The distinction between literary and best selling novels as evidenced by The Mammoth Hunters, The Handmaid's Tale, and Les Guerilleres

Reading is an integral part of the lives of most Americans. The great volume and types of reading material produced in this century indicate that reading has broken the bounds of the classroom to influence everything that we do. However, this knowledge explosion, along with our fast-paced twentieth century lifestyle and technologies such as t.v. and cinema, seem to have also created a basic division in our literature. Two types of books seem to dominate our culture today those that aim at pleasing the "average reader" and those that address the more educated "literary" realm.