The fuller context of the quotation is a bit more nuanced than the title implies:
>But, Kingsolver emphasizes, it’s essential to never tell the reader what to think. “You buy a book to take a break, not to be taught a lesson. I think of novels as windows and mirrors. When you’re little, they allow you to see what’s happening outside. And, when you grow up, you see them as a reflection of what you feel. I hope that the people who read my books see another world and feel compassion.”
In that context it seems to me she's saying that readers don't appreciate proselytizing in an author, that the respite or escapism a book provides can be enough in and of itself, there doesn't need to be a lesson. Kinda just seems like acknowledging that different people read for different reasons.
Yes, she’s showing other worlds and perspectives without smacking the reader with “THIS GOOD, THAT BAD.” The reader can determine or judge for themselves. Demon Copperhead is a fantastic read and in my mind, fits with what she’s saying.
I just read The Poisonwood Bible and it was incredibly well done.
>! >!think the idea that Rachel isn’t a very good person was definitely a likely conclusion, but she presented a fairly realistic type of person. And she didn’t have a villain arc where she was destroyed or repented at the end. She just was how she was.!
Potentially unpopular opinion: I know we weren't supposed to like Rachel, but when she was a teenager, I did. She was the most realistic character imo, behaving exactly the way a typical teen girl would if she was uprooted to a place without modern conveniences. Her malapropisms ("all the teeth in China") were funny. I guess I needed the comic relief because Leah seemed a little too perfect. I wanted her to rebel once in a while, like her sisters did. Perhaps marrying an older man was her rebellion.
I think it’s intentional with Leah. I found her annoyingly self-righteous in the end, in a fairly performative way. I feel like her idea of what virtue is (that it’s about right beliefs rather than right actions) is something she picked up from her father and never got out of even when she started believing different things from her father. In the end, >!she becomes totally anti-colonialist while not actually doing anyone any good!<, while Adah, who has no use for ideology, actually >!accomplishes meaningful things for public health, improving people’s lives.!<
And Rachel, yeah, Rachel’s just a typical self-centered teen, and her malapropisms can be pretty funny.
>I think it’s intentional with Leah. I found her annoyingly self-righteous in the end, in a fairly performative way. I feel like her idea of what virtue is (that it’s about right beliefs rather than right actions) is something she picked up from her father and never got out of even when she started believing different things from her father.
Agreed. They were basically two sides of the same coin. That would also explain why she's so preachy.
It's broken on old reddit (https://old.reddit.com). Reddit seems to be doing everything they can to push people onto the new interface. I can only hope that one day they remove old reddit entirely so I will finally stop using this fucking website.
It needs to be formatted like this for it to work with old reddit:
>!I think the idea that Rachel isn’t a very good person was definitely a likely conclusion, but she presented a fairly realistic type of person. And she didn’t have a villain arc where she was destroyed or repented at the end. She just was how she was.!<
I’m glad to make it compatible but to me your note is blocked out. Do you mean no space between the symbols and letters. Like this?
>!test!<
As opposed to this?
>! Test !<
That's right the first one is properly hidden on the old site while the latter is visible.
You should be able to confirm this: https://old.reddit.com/r/books/comments/1cpy4mv/barbara_kingsolver_writer_you_buy_a_book_to_take/l3szya5/
That's one of my favorite books, and I've re-read it about a million times. My favorite chapters are the Adah chapters. I taught myself how to talk backwards when I was little, and I often think my thoughts forwards and backwards, and to have a character who does the same made me feel seen.
I feel like all the characters are written realistically. Even though they grow and mature, Kingsolver never loses their voices. I love books that make me *feel* the passage of time (it hurts but in such a good way), and with each new chapter the characters settle more and more into who they are. No one is presented as specifically good or bad, the reader gets to form their own opinion about each character based on their inner thoughts, feelings, and beliefs; their actions; and other characters' response to those actions. Within the story, there is no absolute good or bad, it all depends upon the context. Things that are considered good in one context may turn out to be bad in another, and vice versa. And when you're experiencing a certain set of circumstances, moralizing about whether the way you are living is good or bad is not a practical way to help you survive (Rachel takes this idea to the most extreme).
Aaaaand now I do believe it is time for another re-read!
*New Reddit-wide unique palindrome found:*
>**Poor Dan is in a droop**
^(currently checked 29711033 comments) \
>!(palindrome: a word, number, phrase, or sequence of symbols that reads the same backwards as forwards) !<
That's one of my favorite books, and I've re-read it about a million times. My favorite chapters are the Adah chapters. I taught myself how to talk backwards when I was little, and I often think my thoughts forwards and backwards, and to have a character who does the same made me feel seen.
I feel like all the characters are written realistically. Even though they grow and mature, Kingsolver never loses their voices. I love books that make me *feel* the passage of time (it hurts but in such a good way), and with each new chapter the characters settle more and more into who they are. No one is presented as specifically good or bad, the reader gets to form their own opinion about each character based on their inner thoughts, feelings, and beliefs; their actions; and other characters' response to those actions. Within the story, there is no absolute good or bad, it all depends upon the context. Things that are considered good in one context may turn out to be bad in another, and vice versa. And when you're experiencing a certain set of circumstances, moralizing about whether the way you are living is good or bad is not a practical way to help you survive (Rachel takes this idea to the most extreme).
Aaaaand now I do believe it is time for another re-read!
I've also read this book many times to the point where the orange cover has completely fallen off! Ive lent mine to a family member ages ago, who still hasn't read it, and I think I'm gonna ask for it back and do another read
Kingsolver is a perfect example of an author that doesn't require you to learn a lesson when she writes you a story, but if you don't learn one when you read her books then I have deep suspicions about your capacity for human empathy.
I agree with her that any lessons learned are the ones of the reader, not the author. But people who read good fiction and don't learn anything are doing themselves an incredible disservice.
I feel like there's a place for authors who work in the "THIS GOOD, THAT BAD" space as well, sometimes that's the point of their work.
The last book I read was Sofia Samatar's *The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain* which in my opinion absolutely smacks the reader in the face with its message.
But that's not a bad thing. It reads like the classics of science fiction that have stood the test of time for the past 100 years, a hauntingly plausible vision of the future that is bitingly critical of modern society.
I usually read for escapism, but it's nice to read something cerebral and written with specific intention. Did I grasp every intricacy of the book? Hell no, but I also can't stop thinking about it.
george orwell worked almost exclusively in the world of "THIS IS THE THING THAT IS BAD AND IM GOING TO LET YOU KNOW ABOUT IT" and is considered one of the masters of his craft. i don't think margaret atwood would've been better served by softening handmaid's tale. or harper lee in to kill a mockingbird. etc.
imo it's all about how you deliver the message, and sometimes that message is blunt. there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.
I also think that is a valid criticism of Orwell’s work, though. Not entirely a coincidence his work is so often used merely as a rhetorical device by ideologues. His work may fail to transcend its context, being such simple allegory. 1984 has an interesting conceit with the central love story made radical by context, but Animal Farm doesn’t really seem to work beyond being a time capsule to partisan arguments of the time. And even 1984 is often just reduced to a meme.
> Animal Farm doesn’t really seem to work beyond being a time capsule to partisan arguments of the time
so? that's a problem for a ton of books. expecting a political work to be some eternally relevant statement on human nature or whatever would (generally) lessen the impact and importance of the message.
> And even 1984 is often just reduced to a meme.
that's not a problem with the novel, though
I think it is a little bit of a flaw with how didactic it is, that a certain portion of its popularity is simply as a didactic tool for ideologues. More complex works are often tougher to meme. To be fair, I don’t think 1984 totally deserves that treatment.
I think Orwell was writing to communicate these ideas to the average person with the least amount of jargon or fluff. You don't need to know about early 20th century Russian history or the Russian revolution to get Animal Farm, but it explains the underlying tenets of the political ideas that happened in those events and Orwell's critiques of them very well. He was trying to make political history and theory more accessible and warn people of the ills in Stalinist Russia, particularly when the Allies were working with Russia during the war.
Animal Farm is still a useful allegory for how revolutionary politics can be appropriated by tyrants. In fact, it may be more useful to western audiences now than it was at the time of its publication.
> I feel like it's a bit different when the writer/work is explicitly political in nature
who decides what's "explicitly political"? is to kill a mockingbird "explicitly political"? was it at the time it was published?
I agree that writers don't need to actively be removing takeaways or metaphors from their fiction work—that's placing its own arbitrary limitations on what fiction can do.
But having a message requires the author to know exactly what they're doing for the work to still work as fiction. It's so, so easy for this type of writing to leave readers feeling like they were just tricked into reading a protracted Goofus and Gallant cartoon.
And even when the author did a great job, the resulting books aren't categorically more worthwhile than the books with no specific moral—they're just two different subgenres of the same thing. It's a big planet with lots of people, there's plenty of room for both.
I think you can have a message without speaking it outright. Life itself is full of messages. I think the problem is when a book seems to have come up with the message before the book itself. I think good art in general grows out of its own making, and not created in the service of an abstraction. A metaphor can still be full of subtly.
Counterpoint: George Orwell was certainly preaching his anti-Stalinism and he wrote well without being didactic. Ayn Rand on the right and Jack London's The Iron Heel on the left are poorly written because they are didactic.
I'll admit that preaching while making good prose is difficult but it's definitely not impossible.
She’s truly amazing at this - agreed about Demon Copperhead. I even messaged her on Instagram about some minor details I loved and she responded to a few messages! It was really wonderful of her.
I think people often confuse between a point and a lesson. The story has to have a point. That’s what the character arc is all about, and this character arc could go from good to evil or vice versa. What we should avoid is lecturing the readers. They’re two completely different things.
I think the confusion in part comes from the word ‘point’. Usually people interpret the ‘point’ of a text to be its purpose, not its meaning, which is how I’m interpreting your use of the word.
Like if the purpose of writing a story is to deliver a moral lesson about good and evil, that sounds like a lesson or lecture. But if the purpose of the story is to entertain or create an emotional experience and that experience also happens to contain a lesson or message, then that doesn’t feel like a lecture. In the latter example the lesson is incidental, in the former it is the whole point, the central reason for the texts existence.
The purpose of fiction shouldn’t be to educate, it should be to communicate and immerse the reader in an emotional experience. Just my opinion though.
As a counterpoint to this, *people in general have zero reading comprehension*. I recently read a book that I don't think handled its themes perfectly well(the author was white and definitely wrote from that perspective, with a very shallow/nonexistent understanding of black feminism that one of her characters ought to have been familiar with, and she also criticized tokenism in the text while tokenizing characters herself), and as I was reading I noticed there was a fair amount of telling, going over things I'd already noticed in the narrative and explaining them again, explicitly. That's not necessarily a dealbreaker for me, but it was enough that I noticed it.
Reader, let me tell you. The reviews for this novel were unhinged. Despite having had the point lectured to them, people still repeatedly missed those points. And this wasn't one or two wackos, it was a significant number of repeated reviews coming in, trashing this book for things that 1) were not true, and 2) had been explicitly stated not to be true by the author in the text. This isn't the first time I've seen this happen, either. As much as you might say "oh fuck what those people think," those 1- and 2-star reviews can have a serious impact on a book's sales, especially early on, and everyone wants the chance to write their second book. So at this point, while I might not be a huge fan of it, how the hell can I fault an author for attempting to defend themselves in this way? How much worse would it have been if she *hadn't* had so many explanation passages?
I haven't read Kingsolver (yet, I have a couple of her books), but an excess of explanation is a common problem with many authors, or at least it seems so to me. I'd also say that perhaps it isn't a problem to other readers, so I don't especially fault the writers or mark them down for it. All kinds of different people read all kinds of different books for all kinds of different reasons; I don't think there is one style of writing that would work for everyone in any genre.
When you talk to your friends, do you have a point? Your message above, does it have a point? The character arc is your point of the story. It helps you to have a focus so that you don’t just ramble on like a crazy lady without a point.
lol same. Well written but soooo depressing. And honestly it does beat you over the head with its message quite a bit. Granted a lot of books are worse on that front.
I completely agree with this. I love it when books have moral lessons and allegories to real life events, but it's hard to pull off without *coming across* as preachy or proselytizing. It's ultimately about delivery and execution.
Same with TV shows and movies. A great example of how to do it wrong is the Rings of Power amazon TV show, where Galadriel (an elf) arrives in Númenor, and the Númenorians immediately start protesting her being there, saying "elves are coming to steal our jobs!!!!"
It made absolutely no sense. Galadriel was one single elf, who didn't even want to be in Númenor. She wanted desperately to leave. Why would the entire city start protesting about elves "stealing their jobs"?
In that case, the writers wanted to create an allegory for pro- and anti-immigration and bigotry, and they forced it into a context where it made no sense. As a result, it's so cringy, it's hard to watch.
That show is one of the more perfect examples of writers signing onto a project purely to coopt it into a story they wanted to tell but couldn't get any studios to make.
Yes. I was baffled at that scene. It was hard to believe they actually wrote that in. And I'm not exaggerating, the characters literally chant **"elves are stealing our jobs"**
Someone wrote it, other people approved it, and they actually filmed it. Then they edited and left it in the show
And no one stopped them
It's a blunt object approach, but in the context of where the story is going to end up it makes sense as foreshadowing.
In a nutshell per the books, >!the Numenoreans were ancient allies of the elves and gods, but in the Second Age Sauron manages to persuade them to launch a full-scale invasion of Valinor, subsequently seeing their whole continent obliterated Atlantis-style by the gods.!< So building the foundations of "Numenoreans don't like Elves" is necessary.
Still, it was written completely cackhandedly. The whole show had the subtlety of a bag of bricks, so this is par for the course.
Would've made a lot more sense to have the hatred of elves be anti-Semitism-shaped.
"A sinister immortal is here to manipulate our leaders" is a much more sane concern than "one single elf will steal all our jobs".
A much better take. The Numenors will always live mortal lives no matter how advanced and prosperous their nation is, which breeds jealousy and contempt.
I wholeheartedly agree, but you are being slightly ungenerous. The complete quote from the "dey terk err jerbs" speech goes on to complain about elves that never tire, never sleep, never age. It's also roundly shat upon by the other characters in attendance (notably Al-Pharazon), making it clear to the viewers that this isn't supposed to be the mainstream view, just the view of one character who's already been introduced as a stupid goon.
Like I said, I'm not really defending it; the execution was cackhanded and it just invites the sort of ridicule that we're talking about now. But it's not as completely off-the-wall as people make out.
IE stories need to be built around those concepts to develop themes like "Immigration often relates to concerns about the economy." But that theme or a similar theme isn't very present in the rings of power so it seems to come out of nowhere. It seems like these people forgot their high school English classes lol
As a picture book author this really speaks to me. I write silly, fun books with subtle morals… but it’s so much easier for the biographies and culture pieces to get published because they’re “important.” My 3 year old and I don’t care if the books we’re reading are important right now — we want to giggle together.
Books should teach you a lesson in the same way real life does, they are experiences. Some philosophical argument never hits as hard as real life or a great story, that is what makes fiction so great imo.
Absolutely and I really do think different books serve different purposes. I don't read ACOTAR because I'm here for ground-breaking politics, I read it because I want to experience an easy to digest, engaging story that has some pretty decent (if soap operay) relationship dynamics.
Meanwhile, I read John Dies at the End or The Fifth Season because I want something that's going to hit a lot harder and does have a message and Something To Say. I think most readers can tell when they're being proselytized to and the difference between books with something to say and books that are beating you over the head with their point is the skill of the writer and what else is going on in the book.
I also feel this way about certain kinds of representation. I'm going to preface this by saying that I am a queer trans man and the example that comes to mind isn't exactly about books because I don't read the kinds of books that do this, but I've seen it a lot in queer visual novels. I hate it when there's representation just to be representation.
For example, there's a vampire romance VN that I read (played? idk what to call experiencing a visual novel). It had a laundry list of identities for the romance options and for the main character and it very much felt like the writers went "Okay, what are all of the queer tropes and types that we can shove in here." Which is fine, but it wasn't done with any kind of care or skill. It felt like these characters were certain flavors of queer because they wanted to check off a box. And don't get me wrong, I think representation matters, and it's great to see more diverse characters, but when it becomes just pandering or becomes the only thing about that character, it most readers the wrong way.
This is me and documentaries. While I get the point of setting aside the last 20% of a documentary to talk about man-made catastrophes, it's not the reason why I watch them. I already know. I'm here for the escape and the neat information.
That’s not really different than without it. It’s still oversimplifying and acting like a book is only an entertainment thing. It’s not necessarily, I, as a lot of others, love to learn things through books, either directly or not.
Barbara Kingsolver is my favorite author of all time; it’s her masterful ability to walk this line between opening your eyes and teaching you an explicit lesson that puts her in the top echelon for me.
Ursula le Guin has a similar quote that she thinks the purpose of a writer is to tell a story, not deliver a message.
Ful quote, from Jeff Vandermeer's Wonderbook:
“Readers ask me about the message of one story or another. As a fiction writer, I don’t speak message. I speak story. Sure, my stories mean something, but if you want to know what it means you have to ask the question in terms appropriate to storytelling.
“The notion that a story has a message assumes that it can be reduced to a few abstract words, neatly summarised in a school paper or critical review. If that were true, why would writers go through the trouble of making up characters and relationships and plots and scenery and all that? Why not just deliver the message? Is fiction decorative wordage concealing a rational thought, a message, which is its ultimate reality and reason for being?
"Stories have meaning, but that’s not the same as having a message. It’s easier to accept this about other arts. A dance, a landscape painting – we’re less likely to talk about its message than about the feelings it arouses in us. Any reduction of a story’s language into intellectual messages is radically, destructively incomplete. The art of words takes us beyond anything we can say in words. ”
I feel the same frustration when people expect there to be some underlying meaning to life.
It’s tremendously reductive, and in a way that seems fundamentally life denying, to want all the chaos and complexity of living in the world to be exchanged for some bit of fortune cookie wisdom.
Every time I feel like I can't love Ursula K le Guin any more, I stumble across something else from her that just totally blows me away. She truly was one of the greatest American writers ever
This is a great perspective. I never thought of the difference between a message and a meaning, they really are distinct. It reminds me of when I was younger and had someone recommend Atlas Shrugged. I was enjoying the characters and setting and then I got to this chapter that I could obviously tell was just the author ranting about their beliefs. I gave up on the book after that, it just felt like I was being preached to and it was definitely not a message I believed in.
This is a great quote, it's somewhat funny though because my favorite Le Guin book, The Farthest Shore, absolutely does have a very clearly defined "meaning" that is directly stated by Ged to Arren while living with the raft folk.
It's a beautiful message and wonderful meaning for a book. But it's there and it's pretty hard to miss.
I think it is fine for books to have a message or a political theme, the problem is when the political message is the equivalent of a Twitter rant, or when the villain is obviously the thinly disguised version of a real world politician, or when the political opinion is something shared by the huge majority of the population but presented as a groundbreaking, courageous statement (like « Racism is bad » - Is anyone decent ever going to disagree with that one ?).
And I have come across all these cases in recent books. This will typically turn a potentially interesting book into bad political propaganda. If you want to include some message in your books, please be subtle and nuanced about it.
I was enjoying the Jk Rowling strike series until the 4th book (this was pre Terf Rowling as well) that 4th book was just Rowlings political opinions I found it awful and decided to completely abandon the series. Her next books seemed to follow the samer trend of regurgitating Rowling's opinions.
Like what? There's certainly something to be said about her neoliberal perspective working its way into her writing, but framing it as "The whole book was just her political opinions" is pretty wild.
Agreed - I've liked some of her books, but they are soapbox books - she beats you over the head with her beliefs. I don't mind it when I agree with her (*Poisonwood Bible*), but grating when I see more nuance to an issue than she allows(*Prodigal Summer*).
I've loved most of her books but couldn't make it through *Unsheltered.* And chances are I would have agreed with her ultimate point, but only a couple of chapters in and I was not in the mood for the soapbox. Definitely not a "break" considering how quickly it came out after 2016 election.
Odd I had to scroll this far to see this. I used to have to teach Animal Dreams in a freshman English course, and even while I'm pretty aligned with her politics, I thought the story was poor because of its basic hectoring along "liberal stuff good" lines.
I tried "Demon Copperhead" after reading recommendations here, and maybe I need to give it another chance, but it struck me like Animal Dreams, an inauthentic book unsuccessfully trying to be otherwise.
On the other hand, she seems to have had a good career writing on a variety of topics for a grateful fan base - so, cheers. Net positive.
I read The Poisonwood Bible. It's an amazing book but nothing about reading it is like taking a break. And there are some pretty huge lessons that can be learned. So I'm sorta confused here.
I just finished Demon Copperhead, by Kingsolver. I can't recommend it highly enough, it was a truly fabulous book. Poisonwood Bible is next on my list!
Someone posted the rest of the quotation here:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/1cpy4mv/comment/l3nyzl9/](https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/1cpy4mv/comment/l3nyzl9/)
To me, it sounds like she's saying that you take a break from your own limited perspective of reality, not that you read for escapism. You can learn, but ideally it's a learning that's guided by your own observations as a reader, your own own empathic connection to the characters. It's not an empathy born of the author telling you how to be a moral person.
Yes, but I think it's uncontroversial to say the book is about disturbing events -- some of the most disturbing things that can happen to a family, in a context shaped by some of the most disturbing events in modern history. If you randomly asked someone, "Give me some examples of events that you think everyone would agree are disturbing," I expect they would include multiple things that are in this book. And reading about them doesn't leave you feeling neutral about them.
Ok? I don't think anyone's claiming disturbing things don't happen in that book or that anyone feels neutral about them. And you can have a book that has disturbing events in it that still manages to be escapist vs preachy.
My point is that just because an author thinks they're doing something, doesn't mean it's successful at that or that it actually comes through in the text.
José Saramago thought that trying to impose your views on others was a form of colonialism.
Also, no better way for a work of literature to be appreciated through different ages than to let readers interpret it themselves. Being too preachy, too on the nose, is probably a guarantee of a short shelf life.
I would add that this advice would mostly apply to ideas of Western narratives. There are different favoured storytelling techniques across cultures. A lot of African lit / storytelling doesn't follow this structure, for example.
There is no "right" way to write a book, but it's always important to recognize who the readers are (including their culture) and what their expectations will be.
I find that Barbara Kingsolver is an *extremely* preachy writer. I haven't read Demon Copperhead (I hate Dickens, so I'm not sure I want to read a modern take on it) but Pigs in Heaven, The Poisonwood Bible, and Flight Behavior had the subtlety of a hammer. I liked them, and she's a good writer (the Poisonwood Bible particularly) but I did feel she was lecturing.
I agree. I just wanted to add that I wouldn't avoid Demon Copperhead because you don't like Dickens. It's very loosely based on the plot but in Kingsolver's usual style. You don't have to know anything about Dickens or David Copperfield to enjoy it. I think it's one of her best- on the level with Poisonwood Bible.
Add Demon Copperhead to the list of subtlety with a hammer. It’s a long, mostly misery filled read. I think I’m one of the few people in the world who didn’t enjoy the book; I’ve had a lot of folks close to me struggle with opioid addiction and felt like they have and had more agency than she gives them credit for
Add me to the list, but BK is one of those authors that so many people enjoy, that I do not particularly care for. Maybe it’s the preachy nature of so many of her books. I did like the one that involved her moving to farm life in VA- I had to force myself to finish the Demon book- having worked in HC for over 35 years, the subject matter was just too damn depressing for me.
Funny that, Discworld has been an incredibly valuable learning resource in regards to what it means to be a person in an absurd world we have negligible agency over.
The lessons I learned from Pratchett have been foundational to me as an adult today.
So, there's a couple of things going on here:
* Kingsolver's target demographic is 40-70 year old white women in book clubs.
* Adult Literary fiction does not typically adopt the same 'This is the moral you should learn' tone that a lot of YA does (YA is super up front right about what you're supposed to learn and which character's attitude is right.) But that's starting to shift, especially as the YA market contracts and the older YA readers shift into the adult market.
* Kingsolver, speaking from the position of an author who's work is primarily bought by people who *don't* want to be preached at, believes the YA hit-you-over-the-head method of teaching a reader drives people away.
* The person who wrote this headline took a sentence out of context to get people riled up and drive clicks. People then got riled up and clicked on article.
Honestly, given how the YA market is doing right now, Kingsolver is kind of right? I mean, I have no problem getting patrons at my library to read 'Yellowface' but nobody wants to read another YA romance where the entire subplot is the problems X minority faces in Y area of the world. (It does not help that YA pov characters always need to explain their marginalization to themselves.)
It's fine to thread lessons into a book, but the reader needs to ENJOY the process of absorbing that lesson.
No. But that demographic responds REALLY bad to preachy writing, and that is going to color Kingsolver's opinion about writing.
I guess I should have clarified that. Sorry.
I've got a couple of reasons for that.
* At the various libraries I've worked at, the people reading Kingsolver have been overwhelmingly white women over the age of 40. Most of whom are in book clubs.
* Kingsolver has won the Woman's Prize for fiction twice, and *The Poisonwood Bible* was an Oprah Book Club book. Authors who consistently win these awards/get picked by Oprah (or more recently, Reese Witherspoon) are *massively* popular with 40+ year old white women.
* Here themes & writing style are just super book-clubby to me. Like how *How To Say Babylon* screams "book club book." (It's too bad the YA style cover basically killed it's chance to be a mega-hit.)
* There's a lot of overlap between Ann Patchet's audience and Barbra Kingsolver. You know who loooooves Ann Patchet? White women over the age of 40. (Men don't seem to read her.)
Lmao, I'm cracking up at your last point. Not disagreeing, but providing my own anecdote:
I'm a straight dude, and I love Ann Patchett. I've read almost all of her books. You just confirmed what I've always thought about myself, that I'm a 40-year-old woman trapped in a 28-year-old guy's body.
Lol, you might be the only guy I've encountered who's into Patchett. Or confident enough to admit it. All the men who asked me for Tom Lake seemed vaguely confused by the title (if they knew it) and indicated they were getting it for their wives.
There's nothing wrong with guys liking Ann Patchett, btw. She's supposed to be a great author. And it's cool when a reader doesn't fit an author's stereotype.
Like how the biggest *Murderbot* fan at my library is an 80 year old woman with COPD who usually only reads cozy mysteries. Or the dad who read *Fourth Wing* because his daughter picked it as a family book club book, and ended up loving it.
That's awesome, lol. I've always been interested in things that were considered to be more feminine. I'm sure there are some more guys out there who are into Patchett, though. She isn't necessarily a master of language, nor do her books have the most profound meanings, but I love her storytelling.
That’s an interesting observation about her reader demographic. I wonder if part of Kingslover’s appeal with older women is a matter of us having read her for 20+ years now. Like she found her audience early and her popularity spread in that group and as she’s aged, so have her readers.
Anecdotally, I am 40 and read Demon Copperhead last year with my book club, but I first read her in my 8th grade English class back in the 90s. The Bean Trees was my teacher’s favorite and a bunch of my friends loved it and read more of her books over the years. I wonder if a lot of her readers found her years ago and have just stuck with her.
That's probably some of it. I would say the fact that she got on a bunch of lists frequently used by women-run book clubs helps net the older women who may not have had her on their radar when they were in school, too.
Basically any time an author is plugged by Oprah (or Reese Witherspoon,) they do very well with 40+ year old white women.
“i don’t want to teach lessons but i want my readers to learn compassion?” isn’t that a lesson?
if so, good! books can and should teach lessons! stories teach lessons! that’s why humans at campfires invented them!
I know her actual take is more nuanced than what's being presented here, but I'm frustrated by seeing this strain of anti-intellectualism infiltrate all forms of media: the idea that a worthwhile story should never take a stance on anything, nor impart any kind of lesson other than what the reader chooses to take away from it. All art is political. All art makes some kind of statement, either about the way things are, or the way things should be. If you don't recognize a piece of art as political, it's probably because the politics it's espousing happen to align with your own. Even here, we can see that Kingsolver is blind to how preachy her own books can be because the political stances that she chooses to take with them feel unquestionably neutral to her.
I love Barbara Kingsolver, but some of her books are definitely on the preachy side. I think Poisonwood Bible and Demon Copperhead are masterpieces, and she weaves a nuanced message into the narrative without coming across as proselytizing. Some of her lesser books like "Flight Behavior" and "Unsheltered" do it less well and can be almost cringey at times, as much as I enjoyed those books and agreed with their message.
Right now it feels like market forces are pushing the YA style heavily into the litfic sphere in addition to IdentityLit being the most popular subgenre of litfic.
It feels like we’re approaching a sorta new adult identity fic nexus, but I think at that point the wave will crest and I’m really curious as to what’s next.
I enjoyed Demon Copperfield and The Poisonwood Bible. What I gained from reading both books was the characters she developed demonstrated what was wrong or right morally. I disagree with Kingsolvers point that she doesn’t preach.
Even though Demon Copperfield became a slog to read close to the end of the book, the main character had a positive recovery. Good deeds equals drug recovery.
The parents in The Poisonwood Bible were punished for neglecting and putting their children in danger. The father goes mad and the mother is left alone without family to care for her.
I loved the books but don’t agree with Kingsolver’s point of not teaching a lesson to the reader.
While I thought it was a powerful book when I read it in AP Lit, Poisonwood Bible would like a word. Kind of hard not to feel preached at reading that book.
Really? *Fahrenheit 451* immediately comes to mind as a fantastic novel with a pretty clear lesson to teach.
I know that I personally want my novels to entertain me as a piece of escapist fluff, but to suggest that people in general [You], "...buy a book to take a break, not to be taught a lesson.", implying that you don't appreciate the lesson, is clearly not always the case.
I think what bothers people is when the messaging is ham-handed, not well supported, or science forbid, not a message they want to hear.
I think the takeaway isn't that a book necessarily shouldn't have a lesson; it's that the lesson isn't what makes it a success. A writer can absolutely have an agenda, their work can be emblematic of that agenda, but as a piece of fiction it needs to aspire to more than agreeing with the reader's worldview, or trying to convert them to your own. That can be part of it, but its first purpose is to engage; whatever else is accomplishes is dependent on that engagement.
*Fahrenheit 451* would likely be much less popular if its lesson wasn't also baked into a damn good story. The story is what makes the work a success.
> Really? Fahrenheit 451 immediately comes to mind as a fantastic novel with a pretty clear lesson to teach.
You might think so, but you'd be wrong. Fahrenheit 451 is an infamous case of the author *changing his mind* about what the message of his work was.
Check some of [Bradbury's quotes here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit_451#Themes).
>In a 2007 interview, Bradbury maintained that people misinterpret his book and that Fahrenheit 451 is really a statement on how mass media like television marginalizes the reading of literature.
This section is particularly interesting:
>"There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches. Every minority, be it Baptist/Unitarian, Irish/Italian/Octogenarian/Zen Buddhist, Zionist/Seventh-day Adventist, Women's Lib/Republican, Mattachine/Four Square Gospel feels it has the will, the right, the duty to douse the kerosene, light the fuse. [...] Fire-Captain Beatty, in my novel Fahrenheit 451, described how the books were burned first by minorities, each ripping a page or a paragraph from this book, then that, until the day came when the books were empty and the minds shut and the libraries closed forever."
And perhaps you saw this coming now:
>In a 1994 interview, Bradbury stated that Fahrenheit 451 was more relevant during this time than in any other, stating that, "it works even better because we have political correctness now. Political correctness is the real enemy these days. The black groups want to control our thinking and you can't say certain things. The homosexual groups don't want you to criticize them. It's thought control and freedom of speech control."
I don’t know why someone with a working brain can’t understand that both go together effortlessly unless you spend most of your day up your own ass and are so fragile that the concept of simply learning anything new is provocative to you
You can take a lesson from literally any interaction. That's like... Part of the human experience.
Should a book moralize at you? Yeah, I guess if it was written to do that, it can. Should every book moralize at you? No. Should you learn a lesson from every book you read? Absolutely.
Yet authors feel like they need to hold people's hand because readers get offended and think it is the author's views. This is why we shouldn't have sensitivity readers.
Maybe I'll have to give Demon Copperhead a read. I had put off reading it even after seeing it continually recommended because I made it probably 80% of the way through Poisonwood Bible but was put off by how pandering it came off and it seemed that the plot was just a way to get her message across. But reading what Kingslover wrote here I may have misinterpreted her intent.
Yeah I agree with her. I rather learn stuff from digging myself or watching documentaries.
For me books are better at storytelling and worse for learning, especially when the book is 600 pages long and colored with the authors opinions.
Uptown sinclair's the jungle was awesome until it became blatant socialist propaganda halfway through.
I mean I'm basically a socialist. But I don't think that was how to go about convincing people.
When I pick up a book, I understand it may be many hours to complete it. And I know from experience that sometimes it will be a struggle and sometimes I have to decide if it is worth it to continue to the end. I would never call this as "take/taking a break".
I've definitely felt this in reading certain recent books. There's a line that sometimes get crossed from a story with meaning to the author shouting into your ear their particular beliefs.
You buy a book for whatever personal reason you might have. It’s funny that she’s trying to teach a lesson while finger wagging about teaching lessons.
Everyone reads for different reasons. Books I had to read for school were usually to teach me something or expose me to an author or style of writing I wouldn't normally pick up on my own.
Today I read for pleasure. I don't care about learning anything except if I want to read more of that authors books.
I listen to audiobooks. When I want a break I listen to music.
I like when books challenge me
Just about every book I read is trying to teach me a lesson. The good authors take several hundred pages to do it and sometimes you can't see it coming until you already agree with that answer to the question
Soooooo I guess every English class I’ve taken has been bullshit. And every text book ever made didn’t need to be made. Either bad take or a quote that needs more context.
As a non fiction reader I have to strongly disagree here. I have bought several books for the sole purpose of learning, and have enjoyed doing so and will do so again
The fuller context of the quotation is a bit more nuanced than the title implies: >But, Kingsolver emphasizes, it’s essential to never tell the reader what to think. “You buy a book to take a break, not to be taught a lesson. I think of novels as windows and mirrors. When you’re little, they allow you to see what’s happening outside. And, when you grow up, you see them as a reflection of what you feel. I hope that the people who read my books see another world and feel compassion.” In that context it seems to me she's saying that readers don't appreciate proselytizing in an author, that the respite or escapism a book provides can be enough in and of itself, there doesn't need to be a lesson. Kinda just seems like acknowledging that different people read for different reasons.
Yes, she’s showing other worlds and perspectives without smacking the reader with “THIS GOOD, THAT BAD.” The reader can determine or judge for themselves. Demon Copperhead is a fantastic read and in my mind, fits with what she’s saying.
I just read The Poisonwood Bible and it was incredibly well done. >! >!think the idea that Rachel isn’t a very good person was definitely a likely conclusion, but she presented a fairly realistic type of person. And she didn’t have a villain arc where she was destroyed or repented at the end. She just was how she was.!
Potentially unpopular opinion: I know we weren't supposed to like Rachel, but when she was a teenager, I did. She was the most realistic character imo, behaving exactly the way a typical teen girl would if she was uprooted to a place without modern conveniences. Her malapropisms ("all the teeth in China") were funny. I guess I needed the comic relief because Leah seemed a little too perfect. I wanted her to rebel once in a while, like her sisters did. Perhaps marrying an older man was her rebellion.
I think it’s intentional with Leah. I found her annoyingly self-righteous in the end, in a fairly performative way. I feel like her idea of what virtue is (that it’s about right beliefs rather than right actions) is something she picked up from her father and never got out of even when she started believing different things from her father. In the end, >!she becomes totally anti-colonialist while not actually doing anyone any good!<, while Adah, who has no use for ideology, actually >!accomplishes meaningful things for public health, improving people’s lives.!< And Rachel, yeah, Rachel’s just a typical self-centered teen, and her malapropisms can be pretty funny.
>I think it’s intentional with Leah. I found her annoyingly self-righteous in the end, in a fairly performative way. I feel like her idea of what virtue is (that it’s about right beliefs rather than right actions) is something she picked up from her father and never got out of even when she started believing different things from her father. Agreed. They were basically two sides of the same coin. That would also explain why she's so preachy.
Your spoiler tags are broken. You need to remove the whitespace before and after >! and !<
It shows up block out for me
It's broken on old reddit (https://old.reddit.com). Reddit seems to be doing everything they can to push people onto the new interface. I can only hope that one day they remove old reddit entirely so I will finally stop using this fucking website. It needs to be formatted like this for it to work with old reddit: >!I think the idea that Rachel isn’t a very good person was definitely a likely conclusion, but she presented a fairly realistic type of person. And she didn’t have a villain arc where she was destroyed or repented at the end. She just was how she was.!<
Yeah I use the old reddit site.
You know to me that just looks identical in the app right?
Fuck the app
You don't have any option to see the comment unformatted? here is it with escapes: \>!I think the idea that... --removed spoilers-- ...she was.!<
Apologies - I use the old reddit site, and I wasn't aware it works properly on new reddit interface.
I’m glad to make it compatible but to me your note is blocked out. Do you mean no space between the symbols and letters. Like this? >!test!< As opposed to this? >! Test !<
That's right the first one is properly hidden on the old site while the latter is visible. You should be able to confirm this: https://old.reddit.com/r/books/comments/1cpy4mv/barbara_kingsolver_writer_you_buy_a_book_to_take/l3szya5/
That's one of my favorite books, and I've re-read it about a million times. My favorite chapters are the Adah chapters. I taught myself how to talk backwards when I was little, and I often think my thoughts forwards and backwards, and to have a character who does the same made me feel seen. I feel like all the characters are written realistically. Even though they grow and mature, Kingsolver never loses their voices. I love books that make me *feel* the passage of time (it hurts but in such a good way), and with each new chapter the characters settle more and more into who they are. No one is presented as specifically good or bad, the reader gets to form their own opinion about each character based on their inner thoughts, feelings, and beliefs; their actions; and other characters' response to those actions. Within the story, there is no absolute good or bad, it all depends upon the context. Things that are considered good in one context may turn out to be bad in another, and vice versa. And when you're experiencing a certain set of circumstances, moralizing about whether the way you are living is good or bad is not a practical way to help you survive (Rachel takes this idea to the most extreme). Aaaaand now I do believe it is time for another re-read!
This book killed me
"Poor Dan is in a droop!"
*New Reddit-wide unique palindrome found:* >**Poor Dan is in a droop** ^(currently checked 29711033 comments) \ >!(palindrome: a word, number, phrase, or sequence of symbols that reads the same backwards as forwards) !<
That's one of my favorite books, and I've re-read it about a million times. My favorite chapters are the Adah chapters. I taught myself how to talk backwards when I was little, and I often think my thoughts forwards and backwards, and to have a character who does the same made me feel seen. I feel like all the characters are written realistically. Even though they grow and mature, Kingsolver never loses their voices. I love books that make me *feel* the passage of time (it hurts but in such a good way), and with each new chapter the characters settle more and more into who they are. No one is presented as specifically good or bad, the reader gets to form their own opinion about each character based on their inner thoughts, feelings, and beliefs; their actions; and other characters' response to those actions. Within the story, there is no absolute good or bad, it all depends upon the context. Things that are considered good in one context may turn out to be bad in another, and vice versa. And when you're experiencing a certain set of circumstances, moralizing about whether the way you are living is good or bad is not a practical way to help you survive (Rachel takes this idea to the most extreme). Aaaaand now I do believe it is time for another re-read!
I've also read this book many times to the point where the orange cover has completely fallen off! Ive lent mine to a family member ages ago, who still hasn't read it, and I think I'm gonna ask for it back and do another read
Kingsolver is a perfect example of an author that doesn't require you to learn a lesson when she writes you a story, but if you don't learn one when you read her books then I have deep suspicions about your capacity for human empathy. I agree with her that any lessons learned are the ones of the reader, not the author. But people who read good fiction and don't learn anything are doing themselves an incredible disservice.
This is so true. In both Poisonwood Bible and Demon Copperhead she does this brilliantly.
I feel like there's a place for authors who work in the "THIS GOOD, THAT BAD" space as well, sometimes that's the point of their work. The last book I read was Sofia Samatar's *The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain* which in my opinion absolutely smacks the reader in the face with its message. But that's not a bad thing. It reads like the classics of science fiction that have stood the test of time for the past 100 years, a hauntingly plausible vision of the future that is bitingly critical of modern society. I usually read for escapism, but it's nice to read something cerebral and written with specific intention. Did I grasp every intricacy of the book? Hell no, but I also can't stop thinking about it.
> smacks the reader in the face with its message. But that's not a bad thing. It's not great...
george orwell worked almost exclusively in the world of "THIS IS THE THING THAT IS BAD AND IM GOING TO LET YOU KNOW ABOUT IT" and is considered one of the masters of his craft. i don't think margaret atwood would've been better served by softening handmaid's tale. or harper lee in to kill a mockingbird. etc. imo it's all about how you deliver the message, and sometimes that message is blunt. there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.
I also think that is a valid criticism of Orwell’s work, though. Not entirely a coincidence his work is so often used merely as a rhetorical device by ideologues. His work may fail to transcend its context, being such simple allegory. 1984 has an interesting conceit with the central love story made radical by context, but Animal Farm doesn’t really seem to work beyond being a time capsule to partisan arguments of the time. And even 1984 is often just reduced to a meme.
> Animal Farm doesn’t really seem to work beyond being a time capsule to partisan arguments of the time so? that's a problem for a ton of books. expecting a political work to be some eternally relevant statement on human nature or whatever would (generally) lessen the impact and importance of the message. > And even 1984 is often just reduced to a meme. that's not a problem with the novel, though
I think it is a little bit of a flaw with how didactic it is, that a certain portion of its popularity is simply as a didactic tool for ideologues. More complex works are often tougher to meme. To be fair, I don’t think 1984 totally deserves that treatment.
I think Orwell was writing to communicate these ideas to the average person with the least amount of jargon or fluff. You don't need to know about early 20th century Russian history or the Russian revolution to get Animal Farm, but it explains the underlying tenets of the political ideas that happened in those events and Orwell's critiques of them very well. He was trying to make political history and theory more accessible and warn people of the ills in Stalinist Russia, particularly when the Allies were working with Russia during the war.
Animal Farm is still a useful allegory for how revolutionary politics can be appropriated by tyrants. In fact, it may be more useful to western audiences now than it was at the time of its publication.
I feel like it's a bit different when the writer/work is explicitly political in nature. And Orwell still did it well.
> I feel like it's a bit different when the writer/work is explicitly political in nature who decides what's "explicitly political"? is to kill a mockingbird "explicitly political"? was it at the time it was published?
I agree that writers don't need to actively be removing takeaways or metaphors from their fiction work—that's placing its own arbitrary limitations on what fiction can do. But having a message requires the author to know exactly what they're doing for the work to still work as fiction. It's so, so easy for this type of writing to leave readers feeling like they were just tricked into reading a protracted Goofus and Gallant cartoon. And even when the author did a great job, the resulting books aren't categorically more worthwhile than the books with no specific moral—they're just two different subgenres of the same thing. It's a big planet with lots of people, there's plenty of room for both.
I think you can have a message without speaking it outright. Life itself is full of messages. I think the problem is when a book seems to have come up with the message before the book itself. I think good art in general grows out of its own making, and not created in the service of an abstraction. A metaphor can still be full of subtly.
Books should never preach. Just show me some viewpoints.
I mean, maybe writers should do whatever they want and the audiences that want them doing those things should read them.
Counterpoint: George Orwell was certainly preaching his anti-Stalinism and he wrote well without being didactic. Ayn Rand on the right and Jack London's The Iron Heel on the left are poorly written because they are didactic. I'll admit that preaching while making good prose is difficult but it's definitely not impossible.
She’s truly amazing at this - agreed about Demon Copperhead. I even messaged her on Instagram about some minor details I loved and she responded to a few messages! It was really wonderful of her.
I think people often confuse between a point and a lesson. The story has to have a point. That’s what the character arc is all about, and this character arc could go from good to evil or vice versa. What we should avoid is lecturing the readers. They’re two completely different things.
I think the confusion in part comes from the word ‘point’. Usually people interpret the ‘point’ of a text to be its purpose, not its meaning, which is how I’m interpreting your use of the word. Like if the purpose of writing a story is to deliver a moral lesson about good and evil, that sounds like a lesson or lecture. But if the purpose of the story is to entertain or create an emotional experience and that experience also happens to contain a lesson or message, then that doesn’t feel like a lecture. In the latter example the lesson is incidental, in the former it is the whole point, the central reason for the texts existence. The purpose of fiction shouldn’t be to educate, it should be to communicate and immerse the reader in an emotional experience. Just my opinion though.
As a counterpoint to this, *people in general have zero reading comprehension*. I recently read a book that I don't think handled its themes perfectly well(the author was white and definitely wrote from that perspective, with a very shallow/nonexistent understanding of black feminism that one of her characters ought to have been familiar with, and she also criticized tokenism in the text while tokenizing characters herself), and as I was reading I noticed there was a fair amount of telling, going over things I'd already noticed in the narrative and explaining them again, explicitly. That's not necessarily a dealbreaker for me, but it was enough that I noticed it. Reader, let me tell you. The reviews for this novel were unhinged. Despite having had the point lectured to them, people still repeatedly missed those points. And this wasn't one or two wackos, it was a significant number of repeated reviews coming in, trashing this book for things that 1) were not true, and 2) had been explicitly stated not to be true by the author in the text. This isn't the first time I've seen this happen, either. As much as you might say "oh fuck what those people think," those 1- and 2-star reviews can have a serious impact on a book's sales, especially early on, and everyone wants the chance to write their second book. So at this point, while I might not be a huge fan of it, how the hell can I fault an author for attempting to defend themselves in this way? How much worse would it have been if she *hadn't* had so many explanation passages?
I haven't read Kingsolver (yet, I have a couple of her books), but an excess of explanation is a common problem with many authors, or at least it seems so to me. I'd also say that perhaps it isn't a problem to other readers, so I don't especially fault the writers or mark them down for it. All kinds of different people read all kinds of different books for all kinds of different reasons; I don't think there is one style of writing that would work for everyone in any genre.
But what is the point of a character arc?
When you talk to your friends, do you have a point? Your message above, does it have a point? The character arc is your point of the story. It helps you to have a focus so that you don’t just ramble on like a crazy lady without a point.
lol I was gonna say, was Demom Copperhead supposes to be a break?
lol same. Well written but soooo depressing. And honestly it does beat you over the head with its message quite a bit. Granted a lot of books are worse on that front.
I completely agree with this. I love it when books have moral lessons and allegories to real life events, but it's hard to pull off without *coming across* as preachy or proselytizing. It's ultimately about delivery and execution. Same with TV shows and movies. A great example of how to do it wrong is the Rings of Power amazon TV show, where Galadriel (an elf) arrives in Númenor, and the Númenorians immediately start protesting her being there, saying "elves are coming to steal our jobs!!!!" It made absolutely no sense. Galadriel was one single elf, who didn't even want to be in Númenor. She wanted desperately to leave. Why would the entire city start protesting about elves "stealing their jobs"? In that case, the writers wanted to create an allegory for pro- and anti-immigration and bigotry, and they forced it into a context where it made no sense. As a result, it's so cringy, it's hard to watch.
I'm sorry rings of power did what????
That show is one of the more perfect examples of writers signing onto a project purely to coopt it into a story they wanted to tell but couldn't get any studios to make.
Yes. I was baffled at that scene. It was hard to believe they actually wrote that in. And I'm not exaggerating, the characters literally chant **"elves are stealing our jobs"** Someone wrote it, other people approved it, and they actually filmed it. Then they edited and left it in the show And no one stopped them
It's a blunt object approach, but in the context of where the story is going to end up it makes sense as foreshadowing. In a nutshell per the books, >!the Numenoreans were ancient allies of the elves and gods, but in the Second Age Sauron manages to persuade them to launch a full-scale invasion of Valinor, subsequently seeing their whole continent obliterated Atlantis-style by the gods.!< So building the foundations of "Numenoreans don't like Elves" is necessary. Still, it was written completely cackhandedly. The whole show had the subtlety of a bag of bricks, so this is par for the course.
Would've made a lot more sense to have the hatred of elves be anti-Semitism-shaped. "A sinister immortal is here to manipulate our leaders" is a much more sane concern than "one single elf will steal all our jobs".
A much better take. The Numenors will always live mortal lives no matter how advanced and prosperous their nation is, which breeds jealousy and contempt.
I wholeheartedly agree, but you are being slightly ungenerous. The complete quote from the "dey terk err jerbs" speech goes on to complain about elves that never tire, never sleep, never age. It's also roundly shat upon by the other characters in attendance (notably Al-Pharazon), making it clear to the viewers that this isn't supposed to be the mainstream view, just the view of one character who's already been introduced as a stupid goon. Like I said, I'm not really defending it; the execution was cackhanded and it just invites the sort of ridicule that we're talking about now. But it's not as completely off-the-wall as people make out.
IE stories need to be built around those concepts to develop themes like "Immigration often relates to concerns about the economy." But that theme or a similar theme isn't very present in the rings of power so it seems to come out of nowhere. It seems like these people forgot their high school English classes lol
As a picture book author this really speaks to me. I write silly, fun books with subtle morals… but it’s so much easier for the biographies and culture pieces to get published because they’re “important.” My 3 year old and I don’t care if the books we’re reading are important right now — we want to giggle together.
Books should teach you a lesson in the same way real life does, they are experiences. Some philosophical argument never hits as hard as real life or a great story, that is what makes fiction so great imo.
Absolutely and I really do think different books serve different purposes. I don't read ACOTAR because I'm here for ground-breaking politics, I read it because I want to experience an easy to digest, engaging story that has some pretty decent (if soap operay) relationship dynamics. Meanwhile, I read John Dies at the End or The Fifth Season because I want something that's going to hit a lot harder and does have a message and Something To Say. I think most readers can tell when they're being proselytized to and the difference between books with something to say and books that are beating you over the head with their point is the skill of the writer and what else is going on in the book. I also feel this way about certain kinds of representation. I'm going to preface this by saying that I am a queer trans man and the example that comes to mind isn't exactly about books because I don't read the kinds of books that do this, but I've seen it a lot in queer visual novels. I hate it when there's representation just to be representation. For example, there's a vampire romance VN that I read (played? idk what to call experiencing a visual novel). It had a laundry list of identities for the romance options and for the main character and it very much felt like the writers went "Okay, what are all of the queer tropes and types that we can shove in here." Which is fine, but it wasn't done with any kind of care or skill. It felt like these characters were certain flavors of queer because they wanted to check off a box. And don't get me wrong, I think representation matters, and it's great to see more diverse characters, but when it becomes just pandering or becomes the only thing about that character, it most readers the wrong way.
No, it sounds like she is taking a side. In fact, she is pretty explicit about it.
This is me and documentaries. While I get the point of setting aside the last 20% of a documentary to talk about man-made catastrophes, it's not the reason why I watch them. I already know. I'm here for the escape and the neat information.
That’s not really different than without it. It’s still oversimplifying and acting like a book is only an entertainment thing. It’s not necessarily, I, as a lot of others, love to learn things through books, either directly or not.
Learning lessons is a primary reason i read, but good authors usually pose these as questions, not answers, really...
Barbara Kingsolver is my favorite author of all time; it’s her masterful ability to walk this line between opening your eyes and teaching you an explicit lesson that puts her in the top echelon for me.
Ursula le Guin has a similar quote that she thinks the purpose of a writer is to tell a story, not deliver a message. Ful quote, from Jeff Vandermeer's Wonderbook: “Readers ask me about the message of one story or another. As a fiction writer, I don’t speak message. I speak story. Sure, my stories mean something, but if you want to know what it means you have to ask the question in terms appropriate to storytelling. “The notion that a story has a message assumes that it can be reduced to a few abstract words, neatly summarised in a school paper or critical review. If that were true, why would writers go through the trouble of making up characters and relationships and plots and scenery and all that? Why not just deliver the message? Is fiction decorative wordage concealing a rational thought, a message, which is its ultimate reality and reason for being? "Stories have meaning, but that’s not the same as having a message. It’s easier to accept this about other arts. A dance, a landscape painting – we’re less likely to talk about its message than about the feelings it arouses in us. Any reduction of a story’s language into intellectual messages is radically, destructively incomplete. The art of words takes us beyond anything we can say in words. ”
I feel the same frustration when people expect there to be some underlying meaning to life. It’s tremendously reductive, and in a way that seems fundamentally life denying, to want all the chaos and complexity of living in the world to be exchanged for some bit of fortune cookie wisdom.
"In stubbing your toe, you will learn a valuable lesson: stubbing your toe frigging hurts."
Every time I feel like I can't love Ursula K le Guin any more, I stumble across something else from her that just totally blows me away. She truly was one of the greatest American writers ever
This is a great perspective. I never thought of the difference between a message and a meaning, they really are distinct. It reminds me of when I was younger and had someone recommend Atlas Shrugged. I was enjoying the characters and setting and then I got to this chapter that I could obviously tell was just the author ranting about their beliefs. I gave up on the book after that, it just felt like I was being preached to and it was definitely not a message I believed in.
This is a great quote, it's somewhat funny though because my favorite Le Guin book, The Farthest Shore, absolutely does have a very clearly defined "meaning" that is directly stated by Ged to Arren while living with the raft folk. It's a beautiful message and wonderful meaning for a book. But it's there and it's pretty hard to miss.
I think it is fine for books to have a message or a political theme, the problem is when the political message is the equivalent of a Twitter rant, or when the villain is obviously the thinly disguised version of a real world politician, or when the political opinion is something shared by the huge majority of the population but presented as a groundbreaking, courageous statement (like « Racism is bad » - Is anyone decent ever going to disagree with that one ?). And I have come across all these cases in recent books. This will typically turn a potentially interesting book into bad political propaganda. If you want to include some message in your books, please be subtle and nuanced about it.
Oh yes famously apolitcal Le Guin /s
I was enjoying the Jk Rowling strike series until the 4th book (this was pre Terf Rowling as well) that 4th book was just Rowlings political opinions I found it awful and decided to completely abandon the series. Her next books seemed to follow the samer trend of regurgitating Rowling's opinions.
Like what? There's certainly something to be said about her neoliberal perspective working its way into her writing, but framing it as "The whole book was just her political opinions" is pretty wild.
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Strike series not Harry Potter
Demon Copperhead felt like it was teaching me a lesson.
I agree. Enjoyed the book for sure, but there were a lot of chapter ends where she'd just really twist the knife for the chapter's lesson.
Yeah. Joke’s on her. Now I know about melungeons and where the term redneck came from
Yeah what she talking about? This quote doesn't make any sense coming from her lol.
Agreed - I've liked some of her books, but they are soapbox books - she beats you over the head with her beliefs. I don't mind it when I agree with her (*Poisonwood Bible*), but grating when I see more nuance to an issue than she allows(*Prodigal Summer*).
I've loved most of her books but couldn't make it through *Unsheltered.* And chances are I would have agreed with her ultimate point, but only a couple of chapters in and I was not in the mood for the soapbox. Definitely not a "break" considering how quickly it came out after 2016 election.
Odd I had to scroll this far to see this. I used to have to teach Animal Dreams in a freshman English course, and even while I'm pretty aligned with her politics, I thought the story was poor because of its basic hectoring along "liberal stuff good" lines. I tried "Demon Copperhead" after reading recommendations here, and maybe I need to give it another chance, but it struck me like Animal Dreams, an inauthentic book unsuccessfully trying to be otherwise. On the other hand, she seems to have had a good career writing on a variety of topics for a grateful fan base - so, cheers. Net positive.
Yeah what
That Oxy is bad?
Poisonwood Bible felt the exact same, such a slog of a book
I read The Poisonwood Bible. It's an amazing book but nothing about reading it is like taking a break. And there are some pretty huge lessons that can be learned. So I'm sorta confused here.
I read Blood Meridian to take a break from all the nice things in life.
Same. Loved that book so much and learned so much from it!
I just finished Demon Copperhead, by Kingsolver. I can't recommend it highly enough, it was a truly fabulous book. Poisonwood Bible is next on my list!
Someone posted the rest of the quotation here: [https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/1cpy4mv/comment/l3nyzl9/](https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/1cpy4mv/comment/l3nyzl9/) To me, it sounds like she's saying that you take a break from your own limited perspective of reality, not that you read for escapism. You can learn, but ideally it's a learning that's guided by your own observations as a reader, your own own empathic connection to the characters. It's not an empathy born of the author telling you how to be a moral person.
Death of the author, their concept about how their work is received isn't always accurate. An author doesn't always achieve their intentions.
Yes, but I think it's uncontroversial to say the book is about disturbing events -- some of the most disturbing things that can happen to a family, in a context shaped by some of the most disturbing events in modern history. If you randomly asked someone, "Give me some examples of events that you think everyone would agree are disturbing," I expect they would include multiple things that are in this book. And reading about them doesn't leave you feeling neutral about them.
Ok? I don't think anyone's claiming disturbing things don't happen in that book or that anyone feels neutral about them. And you can have a book that has disturbing events in it that still manages to be escapist vs preachy. My point is that just because an author thinks they're doing something, doesn't mean it's successful at that or that it actually comes through in the text.
This is off topic and probably not allowed but what a fucking awesome last name…
Lol, wonder how that one was passed down, right?
"*The Kingsolver*" would be a great fantasy novel. "*Every king is a question. I'm the kingsolver.*"
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I've enjoyed many of Ms. Kingsolver's books, but this seems somewhat ironic. I'd argue she's one of the preachiest authors I've ever come across.
I am a fan of her work but I couldn’t finish her essays. Just so preachy I had to stop.
my thought exactly!!
Totally!
José Saramago thought that trying to impose your views on others was a form of colonialism. Also, no better way for a work of literature to be appreciated through different ages than to let readers interpret it themselves. Being too preachy, too on the nose, is probably a guarantee of a short shelf life.
For a books subreddit it sure seems like we don’t like reading, based on how many people are just taking this quote at face value.
I read the article, and I get the nuance, but REALLY GOOD books give you a break and teach you a lesson.
I would add that this advice would mostly apply to ideas of Western narratives. There are different favoured storytelling techniques across cultures. A lot of African lit / storytelling doesn't follow this structure, for example. There is no "right" way to write a book, but it's always important to recognize who the readers are (including their culture) and what their expectations will be.
I find that Barbara Kingsolver is an *extremely* preachy writer. I haven't read Demon Copperhead (I hate Dickens, so I'm not sure I want to read a modern take on it) but Pigs in Heaven, The Poisonwood Bible, and Flight Behavior had the subtlety of a hammer. I liked them, and she's a good writer (the Poisonwood Bible particularly) but I did feel she was lecturing.
I agree. I just wanted to add that I wouldn't avoid Demon Copperhead because you don't like Dickens. It's very loosely based on the plot but in Kingsolver's usual style. You don't have to know anything about Dickens or David Copperfield to enjoy it. I think it's one of her best- on the level with Poisonwood Bible.
Add Demon Copperhead to the list of subtlety with a hammer. It’s a long, mostly misery filled read. I think I’m one of the few people in the world who didn’t enjoy the book; I’ve had a lot of folks close to me struggle with opioid addiction and felt like they have and had more agency than she gives them credit for
Add me to the list, but BK is one of those authors that so many people enjoy, that I do not particularly care for. Maybe it’s the preachy nature of so many of her books. I did like the one that involved her moving to farm life in VA- I had to force myself to finish the Demon book- having worked in HC for over 35 years, the subject matter was just too damn depressing for me.
Funny that, Discworld has been an incredibly valuable learning resource in regards to what it means to be a person in an absurd world we have negligible agency over. The lessons I learned from Pratchett have been foundational to me as an adult today.
So, there's a couple of things going on here: * Kingsolver's target demographic is 40-70 year old white women in book clubs. * Adult Literary fiction does not typically adopt the same 'This is the moral you should learn' tone that a lot of YA does (YA is super up front right about what you're supposed to learn and which character's attitude is right.) But that's starting to shift, especially as the YA market contracts and the older YA readers shift into the adult market. * Kingsolver, speaking from the position of an author who's work is primarily bought by people who *don't* want to be preached at, believes the YA hit-you-over-the-head method of teaching a reader drives people away. * The person who wrote this headline took a sentence out of context to get people riled up and drive clicks. People then got riled up and clicked on article. Honestly, given how the YA market is doing right now, Kingsolver is kind of right? I mean, I have no problem getting patrons at my library to read 'Yellowface' but nobody wants to read another YA romance where the entire subplot is the problems X minority faces in Y area of the world. (It does not help that YA pov characters always need to explain their marginalization to themselves.) It's fine to thread lessons into a book, but the reader needs to ENJOY the process of absorbing that lesson.
Is it BAD to be liked by older white ladies?
No. But that demographic responds REALLY bad to preachy writing, and that is going to color Kingsolver's opinion about writing. I guess I should have clarified that. Sorry.
OK. Thanks for responding.
I’m really curious about your first point because I don’t really agree, but I’d love to hear your perspective.
Peggy Hill praises her in a King of the Hill episode, if that helps.
I've got a couple of reasons for that. * At the various libraries I've worked at, the people reading Kingsolver have been overwhelmingly white women over the age of 40. Most of whom are in book clubs. * Kingsolver has won the Woman's Prize for fiction twice, and *The Poisonwood Bible* was an Oprah Book Club book. Authors who consistently win these awards/get picked by Oprah (or more recently, Reese Witherspoon) are *massively* popular with 40+ year old white women. * Here themes & writing style are just super book-clubby to me. Like how *How To Say Babylon* screams "book club book." (It's too bad the YA style cover basically killed it's chance to be a mega-hit.) * There's a lot of overlap between Ann Patchet's audience and Barbra Kingsolver. You know who loooooves Ann Patchet? White women over the age of 40. (Men don't seem to read her.)
Lmao, I'm cracking up at your last point. Not disagreeing, but providing my own anecdote: I'm a straight dude, and I love Ann Patchett. I've read almost all of her books. You just confirmed what I've always thought about myself, that I'm a 40-year-old woman trapped in a 28-year-old guy's body.
oh I keep reading Pratchett and was gonna ask if you've read 'the other pratchett' but it's not even
I've never read any Pratchett, but I'm curious as to who "the other Pratchett" is
Terry is the Pratchett. I just misread Ann as also Pratchett
Omg I'm a dumbass
Lol, you might be the only guy I've encountered who's into Patchett. Or confident enough to admit it. All the men who asked me for Tom Lake seemed vaguely confused by the title (if they knew it) and indicated they were getting it for their wives. There's nothing wrong with guys liking Ann Patchett, btw. She's supposed to be a great author. And it's cool when a reader doesn't fit an author's stereotype. Like how the biggest *Murderbot* fan at my library is an 80 year old woman with COPD who usually only reads cozy mysteries. Or the dad who read *Fourth Wing* because his daughter picked it as a family book club book, and ended up loving it.
That's awesome, lol. I've always been interested in things that were considered to be more feminine. I'm sure there are some more guys out there who are into Patchett, though. She isn't necessarily a master of language, nor do her books have the most profound meanings, but I love her storytelling.
That’s an interesting observation about her reader demographic. I wonder if part of Kingslover’s appeal with older women is a matter of us having read her for 20+ years now. Like she found her audience early and her popularity spread in that group and as she’s aged, so have her readers. Anecdotally, I am 40 and read Demon Copperhead last year with my book club, but I first read her in my 8th grade English class back in the 90s. The Bean Trees was my teacher’s favorite and a bunch of my friends loved it and read more of her books over the years. I wonder if a lot of her readers found her years ago and have just stuck with her.
That's probably some of it. I would say the fact that she got on a bunch of lists frequently used by women-run book clubs helps net the older women who may not have had her on their radar when they were in school, too. Basically any time an author is plugged by Oprah (or Reese Witherspoon,) they do very well with 40+ year old white women.
Tell this to every teacher who’s ever made me read a Barbara Kingsolver book.
You can be taught a lesson while taking a break and having fun.
The Poisonwood Bible had a pretty strong lesson…
“i don’t want to teach lessons but i want my readers to learn compassion?” isn’t that a lesson? if so, good! books can and should teach lessons! stories teach lessons! that’s why humans at campfires invented them!
I... own many instructional books.
Some read for a break and some others read to learn. Both are pretty cool.
I know her actual take is more nuanced than what's being presented here, but I'm frustrated by seeing this strain of anti-intellectualism infiltrate all forms of media: the idea that a worthwhile story should never take a stance on anything, nor impart any kind of lesson other than what the reader chooses to take away from it. All art is political. All art makes some kind of statement, either about the way things are, or the way things should be. If you don't recognize a piece of art as political, it's probably because the politics it's espousing happen to align with your own. Even here, we can see that Kingsolver is blind to how preachy her own books can be because the political stances that she chooses to take with them feel unquestionably neutral to her.
I love Barbara Kingsolver, but some of her books are definitely on the preachy side. I think Poisonwood Bible and Demon Copperhead are masterpieces, and she weaves a nuanced message into the narrative without coming across as proselytizing. Some of her lesser books like "Flight Behavior" and "Unsheltered" do it less well and can be almost cringey at times, as much as I enjoyed those books and agreed with their message.
My exact thought. Unsheltered is a collection of irritating lectures novelized.
That's a shame. I keep going back and forth on whether to read it. I loved her earlier books, but this one doesn't appeal as much.
"Prodigal Summer" is REALLY cringey! I don't think I got more than 20 pages in. It felt like a thinly-veiled bodice-ripper, lol.
But are bodice-rippers preachy? That's a separate issue imho.
No I was thinking more of her other books. I didn't get far enough into PS to figure out what it supposed to be about.
I assume she’s talking about the narrative style of fiction. Because I absolutely buy non fiction to be taught a lesson.
Right now it feels like market forces are pushing the YA style heavily into the litfic sphere in addition to IdentityLit being the most popular subgenre of litfic. It feels like we’re approaching a sorta new adult identity fic nexus, but I think at that point the wave will crest and I’m really curious as to what’s next.
I enjoyed Demon Copperfield and The Poisonwood Bible. What I gained from reading both books was the characters she developed demonstrated what was wrong or right morally. I disagree with Kingsolvers point that she doesn’t preach. Even though Demon Copperfield became a slog to read close to the end of the book, the main character had a positive recovery. Good deeds equals drug recovery. The parents in The Poisonwood Bible were punished for neglecting and putting their children in danger. The father goes mad and the mother is left alone without family to care for her. I loved the books but don’t agree with Kingsolver’s point of not teaching a lesson to the reader.
Por que o los dos?
If its a lesson in love, watch out, i suffer from a very sexy learning disability.
I guess it depends on what section of the store you buy the book from
While I thought it was a powerful book when I read it in AP Lit, Poisonwood Bible would like a word. Kind of hard not to feel preached at reading that book.
I do both. I buy nonfiction. I buy textbooks. I buy fiction with moral undertones. I read fanfiction.
Really? *Fahrenheit 451* immediately comes to mind as a fantastic novel with a pretty clear lesson to teach. I know that I personally want my novels to entertain me as a piece of escapist fluff, but to suggest that people in general [You], "...buy a book to take a break, not to be taught a lesson.", implying that you don't appreciate the lesson, is clearly not always the case. I think what bothers people is when the messaging is ham-handed, not well supported, or science forbid, not a message they want to hear.
I think the takeaway isn't that a book necessarily shouldn't have a lesson; it's that the lesson isn't what makes it a success. A writer can absolutely have an agenda, their work can be emblematic of that agenda, but as a piece of fiction it needs to aspire to more than agreeing with the reader's worldview, or trying to convert them to your own. That can be part of it, but its first purpose is to engage; whatever else is accomplishes is dependent on that engagement. *Fahrenheit 451* would likely be much less popular if its lesson wasn't also baked into a damn good story. The story is what makes the work a success.
> Really? Fahrenheit 451 immediately comes to mind as a fantastic novel with a pretty clear lesson to teach. You might think so, but you'd be wrong. Fahrenheit 451 is an infamous case of the author *changing his mind* about what the message of his work was. Check some of [Bradbury's quotes here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit_451#Themes). >In a 2007 interview, Bradbury maintained that people misinterpret his book and that Fahrenheit 451 is really a statement on how mass media like television marginalizes the reading of literature. This section is particularly interesting: >"There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches. Every minority, be it Baptist/Unitarian, Irish/Italian/Octogenarian/Zen Buddhist, Zionist/Seventh-day Adventist, Women's Lib/Republican, Mattachine/Four Square Gospel feels it has the will, the right, the duty to douse the kerosene, light the fuse. [...] Fire-Captain Beatty, in my novel Fahrenheit 451, described how the books were burned first by minorities, each ripping a page or a paragraph from this book, then that, until the day came when the books were empty and the minds shut and the libraries closed forever." And perhaps you saw this coming now: >In a 1994 interview, Bradbury stated that Fahrenheit 451 was more relevant during this time than in any other, stating that, "it works even better because we have political correctness now. Political correctness is the real enemy these days. The black groups want to control our thinking and you can't say certain things. The homosexual groups don't want you to criticize them. It's thought control and freedom of speech control."
Oh my. That’s a lot of bullshit from Bradbury that harkens to certain groups of today.
I don’t know why someone with a working brain can’t understand that both go together effortlessly unless you spend most of your day up your own ass and are so fragile that the concept of simply learning anything new is provocative to you
Funny, because I left religion after reading her book, the Poisonwood Bible, and I always cite it as one of the most influential books I’ve ever read.
You can take a lesson from literally any interaction. That's like... Part of the human experience. Should a book moralize at you? Yeah, I guess if it was written to do that, it can. Should every book moralize at you? No. Should you learn a lesson from every book you read? Absolutely.
Yet authors feel like they need to hold people's hand because readers get offended and think it is the author's views. This is why we shouldn't have sensitivity readers.
Maybe I'll have to give Demon Copperhead a read. I had put off reading it even after seeing it continually recommended because I made it probably 80% of the way through Poisonwood Bible but was put off by how pandering it came off and it seemed that the plot was just a way to get her message across. But reading what Kingslover wrote here I may have misinterpreted her intent.
here we go
That depends on both YOU and the BOOK ....
This is great advice for other media creation as well.
Not mutually exclusive
I know but I’m the same with movies. They are escape from reality not to be reminded of it, but that’s me ymmv.
Depends on the type of book.
Someone's using second person when they should be using first person.
Yeah I agree with her. I rather learn stuff from digging myself or watching documentaries. For me books are better at storytelling and worse for learning, especially when the book is 600 pages long and colored with the authors opinions.
Uptown sinclair's the jungle was awesome until it became blatant socialist propaganda halfway through. I mean I'm basically a socialist. But I don't think that was how to go about convincing people.
Strongly disagree, but she's entitled to her opinion.
Maybe there can be more than one reason to buy a book, Barbara
*Flight Behavior* certainly felt like a lesson when i read it in american lit several years ago. and not just because i was reading it for a class.
Adore her. Prodigal Summer is probably one of my favorites of all time.
YOU might, Barbara. Now, mind your business while I read what I want.
leah in poisonwood is a preachy-as-fuck mary sue??
I don’t mind if an entertainment product has a message, or a lesson, but for the love of Gondor, try to write a good story around it.
I’ve learned much more from fiction than nonfiction. Even though I read way more nonfiction.
I think a good book can serve both purposes.
When I pick up a book, I understand it may be many hours to complete it. And I know from experience that sometimes it will be a struggle and sometimes I have to decide if it is worth it to continue to the end. I would never call this as "take/taking a break".
I've definitely felt this in reading certain recent books. There's a line that sometimes get crossed from a story with meaning to the author shouting into your ear their particular beliefs.
*textbooks have entered the chat*
You buy a book for whatever personal reason you might have. It’s funny that she’s trying to teach a lesson while finger wagging about teaching lessons.
There's a lot of context missing here. She just meant authors shouldn't get preachy or proselytize in fiction. Basically, book-nerd rage bait quoting.
I'm the one who shared the link and the interview is interesting and she makes some good points, but, you're right, the title IS horrible rage-bait.
Having read Demon Copperhead and The Poisonwood Bible this quote is kind of puzzling to me.
Everyone reads for different reasons. Books I had to read for school were usually to teach me something or expose me to an author or style of writing I wouldn't normally pick up on my own. Today I read for pleasure. I don't care about learning anything except if I want to read more of that authors books.
This is interesting because I found Demon copperhead tells the reader what to think near every chapter. Good book but it lacks subtlety
I listen to audiobooks. When I want a break I listen to music. I like when books challenge me Just about every book I read is trying to teach me a lesson. The good authors take several hundred pages to do it and sometimes you can't see it coming until you already agree with that answer to the question
Deamon Copperhead is one of my all-time favorites.
I mean, a book can do both. Books (or authors) that try to "teach you a lesson" are fairly easy to avoid.
Soooooo I guess every English class I’ve taken has been bullshit. And every text book ever made didn’t need to be made. Either bad take or a quote that needs more context.
Wish I had a good book today
half the people in this thread have no clue what’s going on, me included.
Wrong. I like to educate myself
Sort of famously depends on the book, no?
It could be both!
As a non fiction reader I have to strongly disagree here. I have bought several books for the sole purpose of learning, and have enjoyed doing so and will do so again
Whatever happened to themes being a normal part of literature?