Sympathy for the Reader

When I see a stranger reading a book, I like that person better. There is something about the act of reading – especially fiction – that is endearingly vulnerable, almost naïve. The reader’s attention is wholly submitted to the page, breathless with anticipation about what happens next (if the story is any good, that is). This is a uniquely human experience. No other species on Earth has the capacity to enjoy storytelling.

When you’re writing a book, you should think about the reader.

This seems obvious, right? If you’re making a chair, you give thought to how comfortable the sitter will be. If you’re designing a house, you give thought to what it would be like to live there. Why should authors give any less attention to the consumers of their products?

But writers do give less attention. At least, some of us do.

In an interview with The Motley Fool, Amor Towles (A Gentleman in Moscow) laments the tendency of modern fiction to discount the reader:

“I very much came of age in an era where we as younger artists, or critics, or students were taught that to take into account the audience was the worst thing an artist could do. (The idea was that) true art is made with almost intentional indifference to the audience.”

Towles’ sentiment makes me think of the post-structuralist critics I encountered in grad school, people like Jacques Derrida, famous for the idea that “there is nothing beyond the text.” In this framework, it is impossible for language to have any stable meaning that can be transferred from one person to another. Therefore, why try? If language can’t communicate anything coherent, why consider the reader at all? Instead of writing being an exercise in disciplined meaning-making (which it should be), it becomes solipsistic, all about the tortured author trying in vain to express the ineffable longings of his soul. Or something like that.

To be clear, I’m not talking about bestsellers. This type of “to hell with the reader” style is something you’ll encounter more from literary types. I just read a recent Pulitzer Prize-winning novel that was brutal to get through. Truly, one of the least enjoyable reading experiences I’ve had in a while. (But I finished it. Maybe it’s the distance runner in me that compels me to slog through unpleasantries.) The author was so infatuated with his verbal dexterity – which is considerable – that he gave no thought to how his readers might feel, plodding through 350 pages of interminable descriptions, nonexistent plot, and irredeemable characters.

The idea that “there is nothing beyond the text” is self-centered nonsense. There are readers beyond the text, human beings who are giving your words their undivided attention. And you owe it to them to construct meaning in a way that is coherent. Towles, in the same interview, describes this as the “covenant” that an artist has with the audience:

“I know that if someone is going to buy this book and take time to read this book, that I owe them a certain amount of investment in ensuring that the book is of the highest quality that I can make it. And that tends to mean things like removing redundancies. Removing passages that go on unnecessarily long. Removing obscurities that sort of satisfy my vanity, but that are not really productive for the work.”

Writers whose works stand the test of time absolutely consider their readers. If you transported Charles Dickens or Jane Austen into a modern-day grad-school seminar and exposed them to the tortuous writings of Derrida, they’d have no idea what the fuck he’s talking about. Because it is possible to communicate meaning, and to tell a story that has both moral force and narrative clarity. Dickens and Austen were confident enough as writers to pull this off, which is why we’re still reading them.

Navel-gazing, self-absorbed writing is a fad – just like post-structuralism. This type of stuff might win awards, but it won’t endure because it’s miserable to read. It doesn’t honor the writer’s covenant with the audience.

Storytelling is not a fad. It’s what makes us human. Our capacity to create stories is what catapulted us from swinging in the trees to putting a man on the moon, and a good story is welcoming. It invites the reader in, with the understanding that something meaningful is going to be communicated, a truth that can only be understood when passed from one human being to another.