The world of culture, broadly considered, suffered a trio of notable losses recently. At the high end of the spectrum, widely and uncontroversially mourned, were the British Shakespearean actor Sir John Gielgud (with his voice "like a silken trumpet") and the French flutist ("the man with the golden flute") Jean-Pierre Rampal.
At the low end was the matriarch of English-language romantic fiction, Dame Barbara Cartland, she of the white Rolls-Royces, fox furs, pearls and worldwide book sales of 650 million-plus. The commentaries on her passing were more two-edged. Cartland may have been step-great-grandmother to the future king of England; she may have been in the Guinness Book of Records as the world's best-selling living author; but she never could get respect while she was alive. To the gatekeepers of culture, she was so far below critical consideration as to not even register on the scale. In the mansion of literature, there was literally no passage connecting the basement where she toiled with the airy stage where Gielgud regularly brought Shakespeare and lesser gods to life.
In death, however, Cartland has proved harder to ignore. It has been interesting in the past two weeks watching the obituary writers grapple with the fact that, of the three newly departed artists, only hers was truly a household name. A note of grudging admiration has crept in. The Economist even predicted last week that "Cartlandish" may yet find a place in the dictionary -- an equivocal honor, admittedly, since the word is basically a synonym for romantic trash, but one accorded few other contemporary authors. Or old ones, for that matter: We have Platonic, Dickensian, Joycean, Proustian perhaps, but it is an awfully short list. It seems there is simply no getting around that Cartlandish figure of close to three-quarters of a billion books sold.