{"id":7156,"date":"2018-03-28T08:16:17","date_gmt":"2018-03-28T12:16:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7156"},"modified":"2018-03-28T08:16:17","modified_gmt":"2018-03-28T12:16:17","slug":"up-lit-what-is-it-and-why-are-we-reading-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7156","title":{"rendered":"“Up-Lit” — What Is It and Why Are We Reading It?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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photo: Nasir Khan, creative commons license<\/p><\/div>\n

Book publishers, scrambling to find a toehold as the Niagara of new manuscripts cascades over them, have latched onto the concept of \u201cup-lit.\u201d According to Hannah Beckerman<\/a> in The Guardian<\/em>, novels that offer \u201cdecidedly upbeat accounts of the kindness of strangers\u201d are increasingly garnering publisher and prize committee attention, and more important, the loyalty of readers.<\/p>\n

Perhaps it\u2019s a reaction to the long run of dystopian novels or perhaps a reaction to the daily news, but, as HarperCollins<\/a> terms them, \u201cbooks that give us hope,\u201d such as Gail Honeyman\u2019s Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine,<\/em> Cecelia Ahern\u2019s The Marble Collector<\/em>, and Matt Haig\u2019s How to Stop Time<\/em>, have shown there\u2019s a strong market for books whose subtext is optimism and empathy. We\u2019re not talking lit-lite here: George Saunders\u2019s Lincoln at the Bardo<\/a><\/em> (2017 Man Booker prize winner) is riddled with human compassion. Though it comes from the dead. Hmm.<\/p>\n

Says author Joanna Cannon, \u201cI write about communities, kindness and people coming together because that\u2019s the society I wish for. I write what I\u2019d like to happen.\u201d I would put Amor Towles\u2019s A Gentleman in Moscow<\/a><\/em> in that same category. Would that there were more people like Count Alexander Rostov, and, hey, why couldn\u2019t I try to emulate him, and hew to a code of unfailing courtesy (even while retaining a bit of private deviousness in service of a higher good)?<\/p>\n

We\u2019re not talking Pollyannas, either. Beckerman quotes Rachel Joyce, author of The Unlikely Pilgrimage<\/em> of Harold Fry<\/em>, in saying that up-lit stories\u2019 characters can confront all the bad things in life\u2014\u201cdevastation, cruelty, hardship and loneliness\u201d\u2014and yet say, \u201cthere is still this.\u201d She says, \u201cKindness isn\u2019t just giving somebody something when you have everything. Kindness is having nothing and then holding out your hand.\u201d<\/p>\n

To the extent that people read novels for escape and enlightenment, why not escape to a kinder, better world? Why not be inspired to greater empathy rather than snarkiness? The speculative novel Fever<\/a><\/em>, by South African thriller writer Deon Meyer, takes place after an uncontrollable virus kills ninety-five percent of the world\u2019s population. It could have described a society that devolves into anarchy and rapaciousness (think Cormac McCarthy\u2019s The Road<\/em> or Stephen King\u2019s The Stand<\/em>), and, while there are people in the novel who follow that path, the principal characters envision a better, more equal world and work hard to build it. They face logistical, emotional, and moral struggles, but the fact that their better world can be envisioned at all and collectively pursued is, ultimately, affirmative.<\/p>\n

Not having read many of these books, I hope you have and that you\u2019ll leave a comment reporting what you think of them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Book publishers, scrambling to find a toehold as the Niagara of new manuscripts cascades over them, have latched onto the concept of \u201cup-lit.\u201d According to Hannah Beckerman in The Guardian, novels that offer \u201cdecidedly upbeat accounts of the kindness of … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"\"Up-Lit\" -- What Is It and Why Are We Reading It? -- compassion, empathy, and kindness; what a concept!","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[62,40,174,68],"tags":[137,89,28,414],"class_list":["post-7156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-authors","category-fiction","category-first-draft-blog","category-publishing","tag-man-booker-prize","tag-reading","tag-writers","tag-writing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-1Rq","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7156"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7156\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7158,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7156\/revisions\/7158"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}