The Prologue: What is good literature? Quality or quantity?

Every great writer has a very specific idea of what makes writing good. Most have written some sort of essay or treatise on the topic. Wordsworth compiled an entire collection of poems and essays to explain his ideas about poetry with Lyrical Ballads. Hemingway wrote novels dedicated to the question of what makes writing good. You can Google any writer today and find a website, YouTube clip, interview, article, etc. all about their thoughts on good writing.

I think most writers feel the need to justify why their writing is good, especially if it is different or not a blockbuster hit. The problem with literature is that it is so subjective. Thus, it is difficult for anyone to follow an exact formula to produce consistent results of critical acclaim, popularity, and financial success. So many writers have died penniless and unappreciated, like Melville. If you are like me, then you find  Moby Dick to be one of the greatest novels ever written and your copy is annotated, sticky-noted, and well-worn. Even if you do not have a particular interest in Melville, you can appreciate his work, even though no one did in his time. He is one example of many who failed to be a successful writer in all aspects, meaning he wrote good novels, but no one read them or liked them if they did, and he had to take other jobs to pay the bills. Cervantes wrote what is now considered the best novel of all time, but he was not so lucky in his own time to be recognized this way.

Some writers have found the formula for mass production and making money. Unlike Melville or Cervantes, they have been able to find wide popularity and financial success in their own lifetimes. Stephen King has written 54 novels and 200 short stories, many of which have been turned into movies, TV series, and mini series. No one doubts his financial success with a net worth around $400 million. Danielle Steel is right behind King, though much of her success may be credited to the designer of her book covers and Fabio. James Patterson has written 130 novels with 19 as best-sellers. He sells about 2 million copies of each. The secret to his success? Pay others to actually write the books. Still, he is worth something like $350 million. Topping the list are other writers like Nora Roberts, Tom Clancy, and John Grisham. Grisham has written something like 30 books of legal thrillers and worth around $200 million. The other names on the list are familiar, you can browse the top 50 here.

I don't love everything King has written, but I like most, and some of it is really, really good

We have all heard JK Rowlings is wealthier than the Queen of England now (worth $1billion), and I imagine Suzanne Collins is doing nicely after the Hunger Games movies.

It may make me sound like a total geek to say, but I remember going to the midnight release of the books just to be the first in line to get the newest book =)

You have to admit The Hunger Games are pretty cool =)

These are the writers who write a lot and make a lot of money. These are the Lope de Vega's of Cervantes' time. Cervantes was not a King or Patterson of his time. He did not even enjoy so much success as Shakespeare, to whom he is so often compared. Cervantes did not like this kind of mass production. He was quite vocal about Lope de Vega writing too quickly and too much.Cervantes was probably also a little jealous of the popularity that others (who did produce mass quantity) received while he did not. He considered his writing much superior, more quality and less quantity, and yet, the public paid to see Lope de Vega's plays, produced frequently, and not the plays written by Cervantes. Lope de Vega "wrote approximately 3000 sonnets, 3 novels, 4 novellas, 9 epics, 3 didactic poems, and several hundred comedies" (Classic Spanish Books). According to Cervantes, Lope de Vega's plays had many errors and plot holes and all sorts of problems because of this mass production. It is the same complaint some may have of novels by modern writers who are more concerned about publishing quickly than editing carefully. Cervantes tried for quite some time to be a famous dramatist and to compete with Vega, but was never very successful. It is the reason Cervantes became a tax collector- to pay the bills his plays could not.

Street Tile in Madrid (I love these)

My husband took me to see a Lope de Vega play in Madrid at the Classic Theatre

Unfortunately, Cervantes was not any better at collecting taxes than making money with plays. He had a reputation for being bad with numbers, which is what got him imprisoned. This, however, may have been a good thing since it was in prison where he began to write Don Quijote. So, perhaps, things do happen for a reason. Perhaps there is some method to the madness of life. Still, even with the success of Don Quijote (part 1), Cervantes had more bad luck. The government took his rights to the book and its profits, and another person wrote a second part to the novel. Without money, Cervantes had to find a patron to support him to write a real second part to the novel. He was successful in this, but died just after its publication and before he could reap the financial or literary rewards of this second part to the novel. Cervantes' life as a writer was more akin to Melville or Poe who struggled throughout their lives to support themselves through writing. Cervantes was jealous and critical of those who did have fame and money, just as I am sure there are millions of writers who want to tear apart the novels of Rowlings, King, Grisham, Steel, Patterson, etc. And they are not wholly wrong to do so.

Anyways, why do I bring all of this up? Because the prologue to the novel raises the same questions that many people, literary critics, writers, professors, teachers, and students still ask today. What makes for good writing? Is popular writing good or bad? Breadth or depth? Quantity or quality? Financial success or literary acclaim? What is it that matters?

Are Harry Potter, Pet Sematary, Jurassic Park, Private Berlin, Fifty Shades of Grey truly great works of literature?

These types of books belong to what we call genre fiction...

And the formula to write one....

Now, I love novels like Harry Potter, and I recently dragged my husband to the movie theater to see Jurassic World because I loved Jurassic Park so much as a kid. I am an avid sci-fi and fantasy reader, so I never see my favorite novels on the list of Pulitzer Prize Winners. I love them just the same. And as great as JK Rowlings may be or as successful as King is, they are not Nobel Prize Winning Authors. Most of them do follow a pattern or formula and contain a lot of the same ideas. I love anything that resembles JRR Tolkien, but in the end, a lot of those fantasy novels are a little repetitive. I can admit that there are standards and archetypes that sometimes limit originality.

Since fantasy novels are very much the modern day chivalric romance, this is exactly the genre Cervantes is discussing. Though, I would say modern romance novels, thrillers, and mysteries also belong to this same category. They tend to be formulaic and repetitive as well. He is making a little bit of fun of the predictability of these stories. If you have watched enough episodes of CSI, you can see what he means. My husband and I can guess the rest of the plot about 15minutes into an episode of Castle. We love it, but it is predictable. It is not hard to guess the plot of most of these novels. George RR Martin was the last major writer to really shock his readers with the excessive killing off of main characters, but still, my mother and I are pretty good at predicting a lot of the twists and secrets of his series and every other that we read.

Who kills the good guys at the beginning??

The point that I am trying to make is that Cervantes uses the Prologue as his chance to, in a sense, expose the conventions of these kinds of writers, mock the formulas set forth by popular fiction, and set his up as something different. I have rambled on too much, however, for one post and will tackle the details of the prologue, the book burning scene, and Cervantes' satirical critique of chivalric romances and formula writing in the next post! Until then, enjoy the kitten knight.

Kittens =)