literary elitism – Ridley Park

Here’s the bit nobody wants to say out loud

AI doesn’t have to dethrone the literary elite. It just has to outperform the mass of competent-but-unremarkable human writers serving an audience who, frankly, doesn’t care about “stylistic nuance” or “metafictional self-reflexivity.”

There’s a vast literary middle ground – corporate copywriting, trade journalism, formulaic romance, SEO blogs – where AI will not just compete, but dominate, because the audience is reading for function, not art.

The high-literary crowd will remain untouched, partly because their readership fetishises human intentionality, and partly because AI doesn’t yet want to write about the precise smell of sadness in a damp Parisian garret in 1934.

The fearmongering about AI “killing literature” is a bit like saying instant ramen will kill haute cuisine. Yes, more people will eat the ramen, but Alain Ducasse isn’t sweating over his stock reduction.

More than half of American adults read at or below a sixth-grade level.
Sparx

This panic is not new. We’ve been here before:

The printing press was supposed to obliterate the artistry of the hand-copied manuscript. Instead, it made books accessible and created new genres entirely. Calligraphy still exists, it’s just no longer the only way to get words on a page.

Photography was going to end painting. In reality, it freed painters from the burden of strict representation, allowing impressionism, cubism, and abstract art to flourish.

Recorded music didn’t destroy live performance, it expanded its reach. Some audiences still pay obscene amounts to see an actual human sweat on stage.

Film didn’t kill theatre; it created a parallel art form.

Synthesizers didn’t erase orchestras; they just meant you didn’t have to mortgage your house to hear a string section in your pop song.

AI is simply the next entrant in this long tradition of “threats” that turn out to be expansions. It will colonise the big islands of the creative archipelago – commercial writing, functional prose, genre boilerplate – and leave the small monasteries of high art mostly untouched.

So, no, AI won’t be the next Mozart, Picasso, or Nabokov. But it doesn’t need to be. It just needs to be good enough to meet – and occasionally exceed – the expectations of the largest share of the market. And given that most readers are happy if the plot makes sense, the spelling’s passable, and the ending doesn’t require a graduate seminar in semiotics to decipher, I’d say AI’s prospects are rather good.

Here’s why that 10% still matters

The rarefied work of the serious literary writer isn’t competing for market share; it’s preserving and evolving the cultural and linguistic possibilities of human expression. That work thrives not because it’s the only thing available, but precisely because it stands apart from the sea of functional prose, human or machine-made. The AI tide will rise, but the lighthouse will still be human.

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Ridley Park

Welcome, dear reader, to the eternal skirmish between Art and Entertainment, or as the marketing departments like to call it, Literary Fiction vs Commercial Fiction. This is not just a genre squabble; it is the ideological showdown between truth-seeking masochists and market-savvy optimists.

Literary Fiction: Starving Artist Chic

Literary Fiction is what happens when someone spends ten years writing a novel that doesn’t sell but gets shortlisted for an award no one outside The Guardian has heard of. It is the sanctum of character studies, of prose polished until it cuts glass, of metaphors so dense they require footnotes and a whisky.

It doesn’t have to be inaccessible, of course—it just often chooses to be, on principle. Plot is optional, punctuation negotiable. The point is to mean something. To explore the human condition. To examine alienation in a post-industrial neoliberal hellscape, not to entertain your aunt with a beach read.

It’s not that Literary Fiction hates readers. It just isn’t convinced they’re entirely necessary.

Commercial Fiction: Mass Appeal on Tap

Enter Commercial Fiction: the cheerfully formulaic cousin who makes six figures ghostwriting romance under three pseudonyms while sipping cocktails on a cruise. It values clarity, pace, and payoff. There is a beginning, a middle, and—brace yourself—a satisfying end.

It’s written with the audience in mind. The actual audience, not the imagined one you conjure during your third espresso in a North London café while reworking the opening line for the sixth time.

Commercial Fiction exists to be read. Literary Fiction exists to be discussed. Possibly in a room full of mirrors. Possibly after death.

The High-Low Culture Divide

If this were the Renaissance, Literary Fiction would be frescoes in a cathedral—revered, roped-off, and best viewed with your neck craned in discomfort. Commercial Fiction would be the travelling puppet show outside: rowdy, raucous, full of cheap laughs and bawdy jokes. Guess which one brings joy to the masses and which one gets preserved by UNESCO.

There is still this Victorian hangover about high art and low art, as if prose needs a monocle and a trust fund to be taken seriously. Literary Fiction clings to its moral high ground, publishing monographs on the death of the novel, while Commercial Fiction’s out here resurrecting it one bestseller at a time.

Intention Matters

Let’s be honest: some literary writers stumble into the bestseller lists. It’s not beneath them—it just wasn’t the point. Conversely, when a commercially-minded author attempts “Art,” the results are often embarrassing—like a stand-up comic trying Shakespeare in clown shoes.

Approaching from a commercial angle and achieving something artistically resonant? That’s the alchemy. That’s the rare bird. But the reverse—starting with art and accidentally making money—is a tale as old as Joyce (who, let’s remember, died broke and banned).

Can’t We All Just Get Along?

No.
Just kidding. Sort of.

Yes, there is crossover. Yes, The Road is both. But let’s not pretend that Twilight and To the Lighthouse are playing the same game. One is trying to build a fanbase; the other is trying to dissect perception itself. And while both may involve vampires, only one is metaphorical.

In Conclusion

Commercial Fiction is a warm bath. Literary Fiction is a cold shower that leaves you questioning your life choices. One sells. The other sulks. One entertains. The other enlightens (maybe). You can love both, loathe both, or—if you’re cursed with a literary soul—you can write one while envying the other.

Either way, don’t pretend they’re the same. One is art. The other is commerce. Sometimes they shake hands. Occasionally they snog. But more often, they glare at each other from opposite ends of the bookstore, muttering into their blurbs.

Tag: literary elitism

Sturgeon’s Law, AI, and the Literary Ivory Tower

Here’s the bit nobody wants to say out loud