On Appreciation

I was not all that long ago raked over the coals, more or less, for publishing a review full of "spoilers," and when I pointed out that the novel didn't depend on plot twists for its quality, was told that "the casual reader" was looking forward to the next wrinkle. (I should point out that I didn't really find anything in the review that I considered a spoiler -- I am aware of those things, and do try to avoid them if I think it's important. But there are other considerations.)

I was forced to conclude that I don't write for the "casual reader," whoever that might be. I write for people who read the way I do: to discover new things in an old favorite, to look again for things I might have missed the first time around, to savor the way the writer has dealt with theme, character, relationships, because there are any number of ways to do that, to understand how a writer -- or any artist -- has brought out new meanings that might echo in my life.

Hence, Rule 1: If you're only looking at the surface, you're missing most of what's going on. I've run into that a lot with manga lately, because it's a tremendously sophisticated medium that brings a lot of subtlety into play. Not always, but the good examples always deserve another look. (It's also most of what I've been reading.)

Just as quick examples, go back and look at my review at GMR of Kimi Shiruya (or the essay I published here) and the Loveless anime. To me, those are tremendously rich works, full of implication and subtle linkages that build amazingly powerful stories. (And I might point out that I am sitting on a 4000+ word essay on Loveless that I really do intend to try to boil down to a review.)

But you don't find that simply by sitting there looking at what's on the page. You have to look beyond that, and that's where it become appreciation. Yes, I suppose it does require a bit of learning, but it's the kind of learning that's easily acquired from experience. I never took a course in how to read a book. I just read them, and thought about them. Being a reviewer helps in that -- I have to think about them if I'm going to write about them intelligently, but by the same token, I would hope that the fruits of that thinking would bring some insights to my readers.

There's an element of connoisseurship here. It sounds very high-brow, but all that connoisseurship is, really, is the result of that experience, that thinking, that searching for meanings under the surface.

There is, of course, the question of how much you bring to the work, as opposed, I guess, to how much the artist put in. It's not an invalid question, but I think too often presented in the wrong framework: once a work is out there, it's no longer the artist's exclusive domain. Yes, there's "being entertained," which is a passive state best indulged in in front of the TV with a reality show or the news, and then there's being engaged: with the latter, it becomes a dialogue between you and the artist, an activity that demands participation, not just acceptance. So you have to bring something, otherwise you're not participating. And at least part of the artist's purpose, I think, is to spark that internal dialogue, to make echoes in your imagination that call up those past experiences and ideas that are going to flesh out that work for you and make it part of your experience.

And that's really what I'm trying to do, it occurs to me: impart something of that experience, without worrying overmuch about my approval or disapproval (that's there, but it's part of the context: did the artist do what they set out to do, and was it worth it to begin with?). It's much more important to me that my readers come away with some sense of what it was like for me to be involved with that work.

(A key point, that: once upon a time, when I was regularly writing art reviews, a friend mentioned that he'd read all my reviews and still didn't know what my opinion was of the art. That wasn't the point: the point was, what was it like to be there looking at it? You can figure out the rest, if you're paying attention.)

So, if I spoiled the plot for you, sorry -- but not very.