Just read Frank Chimero’s The Back Side of Your Gullet is Decadent and Depraved. There’s a lot to take away from Chimero’s little series, particularly if you happen to worry about precisely the stuff that Chimero worries about (which is to say, anybody who creates, and, probably, anybody with a soul).
Chimero hits on a pattern we’re all familiar with: the better something is supposed to be for us, the less enjoyable that something tends to be. We all know what a slog it is to get through Citizen Kane. We also know it’s (supposedly) one of the greatest movies ever made. And soda’s fun, but rots your teeth. The whole concept of the “guilty pleasure” is a product of a value-system that makes shame the pew-buddy of enjoyment.
What Chimero recognises – or what I took away from Gullet – is that it doesn’t have to be that way. The harder you look, the more you recognise that there’s great, nourishing stuff that also happens to be truly entertaining. Toy Story, Calvin and Hobbes, ripened peaches, sex – that’s all stuff you can really enjoy without feeling dirty. (Of course, with sex in particular, sometimes you want to feel dirty. So let’s chalk that one up to individual preference).
I think writers in particular struggle with this idea that “good” and “fun” aren’t necessarily diametrically opposed. The way the publishing industry is structured, literary fiction is positioned as high on nourishment, low on entertainment. Genre fiction, meanwhile, is marketed as trashy and diverting. So you walk into your average bookstore and you’ve got two immediate choices: tofu salad or a McGriddle. This could all explain, of course, why Jonathan Franzen is kicking so much butt right now with Freedom: he’s written something that’s both healthy and delicious.