“A lot of the people who read a bestselling novel, for example, do not read much other fiction. By contrast, the audience for an obscure novel is largely composed of people who read a lot. That means the least popular books are judged by people who have the highest standards, while the most popular are judged by people who literally do not know any better. An American who read just one book this year was disproportionately likely to have read “The Lost Symbol,” by Dan Brown. He almost certainly liked it.” - The Economist
New Yorkers are an interesting cross-section of people to watch read on the train. Because of my eighteen-stop completely local commute from Park Slope to Midtown in the mornings, I spend a lot of time studying the books to which people have chosen to devote their downtime. I generally trust it as a pretty accurate picture of the market: a lot of commercial and genre fiction, peppered with literary novels, and then a bunch of non-fiction (as expected in New York). Lately, though, I’ve been seeing a lot of self-help books out on the train. I’m not sure if it’s thanks to the ushering in of New Year’s resolutions (i.e. “get a book deal”) or some other self-bettering revolution to which I’m not privy, but they’re definitely there, and some of them are definitely odd. In general, I do my best not to pass judgments on what I see people reading – self-help, trashy genre, or pretentious literary – but sometimes it’s difficult, and I know as I pull out Pynchon or Dostoevsky, I’m being judged, too.
This small phenomenon that’s happening (at least on the F and R trains somewhere between Prospect Park and Fifty-Ninth Street) and the above quote have sort of had me turning over the to the idea of judgment in literature for the last few days. There are definitely two paths running simultaneously; authors are being judged by their audiences, and other readers are all judging each other based on what they’re reading. I suppose even writers are judging their audiences, once they’re published and preemptively when they’re deciding what kind of readers they want (consciously or subconsciously). With the way one writes his work, he ostensibly defines his readership when he decides what he trusts the reader to handle on his own.
With this book, I’ve struggled immensely with the idea of judgment. I’m straddling a nebulous line between literary and upmarket commercial (which, when I think about it is a really excellent place in which to be), and sometimes that causes dissonance when trying to give my book (and myself) an identity. There are times when I’ve asked myself, “Is this smart enough? Is this the book that I actually wanted to write?” I’ve judged myself based on the content of the story that I’ve written, and who I thought my readers would be versus who they actually may end up being. I’ve let it stop me, petrified of the judgment readers would make about me as a writer based on this should it be published, and the judgments people sitting on train benches across from a reader would make about him.
Judgment is an extension of control – we judge because we never want to feel defenseless we’re uninformed. We judge because we want to feel like we know something about someone. We judge because it’s easy and because it’s a natural assertion of control. But I suppose there’s a point where you just need to relinquish control and let people judge. I know I will be damn lucky if I ever get to a point where I’m even in a position to have my published work judged. And if that’s the case, then hey, judge away.
M
