| But just writing a book that entertains people doesn't make someone a great author. It may make them a fantastic storyteller -- which is a perfectly fine thing to be. As LeGuin said in one of her essays, the essential purpose of SFF is to delight the reader. But to be a "great" anything -- if we are using the word accurately -- comprehends so much more than just being able to bestow a little ephemeral pleasure on a large number of people. Surely greatness requires something more lasting: a book that widens our horizons, or touches us on some deeper level so that we never see the world again in quite the same way, or provides some profound insight into the human heart.
There are a large number of writers that I simply enjoy -- and I am not ashamed to read them for that reason only, or to recommend them to other readers -- but I'm certainly not about to justify my pleasure in what they write by trying to convince myself or anyone else that they are writing great literature. My enjoyment of a book doesn't require that sort of justification. I don't need to be deeply moved or changed or enlightened every time I read a book.
But I'm not going to classify books that don't do any of these things -- no matter how much I might like them -- in the same category as the books that do. To even consider my own pleasure in a book as any sort of test of greatness ... well, I'm sorry, but I think that would be conceited.
Some writers have more important things to say than others, and some just entertain. Some manage to say important things and be entertaining too. The books of each of these writers may have value, but it's not the same value. For one thing, it takes a great many books to keep me entertained, but the experience of a book that moves me on some deeper level can last a lifetime. (Not that I won't go back and repeat the experience, because I probably will. But even if I never did, the book would still have given me something lasting.) |