I subscribe to two wildly different models of how fiction relates to its audience.
In one model, which was championed by Flaubert, the best novels are great works of art, the people who manage to write them deserve extraordinary credit, and if the average reader rejects the work it's because the average reader is a philistine; the value of any novel, even a mediocre one, exists independent of whether people are able to enjoy it. We can call this the Status model. It invites a discourse of genius and art-historical importance.
In the opposing model, a novel represents a contract between the writer and the reader, with the writer providing words out of which the reader creates a pleasurable experience. Writing thus entails a balancing of self-expression and communication within a group (...) The deepest purpose of reading and writing fiction is to sustain a sense of connectedness, to resist existential loneliness.
from How to be Alone, Jonathan Franzen
In one model, which was championed by Flaubert, the best novels are great works of art, the people who manage to write them deserve extraordinary credit, and if the average reader rejects the work it's because the average reader is a philistine; the value of any novel, even a mediocre one, exists independent of whether people are able to enjoy it. We can call this the Status model. It invites a discourse of genius and art-historical importance.
In the opposing model, a novel represents a contract between the writer and the reader, with the writer providing words out of which the reader creates a pleasurable experience. Writing thus entails a balancing of self-expression and communication within a group (...) The deepest purpose of reading and writing fiction is to sustain a sense of connectedness, to resist existential loneliness.
from How to be Alone, Jonathan Franzen
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