You Call this Literature?

Looking through the "Literature" section, expecting to find articles on Woolf and Morrison, Pound and Hazlitt, I was disgusted to see the word “best-seller” displayed almost everywhere I looked. I realized that this is in fact what we have come to. People no longer have any idea of what quality literature is. Firstly, society no longer trusts their own opinion, but instead looks for other people to tell them what to and what not to read. Often these individuals are under qualified and wrongly assigned to their literary position. Secondly, it seems that Canadian authors have been given a back seat. Yes, popular literature has hit an all-time low, and fine literature has begun to experience a decline in popularity.
When entering a book store, you will notice that the tables nearest the entrance are filled with shiny, colourful, hard-covered bestsellers; books written by Dan Brown and anything that has Oprah's Book Club's seal of approval sticker. Many people don’t bother to read anything other than these acclaimed bestsellers. In fact, it took William Faulkner almost an entire century to finally be recognized as a valuable writer by most of us when Oprah recommended a three-volume set of his "best" work. It is probable she even gave copies away to an audience of politely clapping women who scream and hoot when given trips to Cancun or gift certificates for Channel. We read what Oprah tells us we should read, find it at the front of Chapters, and, for the select few of us who actually want to read more of an author's work, search desperately to find anything else he wrote in the store. It seems we all want what someone thinks is "best". We don’t want to do our own research or dig through piles of books to find the overarching narrative of an author's career. Rather, we gather bits and pieces, as if all works were separate, only caring to read the author that the New York Times deems "Brilliant" and "Dazzlingly unique".
Incredibly, there are many Canadian’s who have never read a Canadian novel. Canada is one of the only countries in the world, where a child may graduate from high school without having read a single Canadian novel. Some Canadian’s can not even name a Canadian book or author. Many of us have never read anything by Atwood or Munro, and it is concerning that Canadian novels hardly ever make it to be considered a Chapters' “Best Selling Novel”.
It seems everyone wants to "escape." Everyone wants to read for "enjoyment," to dissolve into a world where a beautiful young woman falls head-over-heels for some man who has some dark and foreboding secret. Have we become so passive, so hopeless, that we feel we have to escape our lives and put our brains in the numb cloudy box of predictable plots with happy endings about boring people just like ourselves? It seems we don't want to look around us, don't want to read about things that matter, don’t actually want to think about what we are reading. I recognize the need for enjoyment, but great writers like Brand and Rhys and Joyce and Chesterton inform and inspire us a lot further than a bestselling Dan Brown or Stephen King. If what we're reading is mass-market, bestselling, clichéd, plot-driven books, I'm concerned about what that says about us, and, more specifically, where humanity is headed.