Verisimilitude -- "Spread it and stamp it out."

In the last couple of weeks, I have been paying much more attention to the discussion/argument over literary fiction vs. genre fiction. And the more I read about the subject, the more I am reminded of one of my favorite episodes of The Dick Van Dyke Show in the early 1960s. The episode is called "I'm No Henry Walden" and ran in the second season of the show, which ran five years. (I know all this because I have all five seasons on DVD.) The show is a classic and quite funny.

In the episode, Rob and Laura Petrie (Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore) are invited to a party of literary and intellectual snobs to raise money for foundation of poet laureate Henry Walden. They don't know why they were invited, though Rob is a top television writer. They are clearly out of their element.

They are introduced to Felicia Fellows and anti-existentialist Yale Sampson, played brilliantly by Carl Reiner. In explaining his views on the decline of modern culture, Yale (whom Rob once mistakenly calls "Mr. Harvard") blathers some incoherent mumbo-jumbo about the "plethora of the mundane" and "banality" and ends, to the absolute delight of Fellows, by saying, "Surely you can see the danger!"

The TV audience laughs, and Rob and Laura have no idea what he is talking about. None of us do. The rest goes like this --

Rob: What can one man do?

Laura: Yes, or one woman?

Felicia: We can spread the word!

Rob: Uh, what word is it?

Yale: Verisimilitude.

Rob: Verisimilitude. (Smiling). It's a good word to spread.

Yale: (Shocked, indignant) To spread, sir, to stamp out!

Rob: Well, that's what I meant. Spread it and stamp it out.


I always laugh through that part. The episode is probably the reason my 16-year-old daughter learned the meaning of verisimilitude about six years ago.

In the episode, there is another brief exchange I love after Yale walks out of the camera shot.

Felicia: Hasn't he a MARVELOUS mind?

Rob: (Mocking) Marvelous.

Felicia: (Thinking) He has the gift and ability to say things that, uh . . .

Rob: (Pausing while he thinks) . . . uh, seem vague but are in reality meaningless.


The episode reminds me of the gap people see between literary writing and genre writing, which is intended for a wider audience. There is a same sort of intellectual snobbery in the discussion.

Literary types, it seems, often look down their noses at writing for a mainstream audience, as if such writing lacks intellectual and artistic merit. I have a very dear friend whom, I think, berates John Grisham for that very reason. His thinking, apparently, is that Grisham is a hack because he isn't writing the next FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS.

But Grisham writers legal thrillers and is quite good at it. They are generally entertaining and occasionally thought-provoking.

The idea is that genre writing isn't serious enough or weighty enough to withstand the test of time.

That is intellectual snobbery at its worst. (In the TV episode, Sampson wrote a book called DEATH FEARS ME, while a strange-looking poet wrote LAVENDER LOLLIPOPS and POINT ME TO THE MOON. The show made snobbery a well-deserved target.) One merely needs to consider Dashiell Hammett -- I particularly love THE THIN MAN -- or the works of Agatha Christie to see great writing that withstands the test of time.

I have nothing against literary fiction. Some of my best friends read literary fiction. (That was an attempt to lighten the mood here.) Generally, though, when I want intellectual heft, I read non-fiction. But I hate intellectual artistic snobbery in fiction. I love genre fiction, particular mysteries and thrillers. They can be serious and thought-provoking. And a lot of it will stand the test of time.

And perhaps my mystery fiction will, too.

Thanks for reading me today.

And keep reading and writing fiction, whether it is literary or mainstream. It all has value.