Literary Elitism
Mark tells it like it is with respect to a creeping elitism:
... I wonder if "difficult" sometimes refers to the accessibility of a work to someone of average intelligence and education more than its literary depth. A book might be difficult if it constantly makes references to other literature or distant events or cultural proclivities that I as a person of average intelligence and education find difficult because the references are too esoteric and most people with my background wouldn't know them.
Oprah has been so villified that some are now taking shots at Steinbeck's "East of Eden", as if she is tainting Steinbeck by mere association....
I once sent a lefty colleague this, which makes some immoderate claims about war but then the reasonable "sometimes the herd is right" and he reacted viscerally, completely turned off by that more than the controversial stuff at the beginnning... I recall emailing a blogger/columnist/lapsed Catholic who said she wasn't so much a liberal as an elitist... Least he/she was honest.
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