Popular Fiction: A Short Introduction - by Dr. Arshad Ahammad A.

 

Popular Fiction: A Short Introduction

Dr. Arshad Ahammad A.

 

In the assessment of literary reading tastes, the elementary question that may be raised is "Who is one’s favourite author?" Have you ever wondered what is the contradiction in not including Sidney Sheldon, Erle Stanley Gardner, Agatha Christie, or James Patterson along with names like Charles Dickens, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Orhan Pamuk or Khaled Hosseini while answering this question? This contradiction leads us to the nuances of the conflicts between literary fiction and genre fiction, or more generally, mainstream literature and popular literature, for the former group of authors belong to the tradition of genre fiction and the latter’s works represent literary fiction. Popular fiction embraces around 70 percent of the market for fiction worldwide and this proves the ‘popularity’ of this genre.

Popular fiction is often regarded as comprising those books that everyone reads. Popular literature is distinguished from artistic literature in that it is designed primarily to entertain. Unlike mainstream literature, it generally does not seek a high degree of formal beauty or subtlety and is not intended to endure. While the primary goal of an author of a literary work is her or his self-expression, the writer of popular literature focuses on the readers and their tastes.  Since popular fiction and genre fiction are more or less the same, the works in this category, their plot and structure are shaped by the necessities of the subgenre to which they belong to. These books and the subgenres they are associated with such as children’s literature, fairy tales, folk stories, sci-fi, horror fiction, detective stories, chick literature, fan fiction, cartoons and graphic novels entertain masses of readers with fascinating and wonderful tales. The origins of popular literature can be found in oral traditions, and the folk roots of genre fiction can simply be recognised. Let us briefly examine the origin of children’s literature in India and its roots in the age-old convention of storytelling.

Storytelling Tradition and Children’s Literature in India    

Human beings followed the habit of telling stories since ancient times. The purpose of this practice is to get rid of fear, rejoice, or exchange ideas. Oral stories are made by applying the dust of imagination over reality. The narrator also has a great mood in the narrative where the readers—mostly children—are seated close together to listen to him or her enthusiastically. The success of the oral stories depends on their narrator. Restrictions that the narrator adopts include the exclusion of pornographic material and the insertion of elements necessary for completeness. This keeps children curious and active. Before the advent of printing technology, children's stories were spread orally. Cinderella’s tale can be taken as an instance. It is not known who wrote this thousand-year-old story and in which part of Europe. Cinderella's story developed and spread orally through European storytellers, and foreign invasions and dominations led to the worldwide spread of this classic tale. Children's tendency to listen to stories in infancy itself perpetuates storytelling. Children’s literature stands for different purposes. The pleasure of reading, literacy enhancement, and moral education are some of them.

The Indian landscape of storytelling is rich and varied. Panchatantra, Jataka Tales, Bruhad Stories, Vikram-Betaal Stories, and Kathasaritsagara—the products of the great Indian storytelling tradition—evoke the cultural symbols and values of Ancient India.  It is a widely approved argument that the illustrious Arabian Nights, originally known as Alif Laila Wa Laila (One Thousand and One Nights), had its roots in India. This storytelling tradition has been maintained through both oral and written forms.   Children save in mind many of the stories of Panchatantra, Kathasaritsagara and The Tales of Vikramaditya. The trapped fox and the clever monkey in Panchatantra, and the white elephant in Jataka Tales fascinate children of every generation. It was through this great tradition that Indian children became familiar with Alibaba, Aladin, Sinbad and the fisherman and the djinn in the Arabian Nights. In all these stories, there are obviously some similarities that allure children irrespective of temporal and spatial differences. Similar masterplots can be seen in the tales such as Panchatantra, Aesop's Fables, Mulla Stories and the Tales of Tenali Rama. Many are unaware of the fact that if there were no such oral traditions, there would be no written literature.  It is not noticed that even postmodern writers are influenced by these ancient tales. The significance of popular fiction may be understood from this aspect. 

Popular Fiction: Characteristics

Popular fiction is generally constituted by both conventions and inventions. Conventions mostly denote elements that are typically quite specific to a culture and time and do not signify the same outside this exact context. These include masterplots, accepted ideas, pigeon-holed characters, and commonly used metaphors. The usual setting of fairy tales and horror stories, masterplot used in Cinderella’s story, and the common plot structure of detective stories are examples of conventions. On the other hand, inventions are elements of a popular work that are distinctively imagined by the writer. Experiments in plot, themes, characterisation and language are meant here. Both these elements play different but vital roles in the cultural milieu of the creation, distribution and readership of popular literary works. While conventions epitomize the collective ideals of the society in which the work is produced, inventions present new impressions which refashion the existing values and concepts.

Why is popular literature so widely read? The category of popular literature itself stems from the perception that both the form and content of literary fiction are incomprehensive to the common folks. The tough words used, and the complex ideas discussed in literary fiction made the common man think that these writings are not their cup of tea. The relevance of popular literature cannot be underestimated for, a good portion of the readers, especially the rural people, have been drawn to reading habits and to libraries through popular literary works.  David Glover and Scott M. Cracken identify a few elements that helped popular literature to emerge as a major genre in the nineteenth century. They include improved literacy, introduction and advancement of new printing and publishing technologies and the advent of commercial media such as radio and television (4). The changing patterns in book circulation and book trade helped popular fiction to take hold. The theatre, television and films augmented the marketability of popular fiction to an extent.

Readers and audiences possess a major role in popular fiction than in literary fiction. In earlier periods, the readers of popular fiction were condemned for their ‘bad tastes'. The advocates of high culture in the late nineteenth century considered popular literature and culture as something opposed to the ‘sweetness and light’ of high culture, as argued by Mathew Arnold in Culture and Anarchy. Arnold considered ‘popular’ as markedly contradictory to ‘culture’ and identified it with anarchy (qtd. in Chakraborty 3). These elitist views were shared by later critics like Q D Leavis and Denys Thompson who observed popular culture as degrading since it is produced for “the masses of uneducated or semieducated persons” (Leavis 190). This attitude has been changed with time and now popular literature is duly acknowledged as a result of the shrinking of chasms between high culture and popular culture.

The representation of gender is a major concern while discussing the readership of popular literature. Right from the eighteenth century when popular fiction began getting noticed and addressed as a specific literary genre, women have been readers of popular stories and novels. Their active readership creates mixed responses among those who approach popular fiction critically. The increase in the number of women readers significantly suggests an increase in women’s literacy but simultaneously the popular works of fiction have been criticized for presenting women in negative roles. Subgenres like romances and pulp fiction, or even horror fiction, which women read largely, are criticised for representing the fairer sex as uneducated, socially and politically dormant, fragile and marginalised by the patriarchal elite.                                                        

Instances of pulp fiction in the context of Indian city culture are to be discussed mainly with reference to the emergence of light novels framed in the spatial plane of corporate service sectors, aiming at professionals as readers. A new group of readers moved English from being “elitist to democratic” in terms of the “sheer scale of their sales” (Kumari and Sinha 24).  Ravinder Singh’s I too Had a Love Story (2008), Advaita Kala’s Almost Single (2007), Keran Verma’s Jack and Master: A Tale of Friendship, Passion and Glory (2014) are instances of this kind of fiction, usually labelled as ‘commercial or mass market fiction’.  These novels are appreciated as “simple and honest in rendition” (25). Novels of Chetan Bhagat, Amrit Shetty and Madhuri Banerjee are examples of this kind of novel which make frequent references to symbols of new city culture such as malls, department stores, star hotels, outlets of Domino’s Pizza or Café Coffee Day and new and innovative electronic gadgets such as smartphones, i-pods and notebooks. What gives these novels a shared identity is that they bring “the metropolitan paraphernalia” (25). The writers of literary fiction never enjoy the commercial success achieved by the writers of corporate-centred pulp fiction, a matter which accelerates the wide acceptance of genre fiction.

Upmarket Fiction: where Literariness meets Popularity

There is a specific genre of fiction getting prominence nowadays in world literature in which emphasis is given to both plot and characterisation so as to ensure both literariness and popularity to seek the attention of the readers of both commercial fiction and literary fiction. This new subgenre is termed upmarket fiction which is a combination of both literary fiction and popular/mass market fiction. Upmarket fiction is otherwise defined as a subgenre of fiction that incorporates elements of commercial fiction, that claims literary quality or literariness. The borderlines between upmarket fiction and popular fiction are often indistinct and difficult to define. Authors of upmarket fiction focus on creating complex characters and intriguing plots while popular fiction concentrates on plot-driven narratives; while the former gives emphasis on both plot and character, the latter centres on the plot only. 

A typical work of upmarket fiction centres on a strong protagonist and has an engaging plot with complex themes. It incorporates elements of genre fiction and possesses literary quality in language and style.  Daphne Du Maurier’s gothic novel Rebecca (1938), Belgian-French author Georges Simenon’s The Man Who Watched the Trains Go By (1938), and Gillian Flynn’s crime thriller Gone Girl (2012) are perfect examples of upmarket fiction.

Conclusion

         The wide acceptance and huge marketability of popular fiction have helped to generate new modes of public deliberations and discourses, especially after the flourishing of upmarket fiction since the latter reduces the disparity between literary and genre fiction. Owing to globalization and cross-cultural exchanges, popular fiction, comics and cartoons are being imported to and circulated in different countries all over the world via different media and formats. This helps popular fiction to remain in the field and to transform society by adapting to new changes and challenges.                                           

References

Chakraborty, Abin. Popular Culture. Orient Blackswan, 2019.

Glover, David and Scott McCracken. “Introduction.” The Cambridge Companion to Popular Fiction. CUP. 2012. (http://www.cambridgeblog.org/wp-co ntent/uploads/2012/08/The-Cambridge-Companion-to-Popular-Fiction-Intro.pdf)

Leavis, Q. D. Fiction and the Reading Public. Chatto & Windus, 1978.

Srivastava, Prem Kumari and Mona Sinha, editors, Indian Popular Fiction: New Genres, Novel Spaces. Aakar Books, 2021.