I haven’t read most of the great books, or, Doing the Diligence

Nope.

A fun game at conventions is to dance around what you haven’t read. There are so many nerds who get so little face-time validation elsewhere that they’re quick to condescend and lecture on behalf of the Great Roberts Heinlein and Jordan. This leads many con-goers faking having read books and participating in empty conversations. I’m not sure who it’s fun for, but it must be fun given how frequently it happens.

A game I play at conventions is confession. Bring up an old Jack Vance? I’ll admit to never having read it and ask what spoke to you about it. I’ll confess to never having read Theodore Sturgeon or Octavia Butler, or only having read Samuel Delany’s non-fiction, or only the first book of Wheel of Time and Ender’s Game. The fun of this exercise is watching people around me relax, because by going first (and going at all), I’ve let them give up pretense. Tension leaves their shoulders as they realize it’s okay.

My excuses are legion. I didn’t grow up with LeGuin and Zelazny, and only ever heard of G.K. Chesterton after I graduated college. I’ve gone out of my way to collect books by canonical authors in order to catch up – what I call “doing the diligence” – which yields a mixed bag of results. LeGuin and Zelazny amaze me, but if I never read another Asimov short story that’s a thin fictional veil over a science lesson, I’ll be fine.

Nope.

My troubles are compounded by interests in literary fiction, which has its own far broader canons around the world. The many years I spent reading Mark Twain, John Steinbeck and various translations of The Divine Comedy seem to be the same time others were getting familiar with The Sword of Shannara (only read the first one and can’t remember it, sorry). And then there are all those superhero comics that ate up my adolescence, though they seem to be more useful now that Marvel films are dominating the earth. Don’t get me started on Beta Ray Bill.

Nor have I have I given up my other loves. I’ll get to A Canticle for Liebowitz, but I’m probably going to read Pearl S. Buck’s The Good Earth and G. Willow Wilson’s Ms. Marvel first. So maybe I’ll always be behind, but that’s not always bad.

I own it, but...

As frustrating as it can be to listen to geniuses dissect apparently great works I’ve never heard of, this slower pace has also yielded great pleasures. I’m not sure I would have appreciated the works of Shirley Jackson as a teenager, though having started reading her a few years ago with We Have Always Lived in the Castle, she is now one of the most inspiring authors in my life. So there’s the frustration of finding two more important books for every one I knock down, this hydra of literacy, but there is also the wonder of finding true masterpieces vetted by decades of readership.

It may just be the way I look at things, but I am far happier to have read Lord of Light late than never at all. No one I know of writes this way today, and as far as I’ve read, no one else used to, not even Zelazny.

If you’re curious, the next authors I intend to do the diligence on are Lois McMaster Bujold and Samuel Delany. I’m told I’ll love Nova. The two keep getting postponed because I’ve taken such a long detour through Jo Walton, even though she so strongly recommends both of them.

J.K. Rowling Is Not Your Bitch

The Casual Vacancy, held by some lady.

Full disclosure: I don’t like Harry Potter. Book 2 is a darned fine novel, but it’s also essentially a remake of Book 1, and the series goes lugubrious from there. My friends know me as the miserable troll under the YA bridge.

Hate that J.K. Rowling is writing a non-Fantasy book for adults? Then I hate you. Well, no, but I detest this outcry. A block of fans is demanding she pigeonhole herself with childhood angst and bookish wizardry. Instead of writing yet another YA novel where she’s guaranteed enormous sales and praise, she’s taken a risk and is exploring her craft. She’s in a fine financial position to try it, but it’s still brave, and not nearly enough authors do it.

Look, it’s not that Rowling gave you this YA tent. It existed before her, but not like this, and post-Rowling this stuff that you love is ubiquitous. Aside from detonating the YA explosion, she gave you seven novels at something like 5,000 total pages, which fully ended the God-damned story. To be angry that she writes anything else indicates a disgusting level of entitlement.

Oh, the entitlement. Oh, the things I’ve heard her “fans” decry. To list them would take… well, not an unnecessary amount of time. Precisely the right amount of time.

1)      “She’s acting like she’s better than Fantasy.”
I have yet to read a single interview or watch a single Youtube clip of her condescending against YA or Fantasy. This seems to be audiences overreacting to her simply writing something that isn’t YA Fantasy, perhaps even something that isn’t Harry Potter. All this means is she’s interested in more things than Potter. She’s clearly interested in magic, or she wouldn’t have written so many yammering pages of it.

2)      “She’s selling out.”
She became a billionaire off of Potter. If anything, A Casual Vacancy will be
a substantial pay cut.

3)      “I don’t want to read a magic-free Rowling world.”
Do you read any magic-free worlds? If so, then why not read one by her? She’s never published such a thing before, so you don’t know whether she’s bad at it. If you honestly love this author’s previous creations, consider giving her a chance at new works. Even if she sucks at it, this path of her career could open up unpredictable growth in her abilities later.

4)      “I knew it would suck. All the reviews say it sucks.”
Lev Grossman loved it. Newsweek backed it. I know Michiko Kakutani is throwing clods at the book, but especially for a first adult-book from the highest profile author alive, I honestly expected far worse critical press.

5)      “Small-town politics is so done.”
So are magic kids. They were done to bloody death before Rowling even picked up a pen.

6)      “The price of the Kindle version is too high.”
Not only is this not Rowling’s fault, but her publisher didn’t sell you a Kindle. Your Kindle ownership doesn’t entitle you to Hachette cutting your costs. If Amazon wanted to incentivize with her publisher, they could. As it is, it’ll probably be on their free Prime library in a year.

7)      “But my Kindle edition doesn’t work!”
You’re right. Hachette screwed up on that one, and if that’s your only complaint, please continue. It’s an embarrassment to an entire industry that will probably get someone fired and shouldn’t have been possible on such a big release.

Think about all the virtues in Harry Potter.
Now think about how few are manifesting in this audience.

Most of this argument has brought up sad echoes from Harry Potter’s past. I remember all those fans saying new or lapsed readers were picking up her books and falling in love with reading all sorts of new works. If you have a massive contingent of people whining she’s not writing about wizards, it cripples the thrust. It also feeds into one of the publishing industry’s most insidious stupidities.

You know that particular stupidity, don’t you? It’s the one that made editors pressure Ursula K. LeGuin to write more like Rowling. It’s not only the little guy-and-gal authors who get this; it’s legends and treasures of our canons who have been told to ape the most popular act. Now we’re experiencing the next step in this absurdism: the public yelling at Rowling to write more like herself.

This the same backlash Stephen King got for writing something other than Horror. Alexander Pope still gets it, centuries after his death, for writing anything other than satire. It’s a backlash so common and severe that when God tried to change up His sequel to The Torah, the Romans killed His only son.

It doesn’t have to be like this. Fundamentally, this is about readers feeling passionately about a creator’s work, and that’s a lovely kernel. But we need to encourage our heroes to produce diverse works, from wherever they derive inspiration. There are few greater compliments to someone’s prior novels than in patience and respect for their new experiments. That’s all anyone needs to display here – that, and how to code a readable e-book.