Why do people have an issue with books that are just fun?

A better analogy is that it's as if someone were unironically trying to say CSI: Miami had just as much artistic merit as The Wire. The thing is that fucking nobody would say that unless they were genuinely retarded, which is why it's troubling to see the same thing happen with books. What happens is that people feel closer to books, they spend more time with them, more effort, so when someone implies that time was wasted they get butthurt beyond all reason. King can be fun, but he's not very good. That's fine, I like things that aren't good sometimes too, but I'm able to separate my enjoyment and objective quality. I've never understood why this is so hard for people when it comes to written works.

"Fun ist ein Stahlbad"

>the greatest minds who ever existed.
Subjective; dropped.

>quick user, name something with artistic merit
>"The Wire"
>nailed it

The point is that someone equating these shows and saying they're the same thing just because the subject matter is similar would be ridiculous. Nowhere in my post was I implying The Wire is the greatest show of all time or even that it's my favorite.

How often have you actually experienced people saying "Stephen King is true literature"?
(Whatever true literature may be, in your subjective opinion.)

Dostoyevsky's books are fun, and I like his "fun" more than Stephen King's.

In art, everything is subjective.

How do you prove objectively that Michelangelo's work is better than a pile of poopoo, that Shakespeare's work is better than your shitpost? You can't. Yet all this is true.

I understood, but I was expecting you to say The Seventh Seal or something like that, so you pulling out 'The Wire' was funny.

Because they base their identity and self worth on literary fiction reading, so acknowledging the value of any other kind of fiction is a personal threat to their identity and self worth.

It also serves as a helpful bogeyman to groups of people who do this, the thing that threatens to destroy the group. They can use it to draw the group tighter, to help dissolve internal divisions and motivate members into action. "They're going to destroy literary fiction with entertainment fiction!"

>can't spell pretentious
No wonder you dont like books

Check out Rectify. It's the most "literary" show I've ever seen.

I don't read King, but Veeky Forums is full of pseuds who one day decided that they want to be patrician and started reading high literature they aren't really equipped to enjoy. For them reading is slow hard boring work that is supposed to make them better and more cultured than people around them. People enjoying light uncomplicated stuff is exactly the people they like to be able to look down on.

On the other hand well read people in their twenties and early thirties I know really appreciate high literature after reading shitload of formulaic genre literature in their youth, but still can enjoy a genre novel that was recommended by a friend.

This whole "If you don't like King you're a pseud" attitude is just as shitty as being a real pseud, or a terrible pleb. I have trouble reading King, and every time I try to make real criticisms (sloppy prose, simplistic morality, overstuffed plots) I just get called a pseud.

Exactly. These are premature cynical old men.

You realize the very things you're talking about are actually qualities of the genre that could roughly speaking be called drama. Drama and realism don't necessarily overlap. The point of drama is to entertain using reality, plot, simplistic morality, etc, arousing feelings of rightness, sympathy, etc, etc.

When you denigrate the very mechanisms of the genre you show you don't comprehend the intended approach to the genre, which is not one of high critical scrutiny, but of a kind of arrest of disbelief, absorbedness, etc, that you criticize for not working.

You psued because you dont realize you shouldn't treat him like E.M Forster.

Any eating establishment that has chicken tenders as a meal for "adults" will always be low quality.

>you don't comprehend the intended approach to the genre, which is not one of high critical scrutiny, but of a kind of arrest of disbelief, absorbedness, etc

>just turn your brain off, bro

Who says you have to do this when reading "drama"? This just sounds like a definition you pulled out of your ass.

Inverse snobbery is still snobbery. Telling people what they should like is stupid no matter where is comes from.

I'm not being an inverse snob. I think literary fiction is the better way to spend your time, but the inability to grasp the point of other forms of fiction means you don't really understand books in general at all. I'm not saying you should like it, but if you aspire to a kind of general intelligence you have to understand it and express the limits of your own taste using that understanding.

Not everything is meant to be held up to the full power of human scrutiny. Some of it is. That's literature, art, etc. That stuff is great but it isn't everything. You don't go to the pool and the bowling alley and moan about the architecture or whatever.