their ideological importance, as the following will illustrate. [xii]
Very few researchers since the 1970s and 1980s have done much about the sociology and psychology of literature that would be able to tell us something about bestsellers. It is even so possible to point to a few exceptions that have played a role – major or minor – in Danish literary research. One could mention J.A. Appleyard: Becoming a Reader (1994) and, to an even greater extent, Peter Brooks: Reading for the Plot (1984), both of which are psychologically based, as well as Antony Giddens: Modernity and Self-Identity. Self and Society in the Late Modern Age (1991) and Pierre Bourdieu: The Rules of Art. Genesis and Structure of the Literary Field (1996), both of which are based on social history. In passing, one could also mention Janice A. Radway: A Feeling for Books. The Book-of-the-Month Club, Literary Taste, and Middle-Class Desire, which adopts a personal, social-historical and anthropological angle on the subject. Finally, Franco Moretti, inGraphs, Maps, Trees. Abstract Models for a Literary History (2005), has proposed alternative, quantitatively based ways of carrying out contemporary literary history, but this has not as yet resulted in much. His concept of ‘distant reading’ though could potentially set things in motion as regards the bestsellers, of which only a very few merit a close reading, but which can help relate a more general story of literature and its history.[xiii] In the Anglo-Saxon world, however, culture- and literature-historical investigations have been carried out in bestseller literature by, for example, the British researchers John Sutherland: Reading the Decades. Fifty Years of British History Through the Nation’s Bestsellers (2002) and Clive Bloom: Bestsellers. Popular Fiction since 1900 (2002). Furthermore, the American Michael Korda has written Making the List. A Cultural History of the American Bestseller 1900-1999 (2001). All three can be used to throw Danish bestseller literature into relief, since there are both similarities and dissimilarities between the bestseller literature of the large countries written in the world-language of English and a smaller country such as Denmark with a minority language.
In the following, I will carry out a number of probes into Danish bestseller literature, in which I also include translated literature – but intend to limit myself to fiction.[xiv] By way of introduction, I will define in general terms – and in continuation of John Sutherland (2002 and 2007) – what a bestseller is and what functions it can have. Sutherland mentions that ‘Bestsellers fit their cultural moment as neatly as a well-fitting glove. And, typically, no other moment.’[xv] This does not mean, however, that the bestseller is merely a passive mirror of its age. It can also be a reaction to it and help set the agenda for its change. This is manifestly evident in the three ‘dips’ into bestsellers I now intend to make.
My point of departure is the sensational story of the collection of poems Yahya Hassan (2013) by Yahya Hassan, which makes clear in a unique way just how a modern bestseller can come into being and function. After this, I will outline how bestseller literature has made a considerable contribution to the formation of a female self-awareness over the past 30-40 years. Subsequently, I will provide examples of how bestseller literature has functioned and continues to function as a forum for moral and (gender-)political debate. And finally I wish to touch on the relation between the local and the exotic in bestseller literature and thereby combine an international and national perspective.
Forms and functions
A bestseller is first and foremost defined by its sales figures in relation to time. The number of sold copies that is required to be able to speak of a bestseller depends on the size of the country and the market, so the figure for Denmark is much lower than in large countries such as USA and UK. In Denmark, it is only 10,000-15,000, although one has to graduate and speak of big bestsellers when one tops the magical 100,000 mark. By international standards, one can speak of mega-bestsellers when talking about J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, Dan Brown’s series with Robert Langdon in the role of the unbeatable interpreter of symbols, or E.L. James’ erotic trilogy about Anastasia and Christian Grey. So it is admittedly the figures that count, but it is extremely relative in what sense. The relativity also becomes increasingly obvious when the time factor is added. The life-span of the bestseller is weeks and months and in rare instances a couple of years, and a steadyseller such as the Bible is therefore not in a real sense a bestseller. [xvi]
I started out by speaking of the bestseller as if it was a simple, fixed entity. One also speaks of a bestseller as if it constituted a special genre, but there is no such thing. There are, on the other hand, certain genres that sell better than others, and that one often finds on the bestseller lists. The romance, family saga, historical novel, crime novel and thriller are recurring genres during most of the 20th century, while a genre such as fantasy only really arrives in the last quarter of the 20th century with J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings 1954-55 (Danish translation 1968-70) and more recently with J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series (1997-2007). George R.R. Martin’s The Song of Ice and Fire 1-5 1996-2011 (Danish translation 2011-13) and the Danish writer Lene Kaaberbøl’s Skammerens datter 1-4 (2001-03) (The Shamer Chronicles). The fantasy genre is thus represented on the lists, while science fiction literature, generally speaking, remains a niche genre. The fairytale genre, in a broad sense, plays a lesser role on the lists, which are dominated by the realistic mode, which is broken from time to time by magical realism. Under the influence of literature from Latin America, magical realism had its breakthrough in the 1980s with Isabel Allende, since where it has features on the lists with such Danish and translated works as, for example, the Danish writer Peter Høeg: Forestilling om det tyvende århundrede (The History of Danish Dreams, 1988) and most recently the Japanese writer Haruki Murakami: Kafka på stranden (Kafka on the Beach, 2005). And then there are all kinds of mixes and variations of genres that make it reasonable to speak of genre in a ‘Derrida’ sense (Derrida 2003). Genre is rather something that a book contributes to and takes part in than it is an unambiguous entity to which it belongs. The autobiographical wave of the past years has also sown doubt as to whether, in certain cases, we are dealing with books that should be included under fiction or non-fiction. It is hard to know, for example, if Karl Ove Knausgård’s Min kamp (My Struggle, 2010-12) is to be placed under fiction or autobiography.
It is admittedly possible to speak of genre literature in the case of crime novels and family sagas, but if one looks more closely at the individual work, things get more complicated. The crime novel has also – especially the femi-crime novel – become a kind of realistic contemporary novel in which the character grows older and develops, starts a family, gets children, gets divorced, etc.[xvii] The genres develop – as Alistair Fowler (1982) has pointed out ‒ through time and must be seen in their actual temporal context.
As with British and American lists, there are also only a few names that repeatedly crop up on the Danish bestseller lists if one looks back over the past 35 years. In Denmark, one has been able to see the one translated novel after the other by such writers as John le Carré, Fay Weldon, Ken Follett and Jan Guillou, as well as such Danish names as Leif Davidsen, Benny Andersen, Kirsten Thorup, Jane Aamund and Hanne-Vibeke Holst have featured on the lists with new works. The tendency is clear: There are only a few, striking names that have a brand quality about them and go on selling an increasingly large number of books.[xviii]
A superficial glance at the bestsellers is enough to show that a number of factors apply to books that sell well. Generally speaking, they have to be in prose, even though there are a few, striking examples of poetry selling well that I will return to. Stylistically, the bestseller lies within a linguistic ‘normal area and rarely makes use of a modernist special language. The books can perfectly well be long and in series, so that over a longer period one can familiarise oneself with a universe and follow the ‘ups and downs’ of its characters. The series that flourish within fantasy literature, the crime novel and the thriller make it easy for the reader to ‘get into the book’, since the characters and universe are known in advance. The repetitions reduce the level of complexity and make it easier to read even long novels and complex plots. What is already known is combined with a certain amount of variation, and precisely this repetition and recognisability created a secure feeling in the reader, so that even the most horrific and grim sequences in the crime novel or thriller are bearable. It is nerve-tingling, but not to the extent that it ruins one’s sleep at night. To use Anthony Gidden’s concept, the repetition ensures an ‘ontological security’ that postmodern man, who lives in a changing and unpredictable world, wishes for himself (Giddens 1991). J.A. Appelyard (1994) formulates it as follows: ‘To repeat with variation is the ultimate security.’[xix]