Literature students talk trash – is it acceptable to read trash novels in public?

**Filth, fervour, fetish…Whatever draws you to the seedy underbelly of literature, a.k.a the trash novel, is it ever ok to acknowledge this in public? Do you glow with shame feverishly flicking the pages of a raunchy read on the tube or brandish it about brazenly. Dan Mountain argues that the very delight of reading trashy fiction is in its secrecy, whilst Katie Hanlon urges people to come forth and hang out their dirty literary laundry…**

Daniel Mountain
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A trashy book is much like a fetish. The enjoyment of it is experienced in that dark, sticky, dimly-lit recess at the back of your mind. The same place where you hide your fondness for smearing marmite on your nipples, along with that PJ and Duncan CD you still listen to with almost religious fervour. To bring your love of trashy literature into the public domain is to normalise it. And where’s the fun in that?

You see, we only call trashy books “trashy” because we want them to be seen as wonderfully pernicious. I’m sure that if you wanted to, you could attempt to mount a defence of the literary merits of 50 Shades of Grey. But you don’t do you? The reason for that is that to do so would take away that buzz that sets alight the nether regions of your mind, body and soul.

You don’t want the average member of the public to know about your affinity with ben-wa balls, you want to keep them hidden inside you (figuratively and literally). Mr Simon Simpkins doesn’t want people to know that he longs to be Christian Grey, or Alex Cross, or a powerful wizard of Earthsea, because it would shatter the fantasy. Trashy books are a mirror that reflect inwards, and display our most fundamental and base desires, free of any affectations and restrictions that society lays upon us.

Let’s imagine how conversations about “trashy” books would go were they acceptable to read in public: “Hey, what you reading there Simon?” “Oh, The Warlock of Scantily-clad-elf-valley, have you read it?” “Yeah man! What bit are you on?” “Well the brave knight has just slain the dragon and now the fair maiden – Lady Crotchrub, is emerging from the woods to polish his sword.” “Cool. . . what’s on the TV tonight?”

Where’s the danger, the excitement in that? If anything I think we should be moving in the opposite direction – trashy books need to be seen as even trashier. I want every branch of Waterstones to have a section at the back, cordoned off by a tattered old curtain. I want a thick, musty atmosphere to be pumped in there at all times as I grunt and wheeze while poring over EL James, Robin Hobb and whoever ghost writes for Katie Price. I want to have to peek out of the curtain to make sure that the way is clear before dashing to the till. And above all, I want to feel panic-induced beads of sweat crowd my forehead as I leave the shop, past the section most favoured by old women and children, while trying to stuff the brown paper bag in to my coat.

If you don’t understand the glory and peril of this vision I paint them I am afraid that you are simply too boring. I fear that you are the type of person that would emerge in to public wearing crocs and a faded _Cheeky Girls: Live on Tour_ t-shirt and think nothing of it. You may enjoy the pleasures of these on the most immediate level, but have no idea of the forbidden fruit lying beneath the surface. You have all of the plot, but none of the story.

I don’t whip out my marmite smeared nipples in public, and neither should you.

Katie Hanlon
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I was once reading Nabokov’s _Lolita_ on the bus when the man sitting next to me proclaimed that he was Sporticus, began performing gymnastics using the handrails on the chairs and nearly had a fight with a man who was filming him on his phone. I read about half a page in half an hour and had to read it again when I got home. Sometimes ‘trashy’, easy to read fiction is just more appropriate and useful for ignoring whatever is going on around you, especially in public.

Two arguments come forward for reading ‘trashy’ fiction in public after this short reflection on buses. Firstly, people do far worse things in public than read books and secondly, while all those unpleasant things are going on, who’s to begrudge a poor person a little escapism in the trashy book of their choice?

There’s an interesting blog on _The Guardian_ from August this year about the bestselling books in the UK of all time. The data has only really been reliably collected since 2001 and the information gathered before this is from other charts; but still, it provides an insight into what’s being read and especially over the past decade.

The top 25 are dominated by authors of big selling book series; J.K Rowling, E.L. James, Steig Larson, Dan Brown and Stephanie Meyer. Only four books out of the top 25 are not written by one of these, and one of those four books is Eric Carle’s _The Very Hungry Caterpillar_. Trashy fiction is often popular fiction because of its readability and with sales figures so high, it’s simply pointless to be irritated by people reading them in public. They’re everywhere and will likely remain that way, even if literary critics feel people should know better.

Anyway, your time with the people you pass in public will probably be fleeting. Everyone knows appearances can be deceptive and there’s no point in forming an opinion of a person because of the book they’re reading in the moment you share with them on the bus. If someone is reading Emily Bronte’s _Wuthering Heights_ they could be interested in 19th century or gothic fiction, Bella and Edward Cullen’s favourite novel, Kate Bush, Yorkshire or who knows what else. I read it because I had to read it for my A Levels.

Books mean different things to different people. If the sight of someone reading whatever Katie Price’s ghost writer has churned out really angers you, take a moment and think of a few reasons about why they’re reading it. Or just read your own book – I’ve heard that Mhairi McFarlane’s _You Had Me At Hello_, where the one that got away comes back, is particularly engaging.

It’s important to also mention that there are plenty of arguments dismissing the term ‘trashy fiction’ altogether. That there are merits in every reading experience; that the whole idea of ‘trashy’ fiction is an elitist label that stunts objective readings of texts; that definitions of trash fiction change over time and that Austen/Dickens/an author from the ‘Great Literary Canon’ could’ve been considered trashy fiction in their day.

If anything, what separates Great Literature from trashy fiction is a complicated debate raged by people far better read than I am who simply have thought more about it than I have. I’m not going to argue about the term itself but instead I am advocating not having shame in reading books in public. Any book – from E.L. James to James Joyce, Chaucer to Marian Keyes and beyond.