Good for What? Non-appeal, Discussibility, and Book Groups (Part 2)

Having attended more than 225 book discussion group meetings since I began my study, I can say with confidence that no matter what book was read, as long as at least two members had finished it a discussion about that book took place.¹⁶ In the very few instances where the book was not discussed, usually because members decided before even starting it that the book was uninteresting or the book was too difficult to acquire inexpensively, the conversation was instead focused on public affairs or recently released films based on books. Such meetings account for at most five of all the meetings I have attended. So the question when selecting books for a book group becomes not what book will elicit discussion, but what type of discussion a group prefers.

When a book is regarded as well-written, well-liked, or complete by group members, the conversation takes one form; when it is disliked or has gaps or flaws in its structure or content, or when readers disagree about such, another type of discussion results. (This is not to say that both types of discussion do not happen within the same meeting about a book because on occasion they do. Sometimes, for instance, readers will have enjoyed a book despite its gaps, or they will disagree as to whether the book fully addressed all the issues it presented.) When readers are asked to give accounts of discussions that went well, they typically describe the latter type of discussion. This tendency indicates that it is the discussions of less-than-perfect books and those discussions that involve disagreement or a greater level of critique that readers prefer and seek when participating in the collective reading process. Readers, it seems, prefer to not necessarily discuss the book they read, but instead the book they wish they had read, or rather, the book the chosen selection could have been if presented differently. In this sense, book discussion becomes an act of creation, where readers exchange ideas as they verbally compile what I will refer to here as an ideal text. I will return to this idea below.

Reading as Dissection

As characterized above, when a group finds a book to be well-written, thorough, and unanimously well-liked by their members, the discussion following its reading is dominated by one form of talk; when it is disliked by some or has gaps or flaws in its structure or content, another type of discussion takes precedence. Though it is the minority of discussions (or shortest part of a discussion when both types occur) that falls into the dissection category, it is in these discussions that the physical book gets paid the most attention. When I refer here to “dissection,” I do so using the following meaning as defined in the Oxford English Dictionary: “The action of separating anything into elementary or minute parts for the purpose of critical examination; a ‘taking to pieces’, a minute examination; detailed analysis or criticism.”¹⁷

In recreational book group discussions, direct references to the physical work under discussion are the exception rather than the rule. Such references can be divided into two types: references to the cover, front matter (title page, frontispiece, copyright page, table of contents, acknowledgements) and back matter (references, about the author); and references to the narrative content of the book. Readers generally talk about the book they read from memory, or occasionally from notes, but only open and refer to the actual book itself in a few circumstances. These take place when there is confusion about the events or chronology of the story, when readers agree on having enjoyed the book and have little else to say about it than “isn’t this passage great?” and want to pick apart the devices used to achieve a certain result, and when such discussion is part of their standard repertoire of inquiry. In each of these cases, direct consultation with the physical book assists the readers in appreciating or trying to comprehend what the author has accomplished or in evaluating the attempts of cultural authorities, such as reviewers and publishers, to influence the perspectives or tastes of readers.

Though book group members spend some time on aspects of their appreciation of a work by addressing the physical aspects of a book and do, on occasion, quote directly from the work, these are not the activities that occupy the greatest place in their discussions. As the quotes presented above indicate, readers derive the most satisfaction from discussions regarding books with which they disagreed, were dissatisfied, or about which members disagreed with each other. If the book is “too complete,” discussion becomes “a bit of a problem.” Rather than dissect and discuss the book as written, readers spend the bulk of their time in the creative process of discussing the ways the book could be different, what they would have preferred for it to include or have happen, and identifying gaps in the story. The science fiction group in my study has actually given this tendency a name. Borrowing from Jasper Fforde’s novel Lost in a Good Book, they call the process identifying “bloopholes,” which, according to the novel, is a “term used to describe a narrative hole by the author that renders his/her work seemingly impossible.”¹⁸

Reading as Creation

Through the process of filling in where the author did not or making suggestions for features that would make a book better, readers share ideas about how to bring the work read closer to their ideal, usually advocating for fuller character development and more closure on the major issues or conflicts presented. This difference between types of works–those that are complete and those benefiting from elaboration–may be partially explained using Roland Barthes’ distinction between a “readerly text” and a “writerly text.” The former is one “wherein the reader need not ‘write’ or ‘produce’ his or her own meanings but one where one can find, by passive means, meaning ‘ready-made.’”¹⁹ Though there is always room for interpretation in reading (as is demonstrated by those times when readers mention deliberations they made in sorting out possible meanings), readers sometimes find little space to fill in and engage with the work, and instead spend their energy uncovering what is already there. “Writerly texts,” on the other hand, make “the reader no longer a consumer but a producer of the text.”²⁰ It is this act of production or creation that determines the discussible work. Though Barthes articulates the difference in texts in such a way that it seemingly resides in the texts themselves, it is important to note that his definitions rely on the reader taking a stance to find meaning, passively or more productively.

A work must have (or lack) certain features to be discussible, but it cannot be discussible on its own accord. As Hartley found in her survey of groups, the same book may be discussible for some groups of readers and not others. There are books that have worked well for a number of groups in that they prompted much critical discussion. However, because the background that readers bring to a work differs, and so too does the shared history of a group from that of other groups, a book’s discussibility is not static. It is both the interaction between the work and the reader and the interaction between readers that account for discussibility.

Though discussibility remains somewhat elusive, I have recognized a range of responses that figure into the verbal creation of a reading group’s ideal text and, most notably, three that I have witnessed with the greatest degree of frequency. The first of these is the perceived expectation on the part of the author for prior knowledge on the part of the reader. Readers are confronted with concepts or ideas that are not explained, but that they feel they are assumed to know in order to engage with a work. This requirement for prior knowledge includes facts and social situations, but also knowledge of other written works. Readers invoke their prior reading experiences to help them supplement the work under discussion. Their familiarity with other works by the same author or other works by different authors provides them with ideas about the boundaries of what could have been possible for the work at hand. Each discussion represents an accumulation of experience.

A second recurring aspect of creative discussion is the critique of physical aspects, such as the length of a book, and suggestions for tools that would assist the reader in the interpretation process. Just as readers will discuss a book’s physical aspects as part of what I have called the dissection type of discussion described above, when talking about the version of the book they wish they had read in the place of the one they did read, physical aspects also may be mentioned. In this case, however, these include recommendations for changes in a work’s physical dimensions or a request for features that are not already present. Sometimes these are expressions of disappointment with the book’s length, that it was either too short or too long, which is ultimately a dissatisfaction with characterization, plot development, or the inclusion of unnecessary details that burden the reader’s experience of the work. Other times the evaluation readers make about physical features of the book involves the desire for the inclusion of attributes in the text that were not found in the book (such as glossaries, genealogical trees, timelines, and so on).

A third and most prominent category of recurring aspects of discussion resulting in the creation of the ideal text is, as mentioned above, the identifying of gaps or “bloopholes” in a work. For discussible works, this activity comprises the majority of time spent in group meetings. When reading for pleasure, readers may find gaps in a narrative distracting or disruptive, but these same gaps become seeds for negotiating options, improvising, and creating flights of fancy within the group context. When endings are left open-ended, or the lives of characters not fully explained, readers create their own explanations for what could happen. These are taken from clues in the text that determine the parameters, but also from readers’ experiences with other works, sometimes by the same author, sometimes not. At times the suggestions involve fundamental restructurings of the plot. For example, when discussing This Immortal by Roger Zelazny, one reader remarked, “If it had been about the Diaspora, that is, if it had not been about aliens but about humans that might have made it a better book.” Another thought the book “tied up too easily,” and suggested that “he could have fixed the end by putting in more in the body of the novel about what the Vegans were trying to do.” A third reader agreed, saying that, “If he hadn’t ended the book so quickly, if he had gone on longer it would have been good.” Another wondered about the possibility of bringing other cultures in: “Would mutants in Mexico reflect Mexican culture?” CB called attention to an overplayed device saying, “I thought there was a little too much deus ex machina with the dog being dead for many years and then showing up” and “the black beast–they talk about how it hasn’t shown up and hasn’t shown up and then Bam! There he is.”²¹ After working through each of these critiques in their discussion, another work altogether seemed to emerge. In this way, book group discussion becomes more than just talking about what was read, but also an act of creation that relies on association with other readers.

Conclusion

The reading practices of book groups introduce aspects of appeal that may not already be a part of a reader advisor’s regular repertoire. Groups often derive more satisfaction from discussing the reading experience when that experience was different from what they expected, when a book would have made more sense or been more enjoyable if presented differently, or when members of that group have different views on either the topic or on its rendering. The success of discussion is less about whether everyone in the group liked the book, and more about whether the book invited them as readers to fill in its spaces or consider more deeply the implications of the situations it described. Many times readers will say outright at the beginning of a discussion meeting that they disliked the book chosen and maybe the characters in it, too. At the end of the discussion, the same readers will remark that they are glad to have read the book. On some occasions this represents a change in opinion, in that the discussion made them decide they liked the book after all because they are now able to see aspects they had missed when reading on their own. More often, however, it is not that the person’s disposition toward the book has changed–they may still vehemently dislike the book–but they appreciate the negotiations with other readers that the book encouraged. They learned more about the possible directions a work could take and why different readers might enjoy those varied directions. They learned something about books, about other people, and perhaps about themselves. So the next time someone asks you for a good book to read, explore the many ways you might address their request by first asking yourself the question, “Good for what?”

Correspondence concerning this column should be addressed to Barry Trott, Adult Services Director, Williamsburg Regional Library, 7770 Croaker Rd., Williamsburg, VA 23188; btrott@mail.wrl.org.

Joan Bessman Taylor is an Assistant Professor in the School of Library and Information Science at the University of Iowa, Iowa City.

References

1. De Nel Rehberg Sedo, “Badges of Wisdom, Spaces for Being: A Study of Contemporary Women’s Book Clubs” (Ph.D. dissertation, Simon Fraser University, 2004).
2. May Vlachos, personal communication, Dec. 2, 2005.
3. Pat Neblett, Circles of Sisterhood: A Book Discussion Guide for Women of Color (New York: Harlem River Pr., 1997), 43-45.
4. Ellen Slezak, The Book Group Book: A Thoughtful Guide to Forming and Enjoying a Stimulating Book Discussion Group (Chicago: Chicago Review Pr., 2000).
5. Ibid., 63.
6. Ibid., 96.
7. Elizabeth Long, Book Clubs: Women and the Uses of Reading in Everyday Life (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Pr., 2003), 118.
8. Ellen Moore and Kira Stevens, Good Books Lately: The One-Stop Resource for Book Groups and Other Greedy Readers (New York: St. Martin’s Pr., 2004).
9. Long, Book Clubs, 123.
10. Ibid., 146.
11. Jenny Hartley, Reading Groups (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Pr., 2001).
12. Ibid., 66, 75.
13. Ibid., 78.
14. Ibid., 66.
15. Normal Person’s Book Discussion Group meeting, Mar. 2005.
16. Joan Bessman Taylor, When Adults Talk in Circles: Book Groups and Contemporary Reading Practices (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2007).
17. “dissection,n3 ” The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., 1989. OED Online. Oxford Univ. Pr. (accessed Dec. 5, 2006).
18. Jasper Fforde, Lost in a Good Book (New York: Penguin, 2004), 298.
19. Roland Barthes, S/Z, trans. Richard Miller (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1974), 200.
20. Ibid., 4.
21. Science fiction book group meeting, Feb. 2005.

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