Can a book be for everyone?

A post at tor.com — I mean “Reactor” — by Molly Templeton: Can a Book Really Be For Everyone?

I like Templeton’s articles because she is usually discussing books rather than movies, she is usually discussing broader themes, and we seem to have similar tastes in books. (I am less sure of that last point after reading the linked post, though.)

To me the answer to this question is plainly NO. I mean … obviously the answer is NO, even defining “everyone” to mean “most people.” How could that possibly work?

A) I love grimdark! Let’s have suffering! Better yet, pointless suffering that leads to no good outcome! The protagonist may try to achieve something worthwhile, but sorry, no way! Pick the worst bad guy in the story — let’s have that guy come out victorious. He can grind the world beneath his bootheel. Blood, filth, and suffering are in your face at every turn. That’s what I want! Gritty realism in fantasy!

B) Let’s have a positive tone, where most people are honestly trying to do their best and mostly succeeding. The protagonist is genuinely kind, and so are many of the other characters. They are trying to achieve something worth achieving, and they succeed. The world is a better place at the end than it was in the beginning. Not only that, but the protagonist becomes a better person because of his commitment to achieving worthwhile aims. He also supports those around him when they try to become better people. Filth and suffering are passed over lightly; the camera doesn’t focus on grit. Sometimes we turn a corner and the world opens up into wonder. That’s what I want — a sense of wonder in fantasy.

These two preferences are totally irreconcilable. What possible book could conceivably appeal to both readers?

I do have a possible suggestion, but I don’t think it would ultimately work.

C) I want adventure! Let’s have fun! Fast pace, quick wit — how about a heist? The protagonist is out for himself, but he’s good-humored about it. The world isn’t particularly gritty, but it’s not particularly safe either. An appealing character dies, but not in an especially brutal way, so there’s this element of tragedy, but not with a slasher aesthetic. The heist succeeds, and at least one character achieves something worthwhile because of that. If that’s not the protagonist, at least the protagonist supports this character. The tone is not high fantasy, but not gritty either — or if the camera pans across grit, it’s in a lighthearted way. Adventurous, fun fantasy that’s the ticket!

The reason I don’t think this would work is that fantasy written this way doesn’t actually appeal to me, even if it’s well written. AND, if the protagonist and/or other characters wind up in a better place than they started out, then I suspect grimdark fans might not find this fun heist story all that appealing either. (That’s a guess.) However, if the writing is good enough and witty enough, maybe this kind of book might hit a sweet spot between (A) and (B).

On the other hand, you know who it wouldn’t appeal to? Every reader who detests fantasy and won’t touch a book with fantasy elements.

So … I’m coming down pretty hard on the NO response. NO, a book cannot appeal to everyone. Or to most people. Or, probably, even to a majority of people. A book can only have wide appeal within the group of readers who like that kind of book.

What does Molly Templeton say?

Listening to Zevin, I thought about what makes a book for everyone. I don’t mean everyone in a bestseller list way—who knows how many of those celebrity-book-club, nonfiction-trend, famous-person memoir books ever get read? I mean the kind of book that can draw packs of teens, writers, parents, readers, and everyone else in a community into a theater on one rainy Thursday afternoon. Is it the presence of universal themes? Approachable prose? Intergenerational narratives? A certain sense of transparency, like you can see what the author is doing even as you appreciate it? 

All right, that’s more reasonable, because here we mean “everyone” as “readers from a wide demographic base.” Who is Zevin? This is Gabrielle Zevin, who has written, apparently, some contemporary YA novels, such as Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow. It may be more New Adult than YA; the characters are in their twenties. This is a book with nearly 100,000 ratings and a 4.4 star average. Let’s take a look at the description:

***

On a bitter-cold day, in the December of his junior year at Harvard, Sam Masur exits a subway car and sees, amid the hordes of people waiting on the platform, Sadie Green. He calls her name. For a moment, she pretends she hasn’t heard him, but then, she turns, and a game begins: a legendary collaboration that will launch them to stardom.

These friends, intimates since childhood, borrow money, beg favors, and, before even graduating college, they have created their first blockbuster, Ichigo. Overnight, the world is theirs. Not even twenty-five years old, Sam and Sadie are brilliant, successful, and rich, but these qualities won’t protect them from their own creative ambitions or the betrayals of their hearts.

Spanning thirty years, from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Venice Beach, California, and lands in between and far beyond, Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow examines the multifarious nature of identity, disability, failure, the redemptive possibilities in play, and above all, our need to connect: to be loved and to love.

***

Well, the story may be great, but “Sam and Sadie are brilliant, successful, and rich, but these qualities won’t protect them from their own creative ambitions or the betrayals of their hearts” doesn’t appeal to me at all. Sounds like they’re going to probably practically destroy their own lives, and even if they pull themselves together toward the end, this kind of plot and character arc is anti-appealing.

We’ve been looking at first pages lately; since we’re here, let’s look at the first page of this one. Maybe after reading the first bit, I’ll change my mind and decide yes, the story looks appealing and I do want to read it after all.

***

Before Mazer invented himself as Mazer, he was Samson Mazer, and before he was Samson Mazer, he was Samson Masur — a change of two letters that transformed him from a nice, ostensibly Jewish boy to a Professional Builder of Worms — and for most of his youth, he was Sam, S.A.M, on the hall of fame of his grandfather’s Donkey Kong machine, but mainly Sam.

On a late December afternoon, in the waning twentieth century, Sam exited a subway car and found the artery to the escalator clogged by an inert mass of people, who were gaping at a station advertisement. Sam was late. He had a meeting with his academic advisor that he had been postponing for over a month, but that everyone agreed absolutely needed to happen before winter break. Sam didn’t care for crowds — being in them, or whatever foolishness they tended to enjoy en masse. But this crowd would not be avoided. He would have to force his way through it if he were to be delivered to the aboveground world.

Sam wore an elephantine navy wool peacoat that he had inherited from his roommate, Marx, who had bought it freshman year from the Army Navy Surplus Store in town. Marx had left it moldering in its plastic shopping bag just short of an entire semester before Sam asked if he might borrow it. That winter had been unrelenting, and it was an April nor’easter (April! What madness, these Massachusetts winters!) that finally wore Sam’s pride down enough to ask Marx for the forgotten coat. Sam pretended that he liked the style of it, and Marx said that Sam might as well take it, which is what Sam knew he would say. Like most things purchased from the Army Navy Surplus Store, the coat emanated mold, dust, and the perspiration of dead boys, and Sam tried not to speculate why the garment had been surplussed. But the coat was far warmer than the windbreaker he had brought from California his freshman year. He also believed that thelarge coat worked to conceal his size. The coat, its ridiculous scale, only made him look smaller and more childlike.

That is to say, Sam Masur at age twenty-one did not have a build for pushing and shoving and so, as much as possible, he weaved through the crowd, feeling somewhat like the doomed amphibian from the video game Frogger. He found himself uttering a series of “excuse mes” that he did not mean. A truly magnificent thing about the way the brain was coded, Sam thought, was that it could say “Excuse me,” while meaning “Screw you.” Unless they were unreliable or clearly established as lunatics or scoundrels, characters in novels, movies, and games were meant to be taken at face value — the totality of what they did or what they said. But people — the ordinary, the decent and basically honest — couldn’t get through the day without that one indispensable bit of programming that allowed you to say one thing and mean, feel, or even do, another.

***

What do you think? I think this is definitely not a book that appeals to everyone, because I don’t like it. Why not?

A) I think the writing is top notch, and here we see all sorts of things that have not worked for me in several of the recent “would you turn the page” posts, except here those things do work. The (parenthetical) works much better for me here than it did in Tress because the tone is not arch. We have someone walking somewhere, as in Lost in Time, but here that is engaging rather than boring. The first paragraph is static, but elegant. There’s a flashback, which is also elegant. I note that the paragraphs are longer, which thank you, please, let’s have paragraphs of reasonable length, not divide practically every sentence into its own paragraph.

However,

B) I very much dislike the I’m-so-superior tone. Sam didn’t care for crowds — being in them, or whatever foolishness they tended to enjoy en masse. Oh, I see Sam is so superior. I’m sure he’s much more sensitive and intelligent than ordinary people, who I guess love being in crowds. He’s so sensitive and intelligent and superior that he is contemptuous of decency and honesty. What middle-class virtues those are, how plebian, how ordinary.

I think of this as the Steppenwolf attitude, though Sam is probably much more energetic and gung-ho than the guy in Steppenwolf. Nevertheless, the contempt for ordinary people is the same. I wouldn’t say that I dislike this attitude. No, I despise this attitude.

Sam here is no doubt supposed to be sympathetic and engaging. Well, not to me. I deleted the sample immediately after typing in the above excerpt.

Looking at the ratings, I see 15% are three star or below. I read through some of those reviews, which you shouldn’t if you want to read the story, as there are massive spoilers in some of the reviews. As a side note, please, NEVER DO A LOW-STAR REVIEW THAT SAYS: The book came in the mail with a ripped cover which was very disappointing and that is the whole review. That’s TERRIBLE and I know zero readers of this blog would ever do this, but I’ve got reviews just like that on some of my books as well. Ugh. Honestly, if the review is less than 50 words long and includes the words “ripped cover” and is under four stars, Amazon should just automatically delete it. Or at least remove it from calculations of the average star rating.

Much more relevant to the question about universal (or near universal, or at least broad) appeal, here’s a line from another three-star review: The criticism I keep coming back to seems to stem from the feeling I had that the book revels in the pain of its characters a little too much. I’m not even saying that’s a particularly bad thing, just that it isn’t for me. 

There you go. First, that line would probably kill my desire to read the book even in the absence of anything else, but second, the book is not for readers who dislike seeing characters’ lives destroyed. Those are readers who aren’t going to like the book. Of course, 15% negative reviews (minus the ridiculous reviews about the ripped cover) is a pretty good percentage. Of the nearly 100,000 readers who left reviews, 85% left four- or five-star reviews, so it worked for them. That’s not everyone, but it’s a lot.

Here is where Molly Templeton was actually going with this post:

I suspect, though, that a lot of SFF readers have thought about this, or about a topic in this general vicinity. Who hasn’t found themselves trying to explain—with a mild to severe level of exhaustion and/or frustration—that not all SFF is like the one disagreeable book a friend read and did not like, causing them to back away from the genre forever? Who hasn’t heard a genre skeptic say, “I don’t usually like fantasy, but I liked this book?” Haven’t we all tried to find just the right book, the one that would demonstrate to a doubter exactly why the genres we love are so big, so brilliant, so compelling? And what a task that is. Do they want happy stories or stories that spring from a deep well of trauma? Ensemble casts or chosen ones? Secondary worlds or magic at home? Hot villains or trustworthy paladins? Should we make a survey, try to figure out what the best book to convert someone to SFF is? Is there one true SFF novel for everyone? (I kid. Mostly.)

No, of course there isn’t, see above, so it’s good this is (mostly) not serious.

I know of readers who are fine with contemporary world fantasy, historical fantasy, and alternate history fantasy, but won’t touch secondary world fantasy. I’m sure there are plenty of readers who like paranormal romance with werewolves but would be bored to tears by something like A Winter’s Tale by Helprin. At the moment, I’m off paranormal and UF except for books by Ilona Andrews — I just got tired of those subgenres and that hasn’t worn off yet. Tastes differ. It doesn’t matter how many surveys you do; there isn’t One Great Novel For Everyone; there isn’t a Top Ten Fantasy Novels Your Non-Fantasy Reader Might Love, nothing like that. No, there’s no choice but to say, “What do you actually like to read right now? In that case these novels here might appeal to you.” Without the initial question, there’s just no way.

And, even for books “everyone” loves, some readers won’t love it. But, is 15% “meh” about typical? Or is that proportion high or low? Out of curiosity, I went back and looked at The Fourth Wing. You know what the percentage is for three stars and below? Just 3%. As candidates for “everyone loves it” go, it’s way, way above Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow.

Given that The Fourth Wing is YA secondary world fantasy with (it looks like) an edge of dystopia, and Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow is maybe YA or “New Adult” contemporary fiction with an edge of literary ruining-your-life, my guess is the overlap of readership is not that great. But of course, I don’t know. It would be interesting to find out, but I don’t know how one could.

One final note:

I am sure (very, very sure) that there are nigh-unto-infinite novels that should be massively more popular than they are. What is ONE book that leaped to your mind that fits this category? I’ve asked that before, I bet, but hey, it’s 2024, I bet some of you have new contenders.

My pick: I’m going for something really out of the ordinary here, something that is practically unknown, and something which is not SFF. We might call it positive literary. It’s kind of YA, but not really? Anyway, it’s Thursday’s Children by Rumer Godden.

Especially recommended if you are into dance, especially ballet; and also like school stories; and also like historicals. This book would be the perfect intersection in that Venn diagram. However, speaking as someone who knows almost nothing about ballet, is just okay with school stories, and prefers historicals set much longer ago than this … it’s still just a lovely story. This is the old cover, the one I’ve got, which I like better than the new cover, though I’m happy to see that it’s been reissued and is in print. And it’s not (apparently) available as an ebook. But I really love this story. I wonder what proportion of readers would appreciate it today, and whether it might turn out to have broad demographic appeal if you dropped it into the hands of a million or so modern readers. I think it could definitely appeal to readers of almost any age, so that’s a start.

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