Pop fiction: To understand the resentment that underscores the criticism of Stephen King's recent award from the National Book foundation, you have to have to understand that entire purpose of literary fiction is to create a mutual admiration society where authors who nobody wants to read can get together and compliment each other and remind each other how wonderful they are, so that they don't have to focus on the fact that the majority of what they write is completely inaccessible to most.

They want it to be inaccessible. They want it to be over people's heads. Because otherwise, what could they tell themselves when it wasn't salable?

So they lie to themselves and say that popular fiction is hack work that could be slapped together by anyone willing to sell out, popcorn and gumdrops, while they are creating crepes and filet minon.

Except that everybody would eat crepes and filet minon if it was the same price as popcorn and gumdrops, and although their books are often cheaper than a $30 Stephen King hardcover, people don't even think they're worth that much.

Instead, they're doing the literary equilvelent of oversalting everything, just so they can justify it when nobody cares. It's like when I was in junior high and wouldn't comb my hair. If I didn't try to be attractive and have people like me, at least I would know why they thought I was scuzzy, right? No fear of rejection if I'm already trying to make them reject me, right?

I'm not saying that every published work has to be popcorn. But the best of writing tries it's absolute best to remain accessible to the common man. (Think Guns, Germs and Steel or even Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time, which both avoid deep technical explanations or equations, but are straightforward enough that even simpletons like me can understand, even while handling weighty subjects. Both were popular and had substantive content.)

It's the same feeling that drove them to create a separate bestseller list for children's books, so they could hide that J. K. Rowling was creating powerful stories people of all ages cared about, using some of the same archetypes and literary allusions they did, but in a far more accessible and palatable way than they could ever wish to.

The literary emperors have got no clothes, and they're really, really scared somebody's going to notice.

So if you're wondering why the supposedly classy and elite authors are saying such petty and bitter things, and aren't even listing the prize they gave King on their homepage, even when King was nothing but cordial, and even donated the prize money back to their organization--just remember, the entire reason the prize exists is so that the writers can tell themselves they're better than guys like King, even though they haven't touched nearly the number of readers he has.