AL,
Re your comments below:
"An argument that contends that Enid Blyton's work is
'literature' but David Goodis's isn't, is one which isn't
going to convince me. The same argument would state that
Goodis was 'literature' in France, but not in the UK/US.
Baffling."
The point isn't really whether or not the "test of time" is
or isn't a valid gauge for measuring literary worth, but
whether it's a democratic one, in the metaphorical sense that
Miker used the term.
Lord knows there've been plenty of instances in the history
of democracy (as a literal political system, not as a
critical literary measure) in which the wrong leader was
chosen or the wrong policy implemented. Hitler, after all,
originally came to power through an election.
Similarly, there are probably all sorts of instances of
worthy writers who haven't stood the test of time
(or, like Goodis, have stood that test only in a
"fringe" or "cult" sense), and writers who may not be worthy
of being remembered at all, to the degree such a thing as
literary worth can be objectively measured
(Kerry argues, quite convincingly, that it can't be), who
have stood the test of time quite successfully.
It doesn't make the "test of time" less democratic, in
Miker's sense, just less reliable.
"As for the democracy metaphor: what's being described isn't
democracy, it's majoritarianism. Any successful democracy
strives to treat its minorities with respect. Ditto with
literature."
To get into a discussion of the difference between
"democracy" and "majoritarianism," or the difference between
"successful" and "failed" democracies, is to take this
discussion far from its original subject.
The point is, that it WAS a metaphor, and a metaphor is a
descriptive device used to illustrate something in a colorful
way that aids understanding, not to give a literal definiton.
To use a fairly familiar instance, when Hammett describes the
melodramatic events in a novel the Continental Op is reading
to pass the time as "real as a dime," he doesn't mean the
events actually took place, nor that they have the substance
that actual coin of the realm has, nor even, come to that,
that all dimes are absolutely real, and never counterfeit. He
is simply using the imagery to describe how convincing the
events SEEMED to the Op as he read the novel.
Similarly, when Miker says that the "test of time" is a
democratic gauge of literary worth, he is suggesting that it
is a gauge in which success is largely measured by continued
popularity.
JIM DOHERTY
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