American literary giant: 1974

After Johnny Carson introduced Lynn, the applause was noticeably louder than Pratt's, since most viewers of the TV variety show were on Lynn's side.

Lynn sat down in the chair, the light shining on his face, making it feel warm. He instinctively wanted to put his hands in his pockets, but then realized that sitting in a chair and putting his hands in his pockets looked too sloppy, so he pulled them out again.

Carson started by asking the most direct question.

"Professor Pratt, you called 'The Silence of the Lambs' a 'disgrace to literature' in the New York Times. Do you still hold that view?"

Pratt crossed his arms and spoke at a measured pace.

"I stand by my core argument. Genre fiction, including horror, detective, and science fiction, is primarily aimed at entertainment, not enlightenment. It gets readers' adrenaline pumping, but it doesn't make them think, which is fundamentally different from the pursuit of serious literature."

“Mr. Lynn,” Carson turned to him, “you used Shakespeare to refute this point in your article in The Village Voice. Do you still want to insist that Shakespeare was also a genre writer?”

"I didn't say Shakespeare was a genre fiction writer."

"What I'm saying is that Shakespeare used the tools of genre fiction: murder, revenge, ghosts, suspense—to do what Professor Pratt believed only serious literature could do. He used fear to open the door to the human soul."

"So the key isn't classification, the key is what you do with these tools."

Lynn confidently brought up Shakespeare, and after finishing, he looked straight ahead and saw Leia and Elena sitting in the audience with satisfied smiles.

Pratt adjusted his gold-rimmed glasses. His gaze was sharp, but his voice remained calm and measured.

"This analogy has a fatal flaw. Shakespeare wrote thirty-seven plays, spanning the entire Elizabethan era. And you, with all due respect, have only written one book, one. You're using Shakespeare's thirty-seven plays to defend your one, which is logically called generalization."

The audience laughed.

Carson was clearly pleased with the tension; he leaned back in his chair and gestured for the others to continue.

Lynn did not immediately refute.

On this stage, the weight of a tenured professor at Columbia University and that of a taxi driver are not equal.

But he had a plan.

"Professor Pratt, you said you read 'The Silence of the Lambs,' and I'd like to ask you a question."

"Please speak."

Did you fall asleep that night after reading it?

Pratt raised his eyebrows slightly.

"What are you trying to say? How does this relate to the issue we're discussing?"

"It has a lot to do with it. Because you said before that genre fiction only provides 'cheap emotional stimulation' and doesn't make readers think. But if a book can make a Columbia University professor who works in serious literature think for even a second in the middle of the night, even if it's just thinking 'Should I check the door lock?', then it has already transcended the category of 'cheap'."

"Your premise is that I would lose sleep over a horror novel," Pratt said coldly. "I won't."

"Then you must not have read the part about the basement."

A burst of laughter and applause erupted from the audience. Pratt snorted coldly and didn't reply.

Carson raised his hands to signal the audience to be quiet, then he smiled.

"Alright, alright, let's look at it from a different angle. Professor Pratt, you said in your article that Mr. Lynn 'chose a shortcut,' a term that has caused a lot of controversy. Could you explain what you mean?"

Pratt sat up straight. His gaze shifted from Carson to Lynn, then he spoke slowly in a professor's tone, as if giving a lecture:

"What I mean is very simple. Mr. Lynn is talented, I never deny that. But his talent is not being used in the right way. A talented person choosing to write genre fiction is like a gifted architect choosing to build McDonald's. He can build the most beautiful McDonald's in the world, but it is still McDonald's in the end."

Pratt paused, then continued:

"—But literature needs a cathedral."

The audience fell silent as soon as those words were spoken.

Pratt truly lives up to his reputation as someone who has taught at Columbia University for thirty years; every word he utters seems to have been honed beforehand—sharp, precise, and leaving no room for error.

But Lynn was ready.

He didn't reply immediately, but turned to look at the audience.

He took a deep breath.

"Professor Pratt, you say literature needs a cathedral, so I'd like to ask you, who decides what constitutes a cathedral?"

"Tradition, time, and generations of readers and critics."

"Tradition," Lynn repeated the word. "Okay, let me tell you a story about tradition."

His voice slowed down.

"Geneva, Switzerland, 1816. An eighteen-year-old girl sits by the fireplace, listening to two men discuss the nature of life. That night she has a nightmare in which a scientist pieces together a living person from stitched-up pieces of a corpse."

"She wrote down the nightmare; the book was called Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley. She was eighteen and had never been to college."

"When this book was published, what did British literary critics call it? They called it 'vulgar horror story,' 'gothic trash,' and 'a worthless genre fiction.'"

Lynn looked at Pratt.

"One hundred and fifty-eight years later, Frankenstein is included in every serious literary history textbook in the world, including those in the English Department at Columbia University."

"Professor, I guess you teach this book to freshmen every fall."

Pratt blinked; he didn't deny it, because it was true.

“So,” Lynn said, “the ‘tradition’ you’re talking about isn’t a fixed wall; it’s a door, a door that’s constantly being kicked open. Every great work that was once called ‘genre garbage’ was someone who kicked that door open. Frankenstein kicked it open, Edgar Allan Poe kicked it open, and Arthur Conan Doyle kicked it open.”

"Now it's my turn."

"Maybe I can't kick it open, maybe my feet aren't strong enough, but that doesn't mean the door shouldn't be kicked down."

The audience was silent for a few seconds.

Then a huge sound erupted, a cacophony of applause, whistles, and table-pounding, while Carson laughed so hard his beard trembled.

Pratt remained calm; he was not defeated by the audience's reaction at all.

Carson pressed his advantage: "Professor Pratt, what's your opinion on this?"

Pratt remained silent for about three seconds.

“Mary Shelley is a good example,” he finally spoke, his voice half an octave lower than before, “but Mr. Lynn overlooked one thing.”

"What?"

"Frankenstein is included in literary history not because of its horror elements, but because beneath its terrifying exterior lies a profound theme about the relationship between creator and creation. It precisely proves my point—for a book to be remembered, it is not enough to just be scary; it must have something else besides being scary."

"So here's the question, Mr. Lynn. What's so special about your *The Silence of the Lambs* besides being frightening?"

Pratt's move was very precise; he did not deny Lynn's example, but instead used Lynn's example to turn the tables on him.

The entire room fell silent.

Lynn felt all the lights pressing down on his shoulders. The camera lights flashed red. In the front row of the audience, he could vaguely see Elena and Leia wearing tense expressions.

He did not answer Pratt's question, but turned to Carson.

"May I invite two guests to come up on stage?"