/lit/ - Literature

Hey /lit/

I'm 18 years old and in an AP Literature class for my last year of high school. My teacher assigned a book by Thomas Cobb called "Crazy Heart"

Many of the students in my class are upset because it seems more like a work of commercial fiction to us, and we feel like our teacher only picked this book since it was relevant to the local area and he had somewhat of a man-crush on the author (even put us into a Skype call with him.) The author claimed he wrote it in a short period of time, it was his first work and he admitted that he wasn't thinking about anything except entertainment and deadlines when writing it.

We know that the author's opinion doesn't really matter all too much as our teacher said about a novel but still, we just feel like he is trying to make literary connections that just aren't there. It was also a fairly poorly written book and extremely vulgar.

What do you think? Was this literary? Is there some merit to this book? Can we apply marxist criticism and the psychoanalytic theory to this book or is it just grasping at straws?

pic related, the author. he coughs a lot without covering his mouth on skype.