[More Grey discussion to which I object. Rumours was not only popular, but good. 50 Shades books may be titillating but does anyone think they're good writing??]
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/...-10350271.html
On the other, arguments about numbers rarely take into account wider cultural resonance. Certainly, a trawl through the record sales of the 1960s will nearly always demonstrate, let us say, that The Sound of Music outsold Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, or that Engelbert Humperdinck shifted more singles than the Rolling Stones; but in terms of cultural impact Engelbert and Rodgers and Hammerstein invariably end up taking a back seat. It is the same with the late 1970s. Of course, Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours outsold all the punk bands by 10 to one. Of course all the excitement about the “New Wave” was a conspiracy got up by the music press. Of course, the nation’s youth were really grooving to disco rather than the Sex Pistols and The Jam. But who, nearly 40 years later, has the greater significance – John Lydon or
Mick Fleetwood? Paul Weller or
Stevie Nicks?
Naturally, it is possible to reply, with all sincerity, that Ms Nicks takes the pas or that Mr Fleetwood is a figure of titanic cultural import. As I say, we live in a relativist age and I wouldn’t dream of suggesting that a single snatch of The Jam’s “The Eton Rifles” has greater cultural value than the Mac’s entire recorded output. No, such judgements would only offend. One of the great merits of what, if it were an Agatha Christie novel, would be called The Mysterious Affair of the Popularity of E L James, is its reminder – a rather salutary reminder in many ways – that there are hundreds of thousands of people beyond the influence of the critical thought police, who don’t mind being thought dim, or culturally unattuned, or care what the pundits in the newspapers, and judge it to be worth reading; and that this, essentially, is how the phenomenon of the best-seller works.