Breaking the Author/Reader Contract.

[LostSoul]

Why is it surprising that people don't want to read about a bitter, angry, lonely rapist?

I enjoyed reading American Psycho...

 

[nikolai]

Now about Thomas Covenant, I have heard a few people say they could not read past the rape scene and I never understood why. Maybe you can help me understand.

I've never been able to get into the Covenant books. Too be honest it isn't so much the rape (not that that helps), but the hoaky "pulled from your mundane life into another world" cliche. That and the heaping up of misfortunes on the hero. It just seems trite. For all I know the middle and end of the series may be brilliant, but the begining just rings so many alarm bells I've never been able to get past it.

 

[Umbran]

I think that Card's Ender universe basically got bazooka'd by Card right when he decided to not leave well enough alone and write a second book.

The thing is, the first book is the second book, in a sense.

Card very much wanted to write Speaker for the Dead. But to make it work, he had to develop Ender's past. He started with a short story, and it just grew too large to be anything but a separate book, which became Ender's Game.

As for Covenant - I can certainly see why many people end up stopping at the rape scene. Most folks like their main characters (be they hero or villain) to be at least somewhat sympathetic. Many simply can't have sympathy for Covenant after that. In theory, he's supposed to think he's hallucinating, and he's perhaps half-mad from having a sense of touch again. But he comes across as just a bit too lucid, and the crime just too nasty, for people to forgive him and be able to sympathize. It was a case where Donaldson simply overplayed his hand.

 

[Janx]

There's no such thing as an author/reader contract. Maybe an author/publisher contract....

It's all survival of the fittest. If the author writes a crappy book, sales will flop and the author will be forgotten. Wait 50 years and see which books (like Tolkien) remain as "classics" and which are forgotten.

Janx

 

[Fast Learner]

As for Covenant - I can certainly see why many people end up stopping at the rape scene. Most folks like their main characters (be they hero or villain) to be at least somewhat sympathetic. Many simply can't have sympathy for Covenant after that.

My lack of sympathy stemmed from his incessant whining. Even after he's all healed and super-powered and all that, it's still whine-whine-whine.

It's particularly frustrating because I really like the world of the books and a lot of the characters. Just not the protagonist.

 

[Umbran]

My lack of sympathy stemmed from his incessant whining. Even after he's all healed and super-powered and all that, it's still whine-whine-whine.

I can see that, but for me the whining seems reasonable. This guy has had to build his life around a particular structure of behavior, lest he literally go to pieces. The amount of discipline required borders upon what we'd call madness. So, when faced with a situation that challenges that, he doesn't deal in the most sane of ways.

 

[Templetroll]

- Midichlorians. Get your pseudo-hard-SF garbage out of my space fantasy.

YES! If it hadn't been for Natalie Portman I would have left the theater. I actually hated the midichlorian garbage more than JJB!

 

[Templetroll]

I've never been able to get into the Covenant books. Too be honest it isn't so much the rape (not that that helps), but the hoaky "pulled from your mundane life into another world" cliche. That and the heaping up of misfortunes on the hero. It just seems trite. For all I know the middle and end of the series may be brilliant, but the begining just rings so many alarm bells I've never been able to get past it.

I read the first trilogy, loved the world, hated Covenant enough to not want to ever read about him again. He makes Elric a fun guy to hang around with.

 

[Desdichado]

As for Covenant - I can certainly see why many people end up stopping at the rape scene.

I stuck through the first rape scene. The second one, though, y'know with the daughter he had from the first rape scene? That's when I decided I'd had way too much of that.

 

[barsoomcore]

There is a contract, whether you like it or not. The way a book begins sets up expectations in the reader's mind -- THAT'S the contract. A beginning is a promise. It says, "Here's what kind of story I'm going to tell you."

Nothing says that by subverting that expectation, however, that a writer won't be successful. You can either subvert or fulfill the expectation -- or fail to do either. There are no other options.

So this isn't really the same as "The first book was great but the second sucked" kind of complaints. This is more along the lines of "When it started I thought it was going to be X, but it turned out to be Y for no reason at all. Bummer."

I wouldn't say, for example, that Donaldson fails the contract. What gets set up for you at the start is pretty much what you get. You may not like that, that's fine, but it isn't the same sort of failure as a "contract violation".