Oh, hey. Back from blogger vaca. This is going to be a long one, folks.
A few weeks ago Nancy Pearl, probably the most famous librarian for being a librarian (not many librarians have action figures), came to my library for a staff lecture/pep rally. Later that evening she also did an open-to-the-public forum. I went to both because I am a nerd and although both were worthwhile and surprisingly completely different in content, the staff meeting got me thinking a lot about why people like certain things.
Primarily, Pearl discussed (at least what our library system likes to call) reader's advisory. This is basically the act of recommending or suggesting a book for a library customer. It's a straight forward concept but probably the biggest hang up when working at a library. It's really hard to make recommendations to people you know LET ALONE people you don't know and have nothing in common with. Pearl explained that we, as book/information promoters, need to suggest books, NOT 'recommend' them, because recommendations lead to hurt feelings if the person doesn't like a book you love. You don't need to read or enjoy a book to suggest it.
To make this easier, Pearl presented us with four different 'doorways' a book can fit in: Story, Character, Setting and Language. Most people enjoy books mainly from one doorway, and have a secondary doorway they travel through from time to time. The Story doorway is the most common doorway, a lot of books based in this doorway are also best sellers. A Story book is fast paced, hard to put down, full of adrenaline and usually goes very quickly. Commonly, there is a lot of dialogue and when you look at the pages of a book based in Story, there is a lot of white space from the amount the characters talk to one another to move the plot along. Stephen King, Dan Brown and Michael Crichton are all great at Story writing, and their bank accounts can prove it.
Books with Character as its largest doorway are appreciated by a reader because they get to intimately know someone while reading a book. Biographies and memoirs are obvious Character-driven plots, but a lot of fiction authors also rely on this gimmick like Nick Hornby and Michael Chabon. Character books are often coming of age stories, and in my opinion, the most worn out subject for a story (although when done well, it's great). The third doorway, Setting, is not as common as the last two, but is very prevalent in science fiction books and historical fiction. Setting-driven books work because the author transports you into a time or place so well, you couldn't imagine the book taking place (or being of any value at all) anywhere or anytime else. John Steinbeck, Terry Prachett or something like Frank Herbert's Dune are great examples of Setting-heavy books.
The fourth doorway is the smallest in terms of books written and in readership. Language books are self described as "well-written" (although any book can be well-written, people who like language heavy books like to tell people they only read books that are written well). There doesn't have to be a good subject or a great character, what matters is what the author evokes in the reader, how it makes them feel and how it can change their life. I'm a total sucker for these type of books. My favorite authors write books that make me feel. Authors like Johnathan Safran Foer, Jeanette Winterson, James Joyce, Marcel Proust, Margaret Atwood, Nicole Krauss, etc etc etc write this way and although I don't like every author I've listed, I like all of them more than I like any of the authors in the other categories.
The people who enjoy Language books are probably also the most pretentious and annoying of all types of readers, because we generally look down upon all other doorways. For example, anyone who relies on Language as their doorway probably read about 5 pages of Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code and then threw it away because it was, they thought, so poorly written. But, as soon as that opinion is stated to someone who intensely enjoys a fast-paced Story, that Story-lover will not only be offended but also confused; they thought Brown wrote with beautiful prose. This brings us back to reader advisory. Pearl's introduction to the doorways helps us all, library employees and otherwise, understand what that customer or your friend wants in a book suggestion. Figure out which doorway a person likes or what doorway they are in the mood for that day and it should be (relatively) smooth sailing from there. Which doorway are you?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
7 comments:
I'm a Language grrrl (except for that one time I read the Da Vinci code...twice. And then fell on Angels and Demons and accidentally read that twice too). But Colleen! This post was PAINFUL because I'm hungry, STARVING for books and all I have are books that are too language-y to enjoy. WHAT CATEGORY IS THAT, HUH? I want to re-write everything Henry James has ever written but in 1/8 of the words. And then cook that big fat book on my floor for dinner and feed it to starving children. Waste of resources.
@Nuala Nancy Pearl also mentioned in her talk how often we read older books that are considered Classics in the frame of mind of them being "classic" and therefore Very Important and in the Language doorway exclusively. She reminded us that when these books were written (her example was Charles Dickens, but i think it works for other authors, too) they were meant to be popular (often they were even serialized, a chapter coming out at a time, making it Exciting) and for the masses, in the Story doorway, kind of like John Grisham is for us now. If we read these books as they were originally intended, not taking them So Seriously and extracting them from a language point of view, they might mean something a little different for us this time around.
i'm not sure this works for any of the books you're trying to slog through, though.
Interesting. I think I'm afraid to label myself by one of these categories. Do you think that any contemporary aesthetic (i.e. pomo stuff) has undermined these categories in such a way to render them--perhaps not practically--but theoretically outmoded? I mean, do you think there is one particular text or the "spirit" of a group of texts that it would be difficult to put under one or more of these four headings? Like, maybe there should be a "WTF!?" category or an "ambiguous" category?
Elliott- I don't know about another category. I'm not exactly sure, but I would think most pomo stuff would fit into an existing category-- often Language. Language doesn't have to mean a lot of words flowering the pages, it means that the words that do exist, describe and speak are more important to the reader than the character, plot or location being described. Like, the WAY the author explains a character is what matters, not the actual character. I might be wrong though, I'm not sure what you're thinking of when you say postmodern- I might have another idea of that than you. anyway, there's always room for things on the fringe of every idea.
i guess i'm thinking of the possibility of a book for which it's not easy to locate a character, a setting, or a story. and i wouldn't want to fall back into the language category because it smells like nihilism: it doesn't matter what anybody says, just how they say it. i'm thinking of something that would defy the rigid four system categorization and force a fifth one to open up. and this new thing doesn't even have to have a name right now, but it would be nice to think that not every text will always fit into nancy pearl's hierarcy--and it is a hierarchy with the Language people sitting on top, looking down.
el bone- i think, perhaps, i gave the wrong impression in my post. for me language is at the top of the list i kind of suggested it looms over the other three categories in terms of quality. the way Pearl described it was almost the opposite, language must not be her favorite category. There is definitely room for improvement in the theory, though, and i think the system was only thought up in order to make it easier for people to suggest books to others, not to explain away everyone's tastes. i like the idea of the doorways, but, you're definitely right. as in everything, clear-cut categories make things a little too simple and shape reality into something it should never have been.
you're a language elitist. why do you hate all the other doors?
Post a Comment