Sometimes I read really bad books and it makes me mad.
Let me clarify that by ‘read,’ I mean I keep going as far as I possibly can in the hopes the book will turn the corner and redeem itself before I give up. I am eternally optimistic where books are concerned. Sometimes that means I read hundreds of pages before stepping away.1
How long I stick with a bad book is a factor of how much hype it’s getting and the availability of some better book alternative. So if it’s Sunday, the library is closed, and my book supply is running short, I’ll keep going with a bad book past the halfway point, even as every word is filling me with rage. And if it’s a book that’s on the NY Times Bestseller list or that everyone is talking about, I’ll keep trying out of the vague sense that, “Maybe there’s something I’m missing? Is it me or the book?” I know neither of these reasons make sense and I’m okay with that.
Spoiler alert: if you’re waiting to hear the name of this specific bad book or books I’ve found bad in general, you’re going to be disappointed. I don’t write bad reviews. I don’t give anything less than three stars on Goodreads. It’s kind of like how if you’ve ever waited tables, you tip well regardless of the service you get because you understand all the things that can go wrong that are totally out of your control as a waiter or waitress. Or you just know how deeply shitty that job can be. So you tip and you tip well.
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If you’ve written a book and read your own bad review, you’re much less likely to ever write a bad review yourself. That’s my theory, at least. I don’t need to put that negativity into the universe.
Still, bad books do exist. They get published. They get hyped. They make it onto all the lists. And they are still bad. Publishing isn’t a meritocracy.2 The best doesn’t magically rise to the top. Sometimes bad books win and good books lose. This is part of what makes me mad.
I won’t be naming any names, but there is one specific category of bad book that I find particularly annoying lately. It follows in the footsteps of Gone Girl, which was not at all a bad book. In Gone Girl, the two main characters were equally shitty. They were both pretty unlikable, even if you didn’t realize it at first.
Gone Girl spawned a whole genre of domestic thriller/mysteries with unlikable characters, though none of them did it as well as the original. And don’t get me wrong, unlikable characters can make for great literature. Flannery O’Connor was the master of unlikable characters who were also fascinating as hell. The grandmother in “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”? Wow. The husband and wife in Gone Girl were unlikable but also, the things they revealed about the nature of marriage and its dark underbelly were spot on. They were unlikable, but still deeply human.
But if your characters are just unlikable and bring nothing else to the table? I honestly don’t get the point of it all.
We read for lots of reasons. For escape and entertainment, which are both perfectly valid. But at its best, reading fiction is a way for us to rehearse and learn from the human experience over and over again, in a relatively safe environment. The husband and wife in Gone Girl, odious as they are, reveal how ugly marriage can be in all its dark intimacy. The grandmother in “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” is horrible, but she has the tiniest moment of redemption at the end.
I guess here’s what it boils down to—I can travel through my daily life and easily find lots of real people who are deeply unlikable. Supreme Court justices. Small town mayors and city council people. I don’t need more of that one-dimensionality in my fictional world. In that world, I want to learn how even the odious politician has some trauma in his background that makes him the tiniest bit sympathetic, even if he’s still an asshole. In fiction, I want to see the fullness of humanity, not it’s shallow pettiness, which I can observe for myself every day just by reading the headlines.
I don’t want utopia, because that’s not realistic, either. I just want some insights that make me feel a little more compassionate. A little more convinced that we’re all human in the same ways, even it doesn’t always seem so on the surface. I want to see a little beauty, even in the darkest places. Is that too much to ask?
If you’re in Madison or the area, I’m giving a talk at the Jefferson County Public Library in Madison next Tuesday, July 12 at 5:30 on gender and sports segregation. It’s free. Also, on August 9, I’ll be at Joseph-Beth Booksellers in Rookwood Commons answering all your questions about gender and signing copies of the paperback of She/He/They/Me.
In fact, if I’ve read less than fifty pages of a book, I probably wouldn’t call it bad. It would just be a book that wasn’t for me. Maybe even a book that wasn’t for me at that particular moment in time. I have to give a book a good, fair chance before I’ll officially call it bad.
Increasingly, I find myself wondering if anything is really a meritocracy. Is there any place in the world that truly rewards skill and hard work? Increasingly, I think the answer might be no.
Robyn, you have verbalized my sometimes dilemma, when starting a new book!
You will find my agreement with your description of the “unlikables” (you are being too kind) odious, however, I believe is spot-on, when describing Small-Town, wanna-be BIG DUCKs in small ponds politicians….must insert they are succeeding at being big-F****)….BULLYING & inflicting their personal beliefs on townsfolk!!!!!!!
There’s a lot of big ducks in small ponds syndrome going around lately, for sure. Wish some people had the words, “You’re really not that important,” tattooed somewhere highly visible as a constant reminder. We all need that reminder sometimes!
BRAVO!
Robyn, you have verbalized my sometimes dilemma, when starting a new book!
You will find my agreement with your description of the “unlikables” (you are being too kind) odious, however, I believe is spot-on, when describing Small-Town, wanna-be BIG DUCKs in small ponds politicians….must insert they are succeeding at being big-F****)….BULLYING & inflicting their personal beliefs on townsfolk!!!!!!!
There’s a lot of big ducks in small ponds syndrome going around lately, for sure. Wish some people had the words, “You’re really not that important,” tattooed somewhere highly visible as a constant reminder. We all need that reminder sometimes!