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Position:Home>Books & Authors> What role does criticism play in your evaluation of a novel?Question: What role does criticism play in your evaluation of a novel!? Do you read what other people have said about it!? Do the opinions of others influence your opinion of the book at all!? Do you succumb to peer pressure!? (Everyone else likes it, you should too!) Obviously their opinion counts for something or you wouldn't see so many "what book should I read" and "what did you think of this book" questions on this site!.Www@QuestionHome@Com
Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: It depends on whose opinion it is!. Ie, I respect Mark Twain as a writer, so I will take his thoughts on Fenimore Cooper seriously (he hates Fenimore Cooper, and I will link a glorious essay in which he describes _exactly_ how much he hates him!.) However, will I take Mercedes Lackey's thoughts on Kurt Vonnegut or "What I Think About Hermann Hesse", by Christopher Paolini, seriously!? Probably not!. The reasons Twain hates Cooper are valid, after reading Cooper--he just helped me elucidate my dislike for what I was reading!. I don't succumb to peer pressure--but if I like a writer that hates another author, chances are I too will hate that other auther--but that's because we value the same things in writing!. Correlation, not cause!.Www@QuestionHome@Com As a writer myself, criticism plays a very small role in my decision to read a novel!. I like to read critiques because I feel like they help improve my own writing and give me an idea of what readers may be looking for, but they hold little sway for me!. Sometimes a particularly good, or bad, critique will pique my interest enough for me to read the dust jacket or an excerpt, but only an actual sample of the writing will decide me one way or the other!. Reading is so personal, even more so than watching a movie or T!.V!. show, because a writer's style, vocabulary, and other small nuances can affect people differently, and reading is an experience for the imagination!. Never is the old adage "One man's trash is another man's treasure" more appropriate than in the context of how readable a book is!.Www@QuestionHome@Com not a lot!. What I do is, if I find a book that I think looks good, I'll go to amazon!.com and read the inside cover or the first page of the book!. If i like it, i buy the book, if not, i don't!. It doesn't always work though!.!.!. I don't succumb to peer pressure very often!. like, people are always saying that the twilight series is amazing and that i should read it!. I read the first page, i hated it!. It all comes down to personal preference!. You wouldn't read a non-fiction book about WWII if you weren't interested in it!.Www@QuestionHome@Com Actually, this is an answer to your King Lear question, which you closed while I was writing this: I'm a retired English professor who has taught about two thirds of Shakespeare's plays several times each, and I still think Hamlet is his masterpiece!. However, I also think KL is great!. Reading or seeing it after Hamlet is like hearing a Mahler symphony after a Beethoven one!. The fact that it doens't neatly fit the usual pattern of Shakespearean tragedy is more of a plus in this case than a minus!. You'll notice that it's not clear who fills a couple of the important character roles: who's THE antagonist!? Both Regan and Goneril, right!? And who is the the Octavian/Fortinbras/Malcolm figure--the character that I used to call the restorer of order!? He usually speaks the last lines, which are usually (though not here) rather UNmemorable compared to the NEXT-to-last speech!. (In fact, you may have noticed that in Shakespearean tragedy the highest-ranking person left alive speaks the last lines!.) In King Lear, however, the editions don't even agree as to who speaks those last lines--Edgar or Albany!? I plump for Edgar, since "We that are young" seems more appropriate for him to say than for Albany!. But I think that the choice of who speaks those lines has some bearing on the outcome--the person who speaks them is the "restorer of order"--the next King!. (Evidently whoever rewrote the ending to have Cordelia survive to marry Edgar also saw it that way!.) Another curiosity about KL is its unusual plot structure!. The only other Shakespearean tragedy that follows the same pattern is Titus Andronicus--whereas in most Shakespearean tragedies the protagonist's fortunes rise until somewhere in Act III, when he makes a mistake or overreaches himself, in these two the falling action begins immediatelly and reaches a LOW point at the climax, after which the protagonist's fortunes temporarily rise (Titus learns who raped and mutilated Lavinia; Cordelia invades Britain), only to suffer another setback that leads to his death--but he takes his enemies along with him!. I'm not sure whether this has helped answer your question, but I've enjoyed sharing my thoughts with you! (Having gone to the trouble of writing this, I didn't want it to go totally to waste!.)Www@QuestionHome@Com |