Poetry doesn’t belong to those who wrote it. It belongs to those who need it.
How do you like that? Pretty deep, isn’t it? It’s from the movie Il Postino and it’s a little misleading because we’re not going to talk about poetry at all! But if you came here for the poetry and want to leave now, you’re far too late. You are trapped. Now sit there and enjoy this discussion about text, subtext and intent as it applies to authors and their readers.
If you have been at all keeping up on The Book Smugglers (and you probably have if you have been threatened, like me, by Ana and Thea), you might have seen their interesting review of Sisters Red by Jackson Pearce. For those of you who haven’t, I suggest you do so now (there’s some pretty sweet fighting at the end of the comments). Go ahead. I’ll wait…
…
…oh my GOD, that was NUTS, right?!
Anyway, you can probably get the gist of what I’m talking about after reading the review. The book didn’t work for the Smugglers because of the perceived subtext and they spoke out about it. Pearce came out and defended her intentions. And from there, people added their own thoughts as they came and went. The central point addressed between all of them being: who is right? The Smugglers and their interpretation of the subtext or Pearce and her intentions? Were the Smugglers over-analyzing, taking things out of context, attributing character motive to author motive? Was Pearce overly defensive and aiming to quash negative commentary?
Does this book belong to the author or the reader?
If you’ve been asking yourself these, it’s my opinion that you’re asking the entirely wrong sort of question and I hate you for it.
Let me say that I sympathize greatly with Pearce here. It can be extraordinarily frustrating when someone takes something from a book you didn’t intend. Not only that, it can be particularly hard to deal with should the accusation be of a sensitive subject. Note that I’m not saying the Smugglers did accuse Pearce, but let’s look at her options.
Ideally, you don’t respond to critics unless it’s to thank them and/or discuss the text. You can’t begrudge people their opinions and you can’t argue your intent without sounding condescending. I agree with this, generally, and I’m not a fan of blaming the reader for their dislike of a book. “You just didn’t get it” is not a helpful suggestion and it doesn’t really do anything to help the reader or the author understand anything.
But at the same time, it’s astonishingly hard to see someone accredit a social problem to your book and not say anything. In this, I greatly understand Pearce’s desire to speak up. Sitting back when someone doesn’t like your book is one thing, sitting back and letting people assume (even if the review didn’t say it) that you’re supportive of a victim-blaming mentality is quite another.
This isn’t to say that the Book Smugglers are wrong, either. They found what they found in the book and provided evidence to support their findings. The author owns the writing experience, but the audience owns the reading experience. It’s a shared experience which can be truly phenomenal to experience.
Basically, the book is fairly evenly owned. And with that said, I’m actually (mostly) quite pleased with how the discussion on the Book Smugglers turned out. Ana and Thea took a very sensitive subject and approached it with sensitivity to audience and author. Pearce took something that could be highly emotional and approached it with the ideal civility, explaining her intent and respecting the Smugglers’ opinion.
I’d love to see more of this sort of thing, really. I’d like the walls between author and critic to come down a little and perhaps even see the reviewers invite the authors to come offer their own insight into the interpretation. As I said, it’s a shared experience and the best way to keep sharing it is to involve audience, author, reviewer and Nixon alike.
However, looking at the comments on some reviews, one can see why an author might not be too eager to come out and talk to people who get pretty hateful about a book they’ve never even read. I thought the commentary on the review wasn’t too bad.
But they weren’t talking about my book.
So Sam, are you saying that authors should comment on reviews? Isn’t that the holy taboo of writing?
That said, I agree with you about discussion – and the discussion over at BookSmugglers is a very good one. I deals with heavy, sensitive issues, author intent, etc. and it hasn’t regressed into name-calling or typical nasty shit that seems to usually go down. The author of the book approached it very well – he explained his intent, he explained his feelings on the matter, but he did not disregard or belittel the reviewers’ opinions. And then he stepped back and didn’t comment any more (and I’m sure he was really tempted to). The discussion continues and it is still going well.
Unfortunately this is an exception to what generally seems to happen with authors commenting on reviews or an internet discussion on serious matters. That is why it’s advisable to stay away.
Well, I’m saying take it as a case-by-case basis. There are still things to do and not to do when it comes to replying.
If a reviewer is basically just hating on you, saying that you suck and should die and I hate your book and argh argh why won’t you love me, Sam Sykes, then no, don’t review. You’ll never change that guy’s mind and it’s not worth the stress.
Likewise if your first instinct is to yell and scream and go: “NO YOU FOOL YOU DIDN’T READ IT RIGHT YOU ARE SO STUPID PUT THAT BOOK DOWN RIGHT NOW AND HERE IS A COPY OF GO DOG GO PERHAPS THAT IS MORE YOUR SPEED BUT I WANT IT BACK AND DO NOT SPOIL THE ENDING FOR ME BECAUSE I HAVE A HUGE TBR PILE RIGHT NOW,” then you should probably not reply, either.
But if the situation is one where a reviewer is confused on an issue or perhaps reading into something that wasn’t intentional, I feel both author and reviewer should be willing to discuss it maturely and with minimal poop flinging.
I wish more authors commented to disagree with reviews. Or anyone commented to disagree. I think disagreement spawns the best conversations (and I don’t really mean the best controversy either). I hate blandness.
I don’t think an author should engage in a discussion online where he says the reader is to stupid to understand what he/she meant. (Pretty obvious who I’m talking about here.)
But if the author’s motives are misinterpreted I think it’s great if he/she weighs in and says that what is inferred was not their intention. I feel that in some instances the reader (or more often the reviewer) puts way too much into what is written.
I can give an example of this this that is sure to cause controversy.
In the Lord of the Rings the orcs are black, the only dark-skinned people are the men of Harad that are coming to help Sauron. -Obviously proves that Tolkien thought dark-skinned people were evil, right?
This is why I think people spend way to much time thinking about things. I read books to enjoy them. And the more I dig into subtext, symbolism, and what not the less I enjoy.
Take it two steps farther – The reviewer didn’t enjoy the book because she dug for something (that was apparently not intended). The author is now feeling like so much crap for the next several days/weeks because her book was somehow marked as victim bashing. So we have two negative outcomes from the meaningless digging for meaning.
Now because we are a perverse culture – how will this controversy effect her sales? Will this bad review hurt sales or will the controversy spark sales? I think the two negatives will mean a positive sales boost.
Thanks for the shoutout, Sam, and my GOODNESS what a controversial discussion this has turned out to be. The topic of “ownership” from a literary perspective is definitely an interesting one, and I do agree with you that it’s a pretty even split. Authors created the book with a certain intent, but readers are obviously going to interpret books as they will.
There is one point you make that I do have to contend, however.
“Sitting back when someone doesn’t like your book is one thing, sitting back and letting people assume (even if the review didn’t say it) that you’re supportive of a victim-blaming mentality is quite another.”
and
“Were the Smugglers over-analyzing, taking things out of context, attributing character motive to author motive?”
It’s something Ana and I have said over at our site, but I think it warrants another go – in no way have we or are we accusing Jackson Pearce, the author, of being a proponent of victim-blaming/rape culture. Just as there is a huge gulf between intent and reality, there too is one between an interpretation of a book and that of an author. Just because we think a book has a distasteful message, that does not mean that we think the author is some heinous, reprehensible-message-delivering gorgon. When we review books, we review the content of the novel – the characters, the plot, the metaphor, the subtext – we are NOT reviewing the author. We do NOT attribute character intent to author intent – how could we (and for the love of pete why would we?!)? We have no idea what an author intends when they write a book. All we can do is read and analyze the final product.
We never said (nor assumed, nor implied) that Jackson Pearce is a victim-blaming rape-culture advocate. Her book, though? Yeah, in our opinion, it is.
Thea, I quite agree with you in that I don’t think you were accusing Pearce of anything personally, no matter what you found in the book. You’ve been doing this long enough that any reasonable person would realize that you just aren’t that kind of reviewer.
This is, however, the internet, and reasonable people are not always the clientele. From an author’s perspective, a review means two things: what the reviewer thought of the book and what the people who read it will think of the book. I suspect (naturally, I can’t confirm her motive) that Pearce wanted to clarify for the sake of those who might read the review and conclude that she herself was supporting an anti-victim mentality.
I probably could have made that clearer, but I’m honestly disappointed that you can’t use telepathy to read my mind, Thea. What, am I expected to be clear and concise in all my thoughts now? Jeez!
once again, I’m wondering why I don’t follow Sam on a regular basis…
from the reviewer side of the coin, if the author of a book I review disagrees with something I say — I didn’t understand x, I misinterpreted y…I absolutely want to hear it.
ownership — now, that’s something to think about.
I think I mostly wanted to post and say that I read this, and that it’s given me several things to think about. thanks!
I know that Sam doesn’t seem to have intended this to be a discussion of author intent, but I’ll just make one point.
What is the book Farenheiht 451 about?
According to Ray Bradbury, it’s about television.
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