The Best Of... discussion

The problem with Peter Pan themes, or any pop psyche theme applied to lit, is that they are not large enough to encompass characters as well written ands complex as Holden Caulfield; so one shrinks Holden to fit the theme as if forcing him into a too-small hat and jacket. https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/... Post #4909

EXACTLY, Kallie! Thankyouthankyouthankyou for saying that so well.

It's the same as forcing books/novels/stories/writers into specific genres.

The jacket's too small.

And the panties ride up.

Oh, my pleasure. I'm sure most of us here share an aversion to labels, reductionist theories, blah, blah. Would-be social scientists should keep their mitts off lit unless they mean to expand our minds.

Sadly, commercial publishing depends on those same reductionist labels. They don't know how to market anything without them.

So much wonderful, mind expanding, enlightening stuff gets swept under the rug because it doesn't fit in one of the popular/commercial genres, whether it's literature or even television and films.

I remember, years ago, there was an incredible series, "American Gothic." It was intelligent, it was engrossing, the acting was superb, everything about the production of it, from the writing to the cinematography, was superlative, it was a gorgeously realized struggle between Dark and Light . . . but they didn't know how to sell it.

Renee wrote: "Sadly, commercial publishing depends on those same reductionist labels. They don't know how to market anything without them.

So much wonderful, mind expanding, enlightening stuff gets swept under..."

Oh, I'll look for that. Maybe Netflix . . .

It was amazing. I'd love to have a copy of the whole series.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0111880/