Pop Culture/Pop Fiction
Pop culture and pop literature walk hand in hand. Oftentimes, the culture popular at the time will influence what is written in popular literature. The opposite is true as well. When pop literature is examined through time, it is easy to see the popular culture of the time’s influence. Charles Dickens, now considered to have transcended the status of pop fiction, wrote stories that were influenced by the culture of his day. Pip worked in a sweatshop, gluing labels onto bottles. Many children worked in similar sweatshops at that time. The same can be true of the other poor characters Dickens wrote about. Even though his stories dealt with social evils, the popular culture of that time was for those impoverished people to be treated such. “And union workhouses? . . . Are they still in operation?” (Dickens, 1843) Scrooge asks.
Perhaps the best example of how popular culture affects pop fiction can be seen in the Twentieth Century. Nothing is more evident of how a pop cultural phenomenon affects pop literature than jazz. When this musical style hit, literature picked up the culture and spread it around. The works of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and others of the “Lost Generation” picked up the banner and ran with it. The thing is, now these authors are considered to be literary authors and held in esteem. All they did was write for the popular audience often about pop cultural ideas.
