The Reader's Duty

I noticed this on one of the forums:

I'm a Feist fan and while some of his books may not be as good as Magician i
could not say that i do not like his later books any less. If you are doing your
job as a reader then you would be to imerrsed in the story and excited about
where it will go to be thinking about how this sentence or that sentence does
not make sense, or wondering why you have spent your money on a series of books

I don't know what everyone else thinks about this, but to me, it seems utterly ridiculous. The reader has no duty to the author, at all. A reviewer of a book has the duty to read the whole book, so that they actually give valid criticism, but why should an ordinary reader have any duty?

Some preparatory reading:

Hal Duncan on "reading too much" into books: http://notesfromthegeekshow.blogspot.com/2005/07/duh-tell-us-about-rabbits-george.html

Hal Duncan on style v substance: http://www.emcit.com/emcit128.php?a=2

"If you are doing your job as a reader then you would be to imerrsed in the
story and excited about where it will go to be thinking about how this sentence
or that sentence does not make sense, or wondering why you have spent your money on a series of books"

I'll repeat - how does the reader have a duty? They are paying money for these books, and they expect them to be worthy of that money. If you buy a TV and that picture quality is terrible, you'll feel ripped off. Why should that be any different in books? If you buy a book by Feist, for example, and the prose is absolutely terrible so that it ruins your enjoyment,why the hell is it your duty to ignore that? If a reader has a duty, IMO, it would be the exact opposite - to try and help the author improve by offering constructive criticism (that's the role that editors should, but often don't, do). This person suggests we should just accept awful prose by keeping immersed in the world. Ok. Right. Perhaps just ignoring the words altogether might work as well - it's not about the writing, its about the story, and anyway, the story is all layed out in the blurb, so you might as well not waste your time with all of the writing actually between the covers. Or at least that is what is suggested by this. But as Hal Duncan points out, style is substance. The writing is what makes the story. If the writing's terrible, it's impossible to get immersed in the story. It is not our duty as readers to ignore an author's poor writing. Ok, so we come up against some utterly incomprehensible sentences. I'll use Goodkind as an example - we have a sheer clifface called Blunt Mountain upon which there is a pathway running along it at near mid-height just wide enough for two people. Of course, if you actually read that properly, it's nonsensical. But with this group of people whose primary objective is escapism at any cost, they'll just ignore that, because they're immersed in the story. And being immersed in the story means shutting down your brain, in the views of these people. But I ask you this - how can you be immersed in a story if the writing doesn't immerse you? The story is the writing -it's a novel, not an action movie. Ok, that's a brief rant about the "duty of the reader"- I'll leave it to others to elaborate.

Now on to the first sentence:

I'm a Feist fan and while some of his books may not be as good as Magician i
could not say that i do not like his later books any less.

Huh? How the hell does that work? You first of all say that the other books aren't as good as Magician, but you don't like them any less? I can accept that perhaps you acknowledge that to some extent you can objectively say, this is good and this is bad. Fair enough. Except that your next sentence contradicts that assumption. Effectively what you are saying is "I like Magician the most of Feist's books but I don't like any of the other books any less". The implication is that you have a duty ot the author to like every book just as much as the other because you're immersed in the story. So the fact that one book's shit and the other book's decent is irrelevant - this explains the immense success of Dan Brown. So, I'm expected to enjoy Crossroads of Twilight just as much as The Great Hunt? Because I'm immersed in the story. Right. The fact that the story is almost non-existent in CoT is irrelevant because I'm immersed in the story, feeling a non-existent tension which keeps me turning the pages, and because I enjoyed reading about some of the characters in the first couple of books I must now still keep enjoying reading about them, even if it is reading about them doing absolutely nothing. I'm afraid I don't believe in all books being equal. And, unlike this reader, I also believe that writing is important in novels. A novel isn't just the front cover and the blurb- it's what's held between those covers, and between those covers are words. If the words are poor, the novel's poor. Characterisation, plot, atmosphere, tension - everything comes from the prose itself. Trying to ignore the prose in a novel is like listening to the radio muted.