A Reader's Manifesto
First edition cover of the expanded essay.
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| Author | Brian Reynolds Myers |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Literary criticism |
| Publisher | Melville House Publishing |
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Publication date
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2002 |
| Media type | Print (paperback) |
| Pages | 149 (including endnotes) |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 50243166 |
| 818/.08 21 | |
| LC Class | PS362 .M94 2002 |
A Reader's Manifesto is a 2002 book written by B. R. Myers that was originally published in heavily edited form in the July/August 2001 issue of The Atlantic Monthly magazine. Myers criticized what he saw as the growing pretentiousness of contemporary American literary fiction, especially in relation to genre fiction; he found it to be full of affectations and pretentious wordplay and lacking in strong storytelling.
Myers described the original article, which saw no end of responses from admirers and critics, as "a light-hearted polemic" about modern literature. Myers was particularly concerned with what he saw as the growing pretentiousness of American literary fiction. He was skeptical about the value of elaborate, allusive prose and argued that what was praised as good writing was in fact the epitome of bad writing. His critique concentrated on E. Annie Proulx, Cormac McCarthy, Paul Auster, David Guterson, and Don DeLillo, all of whom enjoyed substantial acclaim from the literary establishment. Myers directed many of his harshest charges at literary critics for prestigious publications such as the New York Times Book Review, whom he accused of lavishing praise upon bad writing either for political reasons, or because they did not understand it and therefore assumed it to have great artistic merit. Myers also focuses on what he calls "the cult of the sentence", criticizing critics for pulling single sentences out of novels in order to praise their brilliance, while ignoring shortcomings in the novel as a whole.
Myers' article attracted heated criticism from aficionados of American literary fiction, especially of the authors Myers mentioned by name. Some critics charged Myers with being selective in his choice of targets, and of cherry picking particularly unreadable passages from the authors' works to make his point, with his methods described as 'clever, efficient and unfair' by New York Observer journalist Adam Begley. However, Myers used only previously quoted and critically praised passages in an attempt to avoid that criticism.
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