Quote:
Originally Posted by TGS
Which presupposes the "substance" is what you think it is.
There is often more to literary fiction than telling a story. If you don't get that, that's OK, but it doesn't really warrant you, or anyone else, rubbishing a piece of work because it rubs up against your expectations.
|
The reader is the ultimate judge of the author, not the other way around, let's not forget. It's the reader who does
indeed get to rubbish a piece of work that doesn't work for them. If a book doesn't live up to my expectations, I
do get to rubbish it. That's why there are reviews, and why "word of mouth" works as it does. Because it's readers who get to say if a book is great, or good, or dreadful--
not the book's creator. If it were the latter,
every book on Amazon would be a best-seller; and we all know that they certainly are not.
If a piece of literary fiction has "more to it" than mere storytelling, it's the job of the author to make it available to the reader in some form or fashion. If the reader doesn't "get it," then the author didn't do his job,
because he didn't leave it on the page.
The idea that readers are "too stupid to get" something, and therefore, are not entitled to an opinion,
is the fiction. Readers are the consumers, the audience, the applauders, the boo-ers, and the ultimate Deciders. If one reader doesn't get it? Then that's likely true--that person "doesn't get it." If most don't, then the author quite simply did not do their job. It's as straightforward as that.
And, to get back OT: I see a lot of "experimental fiction" coming through our doors--with and without quotation marks. With dialogue paragraphs flush-left, and narrative indented (yes, in the same book). With no dialogue TAGS, never mind quotation marks, so you never know who's speaking. Thus far, I have yet to see one I found readable, much less innovative and note-worthy.
The lack of quotation marks, or some reasonable method of inferring dialogue, irritates me to no end and yes, goes on my metaphysical "annoyed the snot out of me" shelf. Yes, McCarthy did it successfully, but like first-person present tense, it's incredibly hard to pull off, and I think that there are exceedingly few authors who should even attempt it. {shrug}. That's my $.02. I'm with Xanthe; if they don't care enough about their dialogue to make it reasonably find-able, I can't find the change in my pocket to buy the book.
Hitch