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Accessibility
Dec. 28th, 2005 12:53 pmFollowing on from the duelling reviews of Learning the World that ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
immortalradical and I had at Strange Horizons the other week, and from this conversation about valid critical opinions (which itself spun off from this post by Matt Cheney about this story by Eliot Fintushel), greengolux has a fascinating post here about accessibility as a quality of fiction:
After linking to all that discussion, I'm not sure there's a lot I can add, except a brief position statement. I think the answer togreengolux's first question has to be 'yes and no'. Everyone's entitled to their opinion, and I'm sure I'm on record somewhere as saying that an outside (or 'naive', for non-pejorative values of 'naive') perspective is valuable. It's one of the reasons I value immortalradical's reviews, and more broadly, why some of the most interesting and useful reviews can be the ones I disagree with. But I also think that, as an outsider to something, it is possible to Just Not Get It. Like greengolux, that's my basic reaction to Jane Austen, and although I would defend my right to have my opinions of Austen's books, I fully accept that I don't have a lot to bring to an informed discussion of her work.
I could learn, of course--any set of reference points can be learned--and that brings us to the second question. Primarily because context is learnable, I strongly doubt that the size of a work's audience has any bearing on the assessment of a work's quality. On the part of the writer, I am skeptical of the idea that aiming for universality is a good thing, or even a possible thing; I'm not even sure what a universal story would be, or what it could say. On the part of the reader, I am skeptical of the idea that that barriers to entry are inherently bad things. Just because I wouldn't give someone who's never read sf Accelerando doesn't make it a bad book, and just because anyone with a reading age in double digits can pick up The Da Vinci Code doesn't make it a good book. Historical context, or conceptual density, or linguistic complexity, or literary context--all of those are things that an individual reader may or may not appreciate. It is not the work's fault if a reader doesn't appreciate its strengths (indeed, it can be a shame, but it's not anyone's fault as such).
Yes, writing within a context may limit the audience to which a book is accessible, and yes, that has to be accepted--and yes, such writing can be artistically limited as well. I'm not excusing works that, to borrowimmortalradical's phrase, preach 'a weak sermon to the baying choir'. It's just that the flipside to those books--the books that extend or develop an ongoing argument (which is one of the things I suggest Learning the World does), or that explore their context in minute depth (say, The Name of the Rose)--are, not infrequently, the books I wouldn't give up for the world.
(Bonus marks for anyone who can link this debate back into the self-indulgence debate of earlier in the year, thus constructing a hideous meta-debate impenetrable to anyone who hasn't read fifty posts on two dozen different blogs. Go on, I bet it'd be easy.)
EDIT:zarabee comments on accessibility here, and sartorias does the same here.
immortalradical and I had at Strange Horizons the other week, and from this conversation about valid critical opinions (which itself spun off from this post by Matt Cheney about this story by Eliot Fintushel), greengolux has a fascinating post here about accessibility as a quality of fiction:The questions I've been asking myself in relation to all this are: can a reader who is outside of the target audience make a reasonable judgement about the quality of a work, and can a work's overall quality be judged on the size of the audience it's targeted at?These are not questions with particularly easy or obvious answers, as the resulting discussion shows. They are also questions that come up time and again in discussions about sf, as John Scalzi's recent discussions about 'entry-level' science fiction, and all the satellite discussions of that concept, demonstrate.
After linking to all that discussion, I'm not sure there's a lot I can add, except a brief position statement. I think the answer to
greengolux's first question has to be 'yes and no'. Everyone's entitled to their opinion, and I'm sure I'm on record somewhere as saying that an outside (or 'naive', for non-pejorative values of 'naive') perspective is valuable. It's one of the reasons I value immortalradical's reviews, and more broadly, why some of the most interesting and useful reviews can be the ones I disagree with. But I also think that, as an outsider to something, it is possible to Just Not Get It. Like greengolux, that's my basic reaction to Jane Austen, and although I would defend my right to have my opinions of Austen's books, I fully accept that I don't have a lot to bring to an informed discussion of her work.I could learn, of course--any set of reference points can be learned--and that brings us to the second question. Primarily because context is learnable, I strongly doubt that the size of a work's audience has any bearing on the assessment of a work's quality. On the part of the writer, I am skeptical of the idea that aiming for universality is a good thing, or even a possible thing; I'm not even sure what a universal story would be, or what it could say. On the part of the reader, I am skeptical of the idea that that barriers to entry are inherently bad things. Just because I wouldn't give someone who's never read sf Accelerando doesn't make it a bad book, and just because anyone with a reading age in double digits can pick up The Da Vinci Code doesn't make it a good book. Historical context, or conceptual density, or linguistic complexity, or literary context--all of those are things that an individual reader may or may not appreciate. It is not the work's fault if a reader doesn't appreciate its strengths (indeed, it can be a shame, but it's not anyone's fault as such).
Yes, writing within a context may limit the audience to which a book is accessible, and yes, that has to be accepted--and yes, such writing can be artistically limited as well. I'm not excusing works that, to borrow
immortalradical's phrase, preach 'a weak sermon to the baying choir'. It's just that the flipside to those books--the books that extend or develop an ongoing argument (which is one of the things I suggest Learning the World does), or that explore their context in minute depth (say, The Name of the Rose)--are, not infrequently, the books I wouldn't give up for the world.(Bonus marks for anyone who can link this debate back into the self-indulgence debate of earlier in the year, thus constructing a hideous meta-debate impenetrable to anyone who hasn't read fifty posts on two dozen different blogs. Go on, I bet it'd be easy.)
EDIT:
zarabee comments on accessibility here, and sartorias does the same here.
