Oh, and again!

Remember when I did that post about Passive reading and I spewed about how much it seems present and how much it scares me? Yeah, I'm talking about that again.

Basically, if you have a book discussion with people, there are a few tricks they try to end the conversation and prove that their opinion is right and yours is wrong, and I hate each and every single one of them. What are they?

-"It's subjective!"
-"It's only fiction."
-"You just don't understand what the writer was trying to say."

I'm going to argue the toss here.

It's subjective.

Yes, well done. Opinion is subjective. It's also entirely redundant to declare that, in an opinion discussion about art, something is subjective. By saying that something is subjective, what you're actually doing is dismissing another perspective out of hand. And as someone who loves, LOVES cubism (which is the art form designed to show multiple perspectives at once, 3D imaging on a 2D format) I can see differing perspectives and select the one that feels most comfortable for what I'm about. That doesn't mean I'm disregarding your opinion out of hand, but rather I'm asking whether you've considered my perspective and trying to get a dialogue going on how the two differing opinions can arise out of one format. I love that, actually, finding out what makes other people tick. But when I'm told something's subjective, it's like being told to calm down when I'm feeling okay. Expect shit to go down, because you know what? My opinion's just as valid as yours (and you telling me to calm down is fucking patronising) and I can respect that nuance, why can't you? By saying 'it's subjective' what you're actually saying is 'I don't respect your opinion, or any that differ from mine'.

It's only fiction.

I said this on goodreads, on a 50 shades thread, recently, as I got so pissed off with this one: Fiction is a grain of truth wrapped in an allegory.

By this, I mean, fiction always carries a message. Sometimes it's a poor message, or it gets lost, but there's a message all the same. Like, in Twilight, you actually learn a lot about Mormon beliefs and the culture (sure, the message is 'give your humanity for love' but it goes deeper than that). Like, in the Smartest Giant in Town (kids book I love reading to my son, Julia Donaldson isn't kid's Laureate for lack of reason) it shows that kindness can be rewarded. And also, four-year-olds love books where someone's trousers fall down.

My point is, the reason or the message or the grain of truth? That's often the initial motivation for the writer to create. Even if it is just 'what Twilight was missing was awkward sex and poor dialogue' that is the core of the story. It's not just pretty words on a bit of paper and once you've read that's it. Books can stay with you for a reason. I read Hunger Games in between overnights. I went without sleep because, even though I thought Katniss was a bitch, I was scared she'd get really fucked up (she wouldn't die, she's the protagonist). It gets bad press, but Crossed in Ally Condie's matched series got me so caught up in their cross-country adventures through war zones that I read it in seven hours, so engrossed in her message about how we are too reliant on both drugs and the information fed to us from the government.

By saying something is 'only fiction' you're just belittling the author's journey (ha, I said that on the 50 shades thread too, that the fan was doing a disservice to EL James, and that though I didn't enjoy 50 I could at least respect that she had a message. Maybe not the one that came out, but one nonetheless. And then I left the thread because really, what more can you say to people who unintentionally talk down on the work they love?) and misunderstanding the point of the prose in the first place. So it's not a relationship manual you're reading, it doesn't mean people don't take tips from what's out there. I read this chicklit book recently (sorry if you're one of the people who hate that terminology for often-funny-romance) where the woman protagonist was obsessed with having a romance like on TV. It was called something like 'From Nottinghill with Love, Actually' or something ... the point is, the writer obviously resonated with those films, and wanted to tell other women 'it's okay to aspire to more than also-ran, because that's what romance is about'. And dammit, she's right.

So STFU. Even in Life of Pi, it's said that the Soul needs stories. Pi would not have survived without creating his allegory. S.T.F.U.

You don't understand what the writer is trying to say.

Maybe I do. Maybe I've read enough that I can see what the writer isn't trying to say too. Or maybe the writer's just not that good and they've made their story too ambiguous. Or maybe, just maybe ... you don't understand it either.