Did Eat Pray Love make people's lives better? Perhaps. But that's not the definition of literature.
For context, here's some sample "kitsch":
Some Kind of love, Some Say
is it true the ribs can tell
The kick of a beast from a
Lover’s fist? The bruised
Bones recorded well
The sudden shock, the
Hard impact. Then swollen lids,
Sorry eyes, spoke not
Of lost romance, but hurt.
Hate often is confused. Its
Limits are in zones beyond itself. And
Sadists will not learn that
Love, by nature, exacts a pain
Unequalled on the rack.
Sounds like "literature" is ripe for disruption, if the gatekeepers of "literature" are determined to keep people like Maya Angelou out of it.
What do you mean by this?
If you’re talking about race, then in my experience the exact opposite is true
Regardless, if there was an attempt to "keep Maya Angelou out," it certainly failed. My comment about "the definition of literature" was about Eat Pray Love not Maya Angelou. My point was that literature (or art) is not "something that makes people feel good".
The notion that art can't be "good" if it makes people feel good is really misguided, in my opinion. People turn to art for all kinds of reasons, but most of all because of the satisfaction involved in consuming it. Even if a story is tragic or explores sorrowful experiences, we derive aesthetic pleasure from the recounting if it is well done. Art is not cheerleading, but neither does it need to be just some predictable narrative about how life is terrible and hopeless.
Speaking of literature, I don't think that reading of the parent comment is correct. The comment was saying that "making people feel good does not make it art/literature," where you're discussing something else, which is "making people feel good makes it not art/literature".
The original comment was something like, "Perhaps Eat Pray Love made people's lives better, but making peoples lives better does not make it art/literature."
Of course, people do have reactions to art. But that doesn't change the artistic value of the original piece. If they did, then the artistic value of something would change over time, which seems counter-intuitiive to me.
The interplay between the artist and the consumer of their art is a separate piece of art in itself, which may or may not have been "designed" by the artist.
But art is the product of a vision, the result of some internal feeling. Sometimes their vision is likeable, and that's a happy coincidence. Other times it's not, but maybe the artist gives up a little bit of their vision in order to make it more likeable. At some point, they've sold so much of it that you can't really call the product art any more.
Kitsch is an imitation of art with exaggerated sentimentality. Kitsch offers shallow emotional gratification with no investment.
This may seem subjective or culturally relative but I don't think it is. I think the weight of many opinions across time gives these things a certain solidity.
You think that and actively look for consistency in the reception history of everything you categorize at true art, or you hope that such a hypothesis would pan out if you happen to do that work at some point in the future?
I ask because at least in the domain of music, my (admittedly limited) knowledge of the reception history of various pieces doesn't leave much room for the consistency you'd need to determine whether anything is kitsch or not. More importantly, the historical reception of many well-known cases hinges on what (I believe) you'd consider completely irrelevant factors.
For example, Taruskin has a chapter from his book "On Russian Music" about Tchaikovsky's Sixth Symphony, showing that the reception history of the work teeter-totters based mainly on what the general acceptance was in a given period/area regarding homosexuality. (Note: the commentators didn't say this explicitly, and probably didn't realize they were doing it-- other scholars had to go back and piece together the pattern based on the data available.) In this case, one ascribing to your hypothesis/theory would be forced to reserve judgment on the "kitschiness" of that symphony based essentially on the results of arbitrary biases from a long gone era.
The messiness of reception histories and meaning in art makes me suspicious of a statement like, "Kitsch offers shallow emotional gratification with no investment." I've studied art and music closely enough to realize I almost never have the information necessary to make that judgment.
Then in film there's Quentin Tarantino's eye for composition and story-telling in Blacksploitation and Kung Fu movies. Cases like that are all over the place.
Hell, there are two young goofballs who are purposefully misreading the very reason John Coltrane wrote Giant Steps-- instead of improvising atop the chord progressions to show their musical prowess they turn it into through-composed video-game speed run music:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWqH4h5CQyQ
Is that kitsch? Are you sure?
It just means everyone gets a vote about whether something is art, the election never ends, and the things that survive and are considered to be art are art.
If I say "Eat Pray Love is not art," I'm doing two things: casting my vote and predicting that, in the future world, by popular vote, no one will consider Eat Pray Love to be art.
Also, some of our literature started off with not great origins one would really attribute to the "proper" form of literature today.
You can might think that "low culture" and "high culture" is a product either of gatekeeping or there's some sort of socio-cultural relativism. I would disagree.
I think that one can develop "taste" for good things over time by study, reflection, and criticism. TV shows that looked to me funny and enjoyable 10 years ago when I was in college now appear to me badly written, lazy, and vapid. So I do not think that good and bad in art is relative.
Is strange that there is such a debate when something like this is said about art but not about any other endeavor.
I’m sure one could draw parallels to programmers or to chefs or to musicians. There’s just people that do things much better than others and the more time you spend in that particular endeavor the more you are able to discriminate. Is it classist to say that the guy who flips burgers doesn’t have the same skill as a top rated chef? Maybe he puts a lot of love doing it. Maybe you like the burger more than the fancy restaurant. But still...
And... Shakespeare? I particularly don’t enjoy Shakespeare that much (I’m a Spaniard, we have Cervantes here) but I don’t see your point. Those are dramatic formulas from that time and period, nothing to do with the skill or genius of the writer.
All those snobs reading Protagoras and Cicero, eh? Waste of time.