{"id":70749,"date":"2014-05-05T15:59:24","date_gmt":"2014-05-05T19:59:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=70749"},"modified":"2014-05-05T16:58:21","modified_gmt":"2014-05-05T20:58:21","slug":"escapism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/05\/05\/escapism\/","title":{"rendered":"Escapism"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\"jane<\/a><\/dt>\n<\/dl>\n

Today on HuffPo books, Jay Crownover discusses the different subcategories of the \u201cliterary bad boy,\u201d<\/a> which include \u201cThe Unattainable\u201d (Sherlock Holmes), \u201cThe Nonconformist\u201d (Holden Caulfield, of course), \u201cThe Alpha\u201d (Achilles), \u201cThe Lothario\u201d (Bond), \u201cThe Misunderstood\u201d (Ponyboy from\u00a0The Outsiders<\/em>), and, in a bold move,\u00a0\u201cThe Anti-Hero,\u201d as represented by Hannibal Lecter.<\/p>\n

It is hard not to wrestle, increasingly, with the listicle-ization of lit, the too-easy shorthand of Virginia Woolf finger-puppets, cheeky pro-book tote bags, Dickens bibs, and twee-pop-Bront\u00eb mashups. There is reading, and then there is reading as signifier, in which we don\u2019t lose ourselves in books themselves so much as turn them into easy, quotable advertisements for ourselves. Sexy librarians? Sure. \u201cKeep Calm and Read On\u201d? Okay. \u201cWhat Would Jane Austen Do\u201d? How about live two hundred years ago in an unrecognizable world with a completely different set of mores? How much less scary when\u00a0Lady Chatterley\u2019s Lover\u00a0<\/em>is not a cultural battleground but just a vintage cover on a T-shirt. <\/p>\n

That said, I wear my\u00a0Jane Eyre<\/em>\u00a0T-shirt. I covet the Barbara Pym doll on Etsy. I love to see a cat reading the classics as much as, if not more than, the next guy. Like, I imagine, most of us, I am glad of anything that makes books approachable and appealing, so long as we don\u2019t forget their power. (And yes, I immediately did ask myself, \u201cWhat Is<\/em> Your Literary Bad Boy Type?\u201d)<\/p>\n

Richard Hoggart, the academic who was instrumental in ending the censorship of Lady\u00a0Chatterley\u2019s Lover<\/em><\/em>\u00a0in Britain, died last month. In his testimony at the 1960 obscenity trial, the cultural historian said of the book\u2019s depiction of sex,\u00a0\u201dThe first effect, when I first read it, was some shock, because they don\u2019t go into polite literature normally \u2026 Then as one read further on, one found the words lost that shock. They were being progressively purified as they were used.\u201d It was a different world, yes, and it is perhaps too easy to point to the\u00a0La<\/em>dy Chatterley\u2019s Lover<\/em>\u00a0lampshade, or locket, or sweatshirt you can now buy, and wonder about the nature of progress. And the difference between \u201cpurifying\u201d and \u201cdiluting,\u201d and whether, in the end, both are inevitable in the march from the forbidden to the merely \u201cbad.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today on HuffPo books, Jay Crownover discusses the different subcategories of the \u201cliterary bad boy,\u201d which include \u201cThe Unattainable\u201d (Sherlock Holmes), \u201cThe Nonconformist\u201d (Holden Caulfield, of course), \u201cThe Alpha\u201d (Achilles), \u201cThe Lothario\u201d (Bond), \u201cThe Misunderstood\u201d (Ponyboy from\u00a0The Outsiders), and, in a bold move,\u00a0\u201cThe Anti-Hero,\u201d as represented by Hannibal Lecter. It is hard not to wrestle, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":178,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13115],"tags":[13795,13794,2998,8538,13792,13793],"class_list":["post-70749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-our-daily-correspondent","tag-book-culture","tag-commodification","tag-jane-eyre","tag-listicles","tag-literary-bad-boys","tag-quizzes"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nOn the Commodification of Literature<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Sadie Stein explores the fine line when reading becomes reading as signifier.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/05\/05\/escapism\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" 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