Good Prose Fiction: Solution Or Problem?
There are two ways in which the high quality of writing has become a problem for readers.
The first way is that there are too many good books to read, and editors are telling us they don't want to filter any more narrowly than that. Let us be candid. Many of us do not care enough about books to read that many, so we ask magazine editors to narrow down the field for us to those that match our tastes. Instead, Mike Resnick tells us that as editor of Jim Baen's Universe he'll give us any fiction he thinks possesses generic goodness. In today's information overload, we wish for more specific literary filters in the torrent of work that has already passed through the "is it generically good?" filter.
This is far too broad a criteria given that different works of fiction provide different mental experiences for which we might have a hankering at various times. Examples include:
- Tear-jerking sentimentality.
- Romantic feelings.
- Intellectual stimulation about philosophy, business, politics, science, engineering, or other ideas.
- Laughter.
- Exciting action.
- Mythopoeia.
- Feelings of horror.
- A puzzle to be solved.
A murder and a detective are just a setting, but the puzzle is the reading experience you have in your head. Fantasy and science fiction are also just settings, and can provide any of those experiences, although there are good reasons that they tend to specialize. I think mental experiences make more useful categories than settings. When fans complain to Escape Pod that Mike Resnick's well-written tear-jerkers are "not Science Fiction", they are complaining wrong. They really were dissatisfied because they were expecting something else which is either on the above list, or belongs there and is missing due to my oversight. (Given that they named SF, good odds are that it's the intellectual one.) Hence Mr. Resnick hears them wrong and doesn't know what they want. People don't need one magazine full of detectives and murders, another full of outer space, and another full of swords and sorcery. Those are settings. Readers need a filter based on the mental experiences they find rewarding. How much does a work trigger fear, humor, tears, romance, intellectual stimulation, or let us work out whodunit? Those are happening in the reader's head independent of props like wands and rayguns.
The second way good writing can be a problem is when it gets out of its place and becomes an exclusionary idolatry. It's a little awkward and uncomfortable to say this, but some of us are unwashed ruffians who read prose fiction specifically to find out the fiddly details and explanations, rather than for the right reasons preached to us by Real Literature. We are the kind of readers who can be educated to appreciate the prose fiction writer's craftmanship, but who unapologetically continue to enjoy reading encyclopedic recountings in a GURPS Transhuman Space setting sourcebook.
It's understandable that many prose fiction authors become obsessed with wordcraft and dramacraft to the point that they can no longer see the rewards of a more polymath set of mental experiences. They wouldn't have gone into the job if they didn't love literature's particular subset of rewards. They're specialists, after all, and reading their livejournals about their writing process, I'm amazed at the depth of their insight into how it works. I just don't care as much as they do. Of course I don't... that's why they're writers and I'm not. Hey, somebody's got to read the stuff.
A polymath, such as a hard science fiction writer, is a jack of at least two trades. His or her work is divided in its loyalties, between the joy of narrative and the stimulation of ideas about our empirical world. Each enriches the other.
That's what fans of specifically science fiction like about it. Slavish totalistic loyalty to literary values like plot and characterization are an artificial limitation on written SF in a way comparable to film's prosthetic makeup limitations and gravity on the set. Carry it too far and pretty soon everybody's writing Dandelion Wine and Farewell Summer just because that sort of book is "well-written" by a supposed universal standard we are all supposed to appreciate.
When it reaches the point that good writing and good books have been set up in opposition to the polymath's enjoyment-- not only ignoring but denigrating-- good writing and good books lose that fight. Readers don't cease to exist when we put the book down. Some of us value other things in the life of the active mind in addition to wordcraft and dramacraft. Philosophy, politics, business, engineering, science. That's why when we go to the bookshelf with the limited time we have allotted for fiction, we specifically pull science fiction off the shelf.
A minority of authors love their skill set so much that it is difficult for them to fit this concept into their world. They find it necessary to narrowly denigrate enjoyment of cleverness more than emotional depth, or denigrate enjoyment of imaginative and fully-realized setting. Loyalty must be given over to literary values wholly. They can tell when an author, and by extension a reader, is serving two masters, enjoying a book for reasons not entirely related to books. For them the Good Book is a jealous god.
Insulting enjoyment is counterproductive. The reaction will not be to properly balance emotional depth. It will be to devalue prose fiction as not interested in giving them what they want, and simply read Popular Science, WIRED Magazine, or Ray Kurzweil instead. That is not necessary, as there can be rapprochement and coexistence on their bookshelves.
Go ahead, write a good book. But please, when you're done writing a book that's good by book standards, release a supplement for the dunces in which you tell-- not show-- the implications we didn't catch. Then we will ooh and aah along with the literary sophisticates.
Comments
todfox on Jul. 25, 2007 3:34 PM
Interesting rant -- I am not sure I agree with all of it but I am still mulling it over. Thanks for your thoughts.
overthesun on Jul. 25, 2007 3:44 PM
Let me be the first to say: Right On! I appreciate good writing, up to a point. Sentence structure, Grammar, self consistency, the restraint to avoid introducing Deus ex machina, and believable characters matter to me. But if you graph a "good book" as a one to 100 scale, as long as you passed the 75 mark, and have the mental experience I want, I am happy. On the flip side, if you don't have any of the mental experiences I turn to books for, you could bust out the top of the scale, with everyone raving that you deserve a hundred and fifty, and I won't want to read it.
todfox on Jul. 25, 2007 3:51 PM
Ok, further thoughts: While I appreciate a rant for rant's sake, to respond seriously I think the key you left off the list is that for some people, wordcraft and dramacraft IS a reason to read a book -- a mental experience wholly aside from the others you listed. While I think an afternoon spent doing nothing but reading RPG sourcebooks can be a happily spent one indeed, there are also authors -- such as Bradbury, Mark Helprin, or John Crowley -- who I seek out for their ability at dramacraft and wordcraft. Some of them are also good at creating mythopoeic thought, laughter, sentimentality, etc (indeed i tend to think so) but when I think of them I do think of their ability to write beautiful prose before I think of any other writing skills they have.
todfox on Jul. 25, 2007 3:54 PM
Besides, have you ever tried to read Hugo Gernsback? :P
matt-arnold on Jul. 25, 2007 5:00 PM
I haven't read Hugo Gernsback, but I've read a lot of Vernor Vinge and am familiar with his balance of weaknesses and strengths. This is simply where his focus lies when it comes to which rewards he is offering. His works are some of my absolute favorites.
matt-arnold on Jul. 25, 2007 4:58 PM
So it's always the means, but sometimes it's also the end. I see what you mean.
If I were truly ranting, I would call that masturbation or a circle-jerk, but A. I don't believe it is that, and B. I don't want to stigmatize those activities either. :)
I don't want authors to change what they write, although I do want to let polymath authors know they have just as much cause to be proud. For instance, I'm happy when authors attempt completely different things in different works. That results in a problem for me when my recommendation list consists of "read anything by this author", but that's not the fault of authors, it's a defect in our current search methods.
My rant is for editors, about how they conceive of what readers need from them. We need different forms of recommendation when it comes to fiction. Currently magazines serve as a pre-internet equivalent of feed subscriptions, and publishers serve as a "does this novel get published? yes/no" filter, and I think that's pretty much it.
Recommendation needs to move somehow from a folder model to a tag model, in which a single work can receive multiple tags of reader rewards rather than being included in precisely one category. The tags should also be leveled based on individual rewards. A work can be strong in prose, medium emotional depth, and low on intellectual stimulation for instance. If some people want to read certain types of worlds rather than mental experiences, works can still be tagged that way. "Slipstream" settings and magical realism can receive multiple setting tags simultaneously, which is one of the virtues of tagging.
phecda on Jul. 25, 2007 6:37 PM
People who write in letters to the editor complaining that something doesn't conform to their tunnel reality are whiners (says the person who is doing the moral equivalent with this post).
And actually, in the past, Detective and Mystery fiction has garnered it's own genre magazines (Ellery Queen's Alfred Hitchcock's and Spicy Detective come to mind), and back in the 70's sibling magazines Galaxy and If tended to trope more to Science Fiction and Fantasy respectively.
I've written about my preferences in content before, but essentially prefer works that push the boundary definitions:
e.g., Brin's "Sundiver" is one of the better locked room mysteries I've read. It also is good science fiction, an interesting discourse on politics and a reasonable action thriller. I would recommend it without reservation to anyone who is fond of any of these genres.
thefile on Jul. 25, 2007 10:44 PM
I posted your rant to Elizabeth Moon's LJ .
Here's her response: Link
matt-arnold on Jul. 26, 2007 1:07 PM
That isn't a response.
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