I believe it was the critic Dwight Macdonald who first pointed out the prevalence of “how-to-ism” in American literature. It isn’t just that there are lots of practical manuals for cooking or gardening, succeeding in business or love, but that the instructional mindset permeates even the most celebrated novels. If you’ve read Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, you’ll know enough about the sea to board a whaler yourself. And Henry James spent a good deal of his time telling young Americans how to comport themselves in European society. The instructional tendency is perhaps especially strong in Ernest Hemingway. Much of his writing consists of tips for how to booze or kill bulls or go to bed with women. All worth knowing, to a greater or lesser degree. 

Didacticism needn’t be obnoxious, but of course it often is, in particular on literature’s lower slopes. I’ve just slogged through one of the most egregious examples I’ve ever encountered: The Year of the Locust by Terry Hayes. Hayes is the British-born Australian Hollywood screenwriter whose spy thriller I Am Pilgrim scaled the bestseller charts 10 years ago. It followed an American intelligence officer tasked with preventing a Saudi terrorist known as “the Saracen” from unleashing a terrifying bioweapon on the West. The new novel — eagerly awaited and an instant bestseller that has very likely been purchased an order of magnitude more times than your favorite book, unless your favorite book is Harry Potter or The Da Vinci Code — has essentially the same setup. It features Denied Access Area Agent Kane, who’s trained to infiltrate hostile no-go countries.