“Safe” Versus “Unsafe” Fiction: A Response to Larry

Larry over at the Other Fantasy section of Wotmania writes about a discussion he had with an anonymous author about readers/reviewers dismissing difficult or challenging writing:

“The discussion began with talking about how frustrating it can be for an author to have his or her work dismissed with a curt “too challenging” or “too difficult” without any real attempt by the reader/reviewer to explore more, to ask questions of him/herself as to why said text is difficult/challenging and if the Reader might in part be ‘at fault.’ “

If a work is too difficult is the reader to blame? One hesitates when they hear this suggestion, especially if it comes from a writer’s lips. Most writers in theory know better than to argue with an editor if they get rejected. If you do argue with a response along the lines of “you just don’t get this” or “you don’t understand my brilliance” or “I was trying to do a, b, and c. What are you dense or something?” there are some editors in the best case scenario who will be mildly irritated by your comments the next time you send in work and in the worst case scenario who will never let you submit to their magazine or publishing house again. Using that logic, it’s probably not a good idea to piss off your readers by insulting their intelligence either; you know, those people who buy your novels that decide how much your earning on your next royalty check.

Blaming the reader for their failure to understand your work seems like a bad idea on so many levels. No matter what sort of argument you offer, you’re most likely not going to convince said reader to suddenly enjoy a work that they previously despised (at least not by pointing the finger at them and blaming them for not getting it). It’s like trying to argue with a five year old to eat his or her broccoli. No matter how many times you explain it’s good for them, your words are probably going to go in one ear and out the other, not to mention the child will probably resist eating broccoli even more. Is it really the fault of the reader for not being open-minded to what a particular work has to say? Couldn’t someone counter that the author ought to do a better job at making the text more interesting to such recalcitrant readers?

It is true that some works simply become more accessible as one grows older. Larry offers an example of hating Moby Dick when he was 17, but loving it when he re-read it at 23. As he points out sometimes this has to do with the new methodological tools one acquires, sometimes it has to do with new life experiences, sometimes it has to do with newly acquired knowledge (not the same as tools per se), along with a plethora of other possible reasons. I’ve had similar experiences to Larry, for example with Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome.

To be fair, I don’t think there is anything wrong with saying, “this book is just not my cup of tea.” Back when I reviewed for Tangent (ah yes, the pinnacle of reviewing) this was a common phrase that reviewers resorted to when they disliked a story. Sometimes it made sense to explain what specifically didn’t work for me, other times I preferred to let the phrase speak for itself. I suspect many writers like to tell themselves, “oh, yes. He/She only said that because they don’t get my work. It is too complex for them.” Often when I wrote that common reviewer phrase it wasn’t because the writing was too difficult, but rather I found it dreadfully boring or it lacked complexity or in some cases it was just plain gibberish. If it is too easy for the reader to dismiss the writer for being too difficult, I suspect it is also too easy for the writer to hide behind the “you don’t get my complex, difficult writing” defense. In other words, I’m suggesting this process works both ways. Is it the reader or the writer who is the blame when a disconnect happens? Maybe it’s both.

So what about works that are generally acknowledged as good, but are also very difficult?

People who think of James Joyce’s Ulyssess often picture an indecipherable labyrinth of words whose only purpose as the author jokes is to “keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant.”

Henry James is the more interesting Modernist for me as I just finished a James/Wharton class this past semester. I found his prose in The Ambassadors difficult and frustrating, even though I did manage to finish it. The entire class reacted the same to The Ambassadors. Everyone hated it, found it dreadfully boring and difficult. I should mention that most the class hated James period, preferring Wharton. I, however, loved The Portrait of a Lady as well as some of the novellas we read. I spent some time thinking about this disconnect; it soon occurred to me that I fancied all of James’s early to middle career stories, while I disliked the stories written during his later period. The simple answer for why this happened is that his style changes. The early novels have more concrete plots, more concrete characters, younger characters than in the later novels which often feature old men, more action (narrative drive), the early novels have beautiful lines that you can quote where the later novels are more interested in creating a subtle unified experience like a painting whose singular strokes cannot be separated but taken as whole forms something beautiful and powerful, in the early novels the reader feels outside the action looking above while the later narratives are very internal (very stream-of-conscious, very mediated by the first person viewpoint) which probably represents some of the influence of his brother, William James’s psychological theories.

So I can understand the frustration from the reader’s perspective. Difficult works can be off-putting. No matter how many tools you have in your arsenal it doesn’t always make the book easier or a more enjoyable experience. It’s not that I didn’t understand the themes of The Ambassadors. I get what James was trying to do, I get the themes and meaning of the story, but I prefer early James far more. If I hadn’t had to read it for class in all honesty I might have put that book down to pick up and try again at a later date. It’s a matter of taste I suppose, but we see here that when Larry argues that people tend to dismiss “difficult” writing it isn’t always an issue of “not getting it.” Sometimes you can get it perfectly well, and still dislike it. I do agree with him that it is worth considering what about the writing one dislikes.

My Clarionmate Trent Hergenrader not too long ago wrote a very insightful blog post about literary tastes that was inspired by reading Amazon Reviews about Cormac McCarthy’s novels:

Reading “reviews” on Amazon is something I love to do because I HATE IT SO MUCH. The two biggest camps are: 1) Cormac McCarthy is a genius and the best living American author, or 2) Don’t believe the hype, his stuff is unreadable and the only people that like it are constipated academics who lie. (For the record, I fall into that first category and resemble the second.)
What drives me crazy is this underlying assumption that “good writing” ought to equal “accessible writing” when in fact they have nothing to do with each other. First off, “accessible” is a quality only each reader can decide for him/herself. Personally, I think too many readers refuse to get in the writer’s rhythm. Greek classics and Icelandic Sagas don’t feel like modern stories because… erm, they’re not. But if you take some time, you fall into the rhythm of that work and it’s smooth sailing. (As a matter of fact, this was my experience with Mr. McCarthy.)

Trent rightfully points out that “good writing” does not necessarily equal “accessible writing.” He further states that they have nothing to do with each other. I think one might read this if they are not careful as Trent saying that good writing therefore equals difficult writing (i.e. inaccessible). However, this ignores my pal’s spot-on comment that they are simply not related in the end. Good writing might be extremely accessible by the masses, or it might be difficult and a struggle to wade through. It can go either way. A book’s quality is not determined by its difficulty. Inversely, it’s difficulty does not necessarily mean it lacks in quality.

I think this is one of the first mistakes Larry makes in his discussion. “Unsafe” fiction or fiction with difficult prose isn’t necessarily better writing, any deeper, or more emotionally powerful than writing that is more accessible to the masses. For me, it’s not even an issue of difficult versus accessible/safe versus unsafe. It’s more an issue of quality versus purely entertainment.

As Trent points out, however, one person’s “inaccessible” is another person’s “accessible.” So it’s difficult to define what works constitute accessibility. I might find Jane Austen’s novels perfectly accessible—I usually don’t think of her as a “difficult” writer—but others might not find reading her prose to be particularly easy. I usually think of “inaccessible” writing as writers who it is generally agreed upon are difficult such as a James Joyce. I think this ambiguity of definition that ultimately comes down to a person’s ability and tastes proves problematic for both my responses to Larry and Larry’s own ideas since we must concede it is never fully possible to define entirely what we mean by inaccessible and accessible as it will vary from person to person.

Trent expands on the aspects of taste that he has defined thus far:

“Second, a lot of good books don’t go in one direction. I don’t read many mainstream best sellers, but typically there’s a fairly straightforward plot. I don’t mean it doesn’t have twists and turns a la The DaVinci Code, but rather what events took place and how they occurred is fairly straightforward. This does not describe, say, Ulysses. Or Blood Meridian for that matter. If you finish a book, set it aside, think a minute, then pick it back up and read the last couple pages over to see if you missed The Meaning in that last chapter, that’s a sign the book is complicated. And really great books give you a sense that there’s Meaning in there somewhere, you just have to back and look for it. I suspect this makes some people feel dumb and therefore angry.”

It’s true that a great deal of fiction simply isn’t all that deep. It’s fun. It’s thrilling to read for some. It’s good entertainment. But most of those books I am describing aren’t about to force you to sit down and revise your world-view or going to leave you speechless with that inexplicable feeling of awe and surrender to the simultaneous harshness and beauty of the world.

To be honest, I think books exist on a spectrum from the purely entertaining to Shakespeare (because let’s face it, he’s the best according to my purely subjective taste). I believe a great deal of the books written fall somewhere in the middle of this spectrum, varying in degree over which side they lean towards more; these books can often have thoughtful (if not quite thought-provoking) themes, might have some depth of plot, they might have captivating characters. These books might not be up to the level of a Shakespeare, but certainly have more substance than a book like The DaVinci Code. I think that middle-ground is often left out of conversations like these, traded in for an all-or-nothing debate (i.e you’re either a “safe” or “unsafe” novel).

I do think the way Trent presents “The Meaning” here as if there is one single right or wrong answer to the meaning of the novel as being an oversimplification, which also has a little bit to do with me quoting him out of context (earlier in the post he points out that deep literary works can have a variety of interpretations). Different people will interpret different things happening in a novel. All the author can do is offer guideposts to the alleyways of his novels, which comes in the form of language, but its doesn’t mean the author necessarily realized all the secret back roads running through his or her words, or sometimes that two roads might eventually intersect that can lead some critics to a contradictory collision of meaning. I know from the experience of sitting through critiques of my stories in many a writer’s group that what you intended isn’t always what someone is going to take away, also that even within a single crit group you can have a variety of interpretation of what you meant.

Literature is not about finding the right meaning, but rather offering an interpretation that explains what the fiction has to say and why that is significant to you. Different people will provide different answers. Still, what sort of meanings do people seek in their novels?

Trent offers a third observation about taste:

Third, you cannot judge a book based on your own view of morality. The works of Cormac McCarthy do not end gently. The world is fairly brutal and unjust, and the characters try (and often fail) to make sense of the brutality and injustice. If you don’t think the world works this way (often because of a belief in a just God), this does not necessarily mean the book is pointless, nihilistic, or needlessly depressing. The same goes if you just don’t like to think about those kinds of things.

Quoth the guy who then goes on to say in a different post :

“The main criticism of cyberpunk is that the protagonists are far too complicit with the state of the world; that they grift and hustle in a macho way in order to create a niche for themselves rather than undercut the social structure as a whole; by not opposing the status quo, the characters are accepting it by default. I think this criticism applies here as well, as the culture of surveillance is tolerated even as it is rued.

The Victorian political incorrectness of the novel also made me squirm at times. Yes, I know the disparaging remarks made about everyone who is not lily white, male, and English are historically accurate but Gibson and Sterling almost seem to revel in this escape clause. Sure, the appalling arrogance is tongue-in-cheek but it made me ask the question of who is the target audience. The racism and sexism often border on the gratuitous—but hey, we’re all white guys here, right?”

We have a problem that arises here, in my opinion. What happened to taking a work on its own terms? Taking on what it has to say whether it matches up with your worldview or not? Does this rule only apply to fundamentalist Jesus freaks? Why is it a “problem” that the protagonists are supposedly far too complicit with the status quo?

It seems to me that this is an example of NOT taking a work on its own merits, this is very much an example of complaining about a story not being what you want it to be. One might point you that Trent claims to ultimately enjoy the work in the sections of the post I am not quoting, that he is only offering what made him uncomfortable about the work, hence it is not the same situation as the people who disliked McCarthy because it was too difficult to understand. However, Larry suggests that a major part of the reason people dislike “difficult” works is because they are unwillingly to accept the message. We’ll explore what such message might be in a moment.

It is interesting to note for now that these comments about cyberpunk are directed just as much at Gibson’s Neuromancer as they are to The Difference Engine . I bring this point up because Larry in the discussion at Wotmania defines “safe” fiction as the following:

“The “untame, unsafe” part in the original is in reference to a reaction against the “bourgeois” qualities in the majority of today’s fiction. In the near future, there ought to be more posted elsewhere by the other participant on this point. In some ways, not having the the antecedents for what led to my coining of what I prefer most as “unsafe, untamed fiction” can lead to misconstrued interpretations, I suppose. I’ll just state that I think stories that end up reinforcing our basic belief codes or which aren’t viewed as being “challenging” or “threatening” are “safe” reads in the sense that the Weltanschaung behind our conceptions of how fiction ought to relate to one’s own world-views is never in “danger” of being overthrown or assaulted by the work being read. The writing, good as it may be, in such cases either reaffirms or stands distant from anything that might unsettle the reader.”

“Safe” fiction has suddenly morphed into an ideological tool. It serves the cause of the bourgeois. So what are some additional qualities of so-called “unsafe” fiction then besides being the opposite of “safe” fiction?

Larry tells us that: “I sometimes wonder if part of the issue (I hesitate to say “problem”) is that for a work to be fresh and imaginative, it has to exist largely on the edges of the socio-literary discourse. While I think a lot of the SF published today is very “bourgeois” in the sense that there is no real “threat” in the writing.”

Quite clearly a work like Neuromancer which was fresh and imaginative at the time, but never really threatens or challenges the status quo provides a significant problem to Larry’s presentation of the differences between “safe” and “unsafe” works of fiction. But how can this be?

Literature was not born initially from the impulse to challenge. In fact it’s the exact opposite. Literature begins as myth, a way of sharing cultural values and beliefs within a community. It begins as a way of explaining the important question of who we are in this particular community. This obviously changed over time. After all, to refer to “tastes” implies an individual who has the ability to like certain books that other people with different tastes may not.

Perhaps what really changed was that the communities within a given society grew more complex, they broke down into more sub-groups within a given “group,” which then broke down into further sub-groups, ad nauseam (a community within a community within a community). The common adage these days in academia is those sub-groups will not only determine your political interests, but your aesthetics as well. The personal is political, don’t you know.

Larry hints at his own theoritical/methodological/political underpinnings:

“I’ve never shied away from the fact that most of my history professors were influenced by the Hegelian-Marxist view of upper/under clashes and that training has led me to consider that perhaps part of the issue is that quite a few novels of the “mainstream,” fantasy, other genres, etc., might best be viewed as being “bourgeois,” safe, stolid novels that don’t really dare to question the underpinnings of the “real”/”fantasy” society in question. Of course, even thinking of this question can be quite controversial even today, a little over 50 years after Joe McCarthy’s heyday.”

On the surface Larry seems to be claiming that he wants more structurally “experimental” works, however, I believe on another level what he really wants is works with a certain political bent. It’s all there hidden in the dichotomy he creates between “safe” and “unsafe” fiction.

Larry has openly admitted in other posts that he’d be considered far left in America. I should also note that Trent as well identifies as a socialist/Leftist, and we saw how that affects some of the statements he is prepared to make about certain works.

Larry presents the issues of “Safe” versus “unsafe” as a matter of aesthetics, but quite clearly it is a matter of politics as well. “Safe” fiction is bourgeois, it never threatens or challenges the status quo. “Unsafe” fiction unsettles, critiques our commonly held societal beliefs, it is “revolutionary,” it constantly questions society from the fringes. Supposedly reading “unsafe” fiction has the ability to unhinge our world-views, we constantly must perform self-evaluation.

I think this politicizing is where I am most uncomfortable with Larry’s ideas, and the reason why I right this fairly long post today. This the point that really set me off, that really rang the most untrue, and that I found the most troubling. Somehow bourgeois, safe fiction, unthreatening, accessible have all become conflated together, while unsafe, difficult/challenging prose, social critique, progressive politics has been conflated. As I demonstrated with Neuromancer it’s just not that easy. A work might be a scathing social critique and be perfectly accessible for examples. The works of fiction I’ve read fit into an assortment of these categories that never line up with how Larry is defining these terms. There is something even more disturbing lying underneath all of this.

Does Larry really want works that will challenge his world-view? The answer I think is right there in the way he defines “safe” and “unsafe” fiction; the fact that he expresses “safe” fiction in Marxist terminology says a lot about what he really wants. How does a Leftist, especially a Marxist, claim he really wants to find fiction that will challenge his world-view by turning to “unsafe” fiction that exists on the edges of the socio-cultural discourse and challenges the commonly-held bourgeois beliefs of the dominant discourse? Doesn’t that description fit very nicely with Marxist politics? How is that challenging your world-view?

Is Larry secretly longing to read that experimental work of fiction that will transform him overnight into a compassionate conservative? Doubtful. I believe Larry whether he realizes it or not wants fiction that goes right along with his world-view, that confirms his Marxist-Hegelian narrative of history and societies.

I had a very interesting conversation the other day with my friend, Carina, at the library. It started by discussing our very different world-views, how she loves postmodernist theory and wants to study different ways of knowing (epistemology) from a multicultural perspective. I said that while I find postmodern theory interesting it also has the tendency to get on my nerves. I explained that the postmodern theorists couldn’t hold a candle to the traditional philosophers, in my opinion, thinkers like Plato and Aristotle. This somehow led to a discussion about Ayn Rand’s Anthem. She was telling me about her experiences teaching this book to her students; her students loved it, while she despised every word written on the page. She couldn’t stand Ayn Rand. I, of course, a former repentant libertarian (but one who maintains many of their basic philosophical outlooks) loved Anthem, I loved its scathing critique of Communism, of the communitarian “we” and the way catering to the group limits human progress. She said she disliked it because of her communitarian views; she prefers the transcendentalists, Whitman, Thoreau, Emerson and how we’re all connected, all linked together, all one people. She is another bleeding heart liberal. This was a fascinating example of how politics already creates a bias into what fiction you will like and what you will even manage to get out of a work. Interestingly enough, I don’t feel the same way about Whitman, Thoreau, or Emerson (might I also add Dickinson and Longfellow to that group!); I love their work.

That’s why I wonder how much people genuinely want to seek out works that challenge their world-views. I wonder often if people are kidding themselves when they claim that is what they want. However, maybe there is a way around this problem by looking at the complexity of literature. I often wonder if it is possible to claim a work even has a specific world-view. Some works obviously do (it’s hard to deny that Ayn Rand’s fiction for example has a very distinct world-view in mind), but is literature really that simple?

A single work of literature may have many themes, meanings, ideas that don’t always add up to a functioning unity (some easy little proverb you can take away as a moral lesson). Sometimes the ideas in a work are contradictory. Good literature, often but not always, defies politics. This does not mean it isn’t political, but rather it has a lot of political impulses that transcends simple Left/Right dichotomies or the concerns of specific ideologies like feminism, Marxism, Libertarianism, etc. In fact, the best works of literature might even poke fun at some of those ideologies for their shortcomings, even as it also explores some of what their stronger criticisms about the way society functions. In this way it often makes no sense to speak of the world-view of a story because it might have multiple world-views.

This idea that literature defies easy political categorizations explains why a conservative can read Orwell’s 1984 and see evil Big government Big Brother Leftists when they read it; this explains why a liberal can read Orwell’s 1984 and see evil war-mongering Big Brother Right-winger Fascists when they read it. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings is another example of a work celebrated and interpreted by many different and opposing political groups. Neo-fascists, Christians, tree-hugging environmentalists, libertarians, and anarchists have all found elements/readings they like in LOTR. However, sometimes literature isn’t really about politics. It’s about more transcendental things like love and death, or simply about philosophy, which doesn’t necessarily have to be political.

One of my favorite books ever written is “Goodbye, Columbus” by Philip Roth. It contains one of my favorite lines ever:

“”What was it inside me that had turned pursuit and clutching into love, and then turned it inside out again? What was it that had turned winning into losing, and losing, who knows, into winning?”

When I read this line for the first time I remember tearing up. It was the right line in the right book at the right time. This was shortly after I had ended my first serious relationship, my first “love” of my life at 19 who I had dated since high school. This was the very question that I had been asking myself secretly in the back of my mind for weeks (as it had only been weeks since I broke up with her). Roth put my question and feelings into words for me, that daunting question, that question that still haunts me even to this day as I date other women and find myself losing interest when I started out with such passion and vigor. It’s a powerful question, transcendental, more than just politics.

Of course in a way there is politics involved. “Goodbye, Columbus” is far more than just a love story.

John Seargent at Goodreads summarizes the book so well that I’ll borrow his description:

Neil Klugman and pretty, spirited Brenda Patimkin – he of poor Newark, she of suburban Short Hills – meet one summer and dive into an affair that is as much about social class and suspicion as it is about love.

The story is very much about social class. The intricacies of someone from a poorer family dating someone from a rich family. The assumptions people make from both classes about each other. It’s got subtext about different groups of Jews (Orthodox, Conservative, Reform), and how they relate to each other. It is about the historical class changes and relationships within the city of Newark (in the novel you start seeing the Jewish population that once lived in the ghetto of Newark leaving, while African-Americans come in to fill the squalor). There are some great scenes in this regard where an African-American boy comes into the library where Neil works to look at books of paintings because he wants to be a famous artist one day, but his dreams are as elusive as Neil’s dreams due to his social status. They are just that dreams. Dreams of a new life, a new world (hence the title, Goodbye, Columbus).

Don’t get me wrong, I find the exploration about class in the novel interesting as well, but what wins me over in the end is that line about the strange way love and passion can dissolve right in front of your face, how you can feel so strongly about a person one day and the next day not feel anything.

There is a danger in reading solely for politics or emphasizing politics when you read; it can devalue wonderful works of literature when it doesn’t conform with what you want (the very accusation Larry charges readers who complain about “difficult, experimental, unsafe works”).

Larry remarks about “unsafe” fiction reminds me a lot of feminist-Marxist literary critic, Claudia Johnson’s, description of Pride and Prejudice in her book Jane Austen: Women, Politics, and the Novel. She sees Austen’s most well-known novel as being her most conservative, the one that most idealizes romantic love, that conforms the most with society, and family obedience. Elizabeth Bennet in the end conforms to society and is beaten down by it. She learns all her stubborn views and beliefs were wrong. After she comes to the conclusion that her obstinacy is bad, she gets to marry the rich and powerful Mr. Darcy.

That is the politic narrative of the story. It doesn’t challenge our belief systems, the status quo, according to Claudia Johnson. It conforms to it. This is the one book Jane Austen sells out in, or so Johnson claims (I actually wrote a paper where I challenge Johnson’s interpretation of Sense and Sensibility which she sees as the most progressive of Austen’s works, as a blatant example of gross misreading, and a good example of the dangers of the “politics before scholarship” syndrome that plagues academia).

People who look primarily for politics, who judge a book based on how “revolutionary” they are will be sorely disappointed by P&P, despite it generally being considered a quality novel. The problem I suspect is the novel was never meant to be read primarily as political.

The book is more philosophical than political. It is more about our understanding of people and human nature than confronting directly the politics of the age. The central themes might be described as Plato transformed into fiction: before one can know others, one must know thyself. One must realize that their senses can deceive them. Common gossip can deceive. Things aren’t always as they first appear. Truth is beyond what is first visible.

This is a story that is far more interested in the interpersonal and the philosophical than it is the political. It is a philosophical narrative about one’s relation to human beings and one’s self, and one’s potential lovers. It a story that also thinks about one’s relationship to their family and friends. Oh certainly one might still pinpoint socio-cultural political themes to tease out and play with. After all, the main crisis of finding a suitor is initiated by the Bennet daughters’ lack of money (women couldn’t get jobs after all in this age for the most part, except as prostitutes, so they had to live off their fathers and husbands). There is certainly politics going on in the background, but I think the story is far more interested than the interpersonal than the blatantly political.

Ultimately we see the “safe” and “unsafe” dichotomy is a false one. It tries to politicize literature, but fails to notice that books have other urges that aren’t always political, but are rather philosophical or interpersonal or transcendental or emotional or even idealistic. It ignores that there are works that don’t challenge the status quo, but are nevertheless considered highly imaginative or quality fiction, that still play an important role in self-evaluation. It tries to place fiction meant solely for entertainment, with no or little pretense to literary greatness, into a political narrative with a covert ideology (thus granting meaning to works that really want to stay fun and meaningless). To present it in such a way has its own clandestine ideology with its own unique political interests that is less about challenging one’s own world-views and constantly rethinking the world, and more to do with confirming what one already accepts and believes in the guise of reevaluation. In conclusion, there is no such thing as “safe” and “unsafe” fiction. There is experimental and non-experimental, there is difficult and accessible, there is quality and bad fiction, there is deep and shallow fiction, but not “safe” and “unsafe” in the way Larry defines it.