The Ulysses Delusion: Rethinking Standards of Literary Merit

by Cecilia Konchar Farr

Popular fiction follows literature professors wherever they go. At coffee shops or out for drinks, after faculty meetings or classes, even at family reunions – they are persistently pressed to talk about bestselling novels. Questions immediately What do I mean when I say a book is "good"? Why do contemporary novels like these, conversations like these, matter to professors of literature? Shouldn't they be spending their time re-reading The Great Gatsby ? The Ulysses Delusion confronts these questions and answers their call for more engaged conversations about books. Through topics like the Oprah's Book Club, Harry Potter, and Chick Lit, Cecilia Konchar Farr explores the lively, democratic, and gendered history of novels in the US as a context for understanding how avid readers and literary professionals have come to assess them so differently.

Genres: Nonfiction

219 pages, Hardcover

First published February 3, 2016

About the author

Cecilia Konchar Farr is Dean of the College of Liberal and Creative Arts at West Liberty University where, in addition to leading as dean, she teaches, researches, and writes about popular literature and the history of the novel. She is author of The Ulysses Delusion: Rethinking Standards of Literary Merit and Reading Oprah and editor of several essay collections, including A Wizard of Their Age and the newly published Open at the Close: Literary Essays on Harry Potter.

Reviews

[Ashley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Okay, so I bought this book because it appealed to me purely based on its title—any book that calls out my least favorite college read while using the word “delusion” was something I needed in my life.

Konchar Farr and I have very similar feelings about literary criticism, how we assign merit to books, and the problems with English academia. This book encapsulates why I was the crazy rebel in two English programs (including one prof who would ask me “okay, what did you hate about THIS ONE, since I already know you didn’t like it.”).

She argues that the literary merit English programs employ should not be so far removed from what the masses desire in a book. She thinks the academic rejection of lowbrow and middlebrow books is a disservice. She points out that “Literature” is most often written by men, who look like the men who wrote it in decades past, and women’s fiction and women writers have always been dismissed, even though they are the majority of authors and readers. From her breakdown of the popularity of Ulysses, to her self re-evaluation of Ayn Rand, this is a great read, full of humor and personality.

But the chapter that pushes it over the top for me is the second to last chapter, an evaluation of how a boy wizard changed the way Konchar Farr teaches her classes. Not only did her family discover their love of Harry Potter on a road trip to Utah and have to purchase more copies and more books upon arrival (it’s was uncannily similar to our family history with Hogwarts), she addresses the Harry Potter phenomenon in a way that makes so much sense for my generation and our love of books.

If I did an about face and went back to academia, I’d love to teach a literary criticism class that included her research.

[Liz · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Let's talk about novels" is the clarion call of Konchar Farr's book, and one that I am willing to answer. Writing to the "academy" and calling out the coded dismissal of genre and "women's" fiction, KF takes a deep look at the chasm that divides America's reading communities: the critics and literature professors from the average readers who drive the "best sellers" lists. She links the history of the American novel to its truly consumerist past and how its very consumption has been turned against it in the name of highbrow art.

KF's point is not that critics and "art" does not have it's place but that there should be a meeting in the middle and that discussions are what should take place about any novel. She even gives props to Nancy Pearl (librarian queen of RA), which is something I rarely find literature professors able to do.

Her writing is accessible especially in the investigation chapters, and full of "parenthetical snark." It's thoroughly enjoyable and gives hope that Literature (with a capital L), can make room for literature/fiction/genre in a more equitable way.

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

A serious work by a scholar and academic, but not written in high academise -- except for the footnotes. Konchar Farr offers a fascinating and timely assault on "high" literary criticism in an effort to make room for so-called "popular" literature, which is actually the vast majority of novels written, sold, read, and loved by the reading public. While I am one who read (listened, actually) to the complete Ulysses -- and loved it, I fully subscribe to her premise that it is a delusion to think that only works like Ulysses have "literary merit." She makes what I believe is a valid argument that there are real literary standards that make a novel "good" (or "bad"), but they are not those canonized by the high critics of the modernism. Rather, every novel in every genre can be and should be evaluated by the standards Konchar Farr and others espouse. One should, though, keep Theodore Sturgeon's thesis in mind: Ninety percent of everything is crap.

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Entertaining, discussable, informative, makes me want to put a lot more books on my need to read list. And made me not feel so bad about a couple I started, but didn't finish.