Judgement

Occasionally students wonder what criteria I use to judge a book. Here's one way to respond. 

1.  What would Kurt Vonnegut say?

Kurt Vonnegut created some of the most outrageously memorable novels of our time, such as Cat's Cradle, Breakfast Of Champions, and Slaughterhouse Five. His work is a mesh of contradictions: both science fiction and literary, dark and funny, classic and counter-culture, warm-blooded and very cool. And it's all completely unique.

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.

2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.

3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.

4. Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action.

5. Start as close to the end as possible.

6. Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of.

7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.

8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

2. Is it fake? Is there any authenticity? In other words, how close is the writer to their content? 

Some thoughts….

With the recent rise of memoir, we examine the issue of authenticity. James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces cast a shadow on our relationship to memoir. He wrote a story about overcoming drug addiction that he claimed was non-fiction, but it was later revealed to be made up. What is true? A better question may be what is authentic? Consider Frank Herbert’s Dune. Even science fiction set on another planet can have authenticity, especially if the writer spent six years doing anthropological research to feed the realism of his “fake” novel about sand people. Occasionally a book is labeled “fiction” because the events are not true to life (James Frey should have marketed his book as fiction, it’s a good story but not based on truth….essentially he exploited a burgeoning market of readers who were hungry for the facts). For instance The Things They Carried writer Tim O’Brien’s story “On Rainy River” attempts to deliver an emotional kind of autobiography. The writer succeeds in making the reader feel what he felt even if the facts were not facts. Hemingway was famous for writing fiction that was thinly veiled autobiography.. His novel For Whom The Bell Tolls is about freedom fighters during the Spanish Civil War. Hemingway himself was involved in reporting events of the Spanish Civil War and was instrumental in raising awareness that opposed and finally toppled fascism in Spain…. Did he fight? Not really… do his characters… yes… so there’s a kind of removed authenticity. His being there in any capacity lends authenticity to the book he never would have achieved had he never left his office. Truth is different from fact, which is different from reality… so what does that leave readers with? The question I often ask of a book is “how close it the author to his/her subject?”

3. Does it help me navigate life in some way? If a book doesn’t help define my own personal values or give me strength to see things clearer or inspire me to be the best version of myself that I can be, then it isn’t going to make a lasting impression. Can the book help me get woke and stay woke? If the answer is yes, then I’m all in. 

4. Does it challenge me? I have read books that were so above my reading level I may have only absorbed 50% of the material. For instance Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy supplied many of the valuable and curious words you see in the margin to the right. Books like Blood Meridian taught me new words because I took the words seriously because I took the novel seriously, as Gordy from The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian suggests we should. Challenges can happen on many levels; here we’re talking about vocabulary, but let’s talk content. Should we read things that challenge our opinions, worldview, etc? YES. Should a Christian read the Koran? Should a liberal read Trump’s books? Should a conservative read Hillary’s? In my opinion, YOU BETTER. Glean some kernel of truth and test it on your TEETH. You know, I want my perspective to be keen … and I don’t want my perspective to be based on shaky assumptions about the world. The truth doesn’t have a side. Read books that help connect you to a larger truth about the world rather than reading simply to fuel your biases.   

5. To what extent is it novel? Novel - “new and not resembling something formerly known or used.”