Portnoy's Complaint and the sociology of literature.

Too often, sociological accounts of literature have used fiction merely as illustrative of sociological theories, concepts and schemes of analysis, adding little to sociological theory and impoverishing en passant the richness of the literary work. The concentration upon the nineteenth-century novel by Marxist writers is understandable, for it is in this novel that the phenomenon of class conflict, the disenchantment of the writer with bourgeois democracy and the flight from realism, either in the form of reactionary romanticism or avant-garde literary forms, are to be discovered. This approach is useful in overcoming a particular barrier presented to a sociology of literature by literary critics. By and large, the literary critics are concerned with the discernment of quality and taste and the establishment of the great works of art, and thus erect the distinction between high culture and low culture. Yet it is very often the case that a coherent world view is presented by what are generally regarded as second-rate or downright bad writers. An approach of this kind places the sociologist in bad company, because it directs attention to the interstices of respectable social life, where the fantasies of many are actualized in portrayals of the pursuits of thieves, murderers and perverts.