We Need To Talk About Literary Fiction

The Bell Jar is coming to a coffee morning near you. But could Faber's 'repackaging' open the door to more classics being read?

The Bell Jar, a book I'd described as 'discombobulating', particularly the oft-quoted intro, was repackaged last week and released back into a world with its nose in a Kindle, reading Jackie Collins and thinking about who'd be the ideal presenter for Daybreak. Right?

And in probably less significant news that most likely only Guardian Culture section scourers will have observed, journalist Sam Jordison and his band of merry readers have decided on Proust as their next book for their online reading group. This part is devoid of sarcasm, by the way.

It seems to me that these topics interlock with each other and, I think, point to a great, positive future for the classics. I may be committing heresy here but if the Plath experiment goes well, maybe the publishers (Faber) could look at a few more of their untouchables and... well... touch them up a bit.

Regardless of the above however, the new cover is still horrendous. Based on the image to the right, I'm thinking Faber's design team works in a modern version of Frankenstein's lab, attaching jackets from middlebrow authors to more contentious work with all the insane zeal and panache of the eponymous doctor. Or should that be Dr Picoult? Perhaps these ladies will see a boost to their works on the back of Faber's decision to dress Plath's novel in such odd attire, but this new jacket is the equivalent of a Juicy Couture tracksuit.

It's fair to say that repackaging rings alarm bells for all the right reasons, usually. It's the literary equivalent of the 'reboot' that has recently pervaded cinema and particular the comic canon. Of course the bottom line in both industries is, um,  the bottom line and Faber have reported their new cultural positioning of the critically acclaimed proclamations of Esther Greenwood has gone down a storm. And that new Spiderman is way better than all the other ones.

Naturally enough the financial side here's perceived as a bit grubby - 'an increase in revenue', the most un-poetic language in the land. Yet everybody who claims reading as a hobby will have a conscious or unconscious interest in the future of books, and what can be done to refocus eyes and ears around them. Often the last thing of consideration is making the most money possible - and that's seems the right attitude for all sorts of practical reasons.

But all of the words I associate with a book - predominantly sensual terms - still represent the best foot forward vs the odourless, visually unobjectionable tablets gradually glazing eyes over and changing accounting practices in the optometry industry (maybe), and a book should make what it can of the visual element to attract itself to newer readers. Survival is, I guess, otherwise futile.

A lack of third dimension and more than a touch of dogma there, but hard to ignore. In that sense at least I agree with Faber. The other big reason I have for being the only guy in the 'mmm...maybe' camp relates to Jordison's on-going reading group who have made their way through some classics of the Western canon but, so far, nothing as big as Proust.

OK so they're only (only) reading Swann's Way, not the whole collection, but how many people have actually read Proust, Joyce, Eliot - and, for that matter, Plath? I've only read Joyce and Plath, and only one book by each. Here's a more general point; if that's what readers of the Guardian are reading, what about the rest of the country?

I admit something unconscious reared its head and just as quickly disappeared; that something felt sneering and a bit contemptuous. Basically prejudice - as if Proust should be for reading groups! But why? What do I know about reading groups? As soon as I gave this some basic consideration, I realised how foolish I'd been in not distinguishing principles from their practical applications, and perhaps there's an element of this behind the Plath debate.

Generally you don't appreciate a great by swaddling it in the pap Faber have dressed Bell Jar up in, and regardless of the marketing angle it's a strange decision to move a classic into middlebrow territory - yet it could an inspiring one, the bridge some would argue will join the worlds of genre and literary fiction.

OK, so the point is to sell more Bell Jar. But there's social utility here too - we're not talking collateral debt obligations (if anyone's a Michael Lewis fan I apologise for the plagiarism here, but it's an intelligent perspective). If in six months, those reading groups whom I sniffily dismissed are discussing a classic, Faber could justifiably point to a good deed done. It might put several comedians out of a job but would it be so terrible if Sophie Kinsella sold less and Stendhal, Lawrence (D.H), Yeats - i.e. the dark and sombre shelves of Waterstones marked 'classics' - sold relatively more?

Being reasonable, Kinsella, Vincenza et al are never going to go out of print, but a bigger share of readers' shelves claimed for literary fiction would still represent huge progress - and publishers would be back in business with a whole new range of books they could reintroduce to an intellectually starved climate. Plus, less Kindles. I just don't like them, OK?

Maybe it's snobbery or maybe it's protectiveness of what's rightly (my opinion) called a classic. It's a paradox, but it might be best for all, particularly those arguing the loudest, if this debate was parked on the shelf. It's beginning to look as fusty as some of the dust jackets on those works of literature Faber et al want to do something with.