The Three Es

[Jack Getze]

At a Sisters in Crime mystery symposium this past Saturday, author Shobhan Bantwal called on writers to accomplish "the three Es" with all their work. "Enlighten, educate, and entertain."

Shoban told me she writes women's fiction with lots of suspense, not really crime novels. But what about us? Are we just here to entertain our readers, or do we have an obligation to educate and enlighten?

Excuse me while I go look up the difference...

EDUCATE: give intellectual, moral, and social instruction
ENLIGHTEN: give greater knowledge or understanding

[Jack Getze]

I don't like the word obligation myself. I believe we're all artists, and we should damn well do what we want the way we want, without obligation to anybody. However -- if we intend on actually SELLING books, then we have an obligation to give the reader what he/she's paying for, be it pure entertainment, or something more. Like IJ says, that means different things to different book buyers. Surely, it all begins with entertainment, but perhaps each of us has to find our own audience.

In each of my books (two indie published, one being shopped), I include a bit of education about the brokerage business, the way it's regulated, insider trading, something.

Enlightenment I see as a whole separate dialogue. I did a workshop last year with Dennis Lehane, and to him, if your novel doesn't expose social injustice, it's not worth writing. I don't believe that. I think if a writer can make the reader look inside and learn something about him/herself, than the writer is accomplishing just as much, if not more, social enlightenment.

[Jon Loomis]

Lehane really said that? Jesus. How would he justify Shutter Island, I wonder? Maybe there's social injustice in paying full price for it at the airport.

[Jack Getze]

Not a direct quote, no. But certainly an opinion he spoke of to the class. He dismissed novels of pure entertainment, in general and specifically, and talked much about the world's troubles and how it was a writer's job to show and expose them. That's literature, he said.

I don't get Shutter Island either, unless the prison/place/island was just a symbol of American society, or something. I have no clue, and don't care. I enjoyed reading the book, mainly because I had absolutely no idea what was going to happen next. A personal joy.

[Jon Loomis]

I was annoyed by it--pseudo-pyschological claptrap, I thought, with the world's cheesiest trick ending. But what do I know?

[Jack Getze]

I don't disagree. It's just that the claptrap and cheese didn't annoy me as much.

[I. J. Parker]

Funny! I also wasn't impressed with Shutter island. Crappy plot.

[I. J. Parker]

The looking inside is precisely what I'd expect under the term "enlighten." The social bit is the agenda, which may be a moral issue or not. I'm personally not happy with agendas. The problems hashed out are generally well known, and at that point the preaching begins.

[Jon Loomis]

If I want enlightenment, I'll read Lao Tzu or the Bhagavad Gita. If I want to be educated, I'll read Aristotle or take an art history class. I assume my audience, such as it is, feels the same way. My only obligation is to tell a good story, and to throw in plenty of food, sex and jokes (okay, I'm not really obliged to do the food, sex and jokes--I just like them).

[minervaK]

To my mind, education and enlightenment are, like beauty, in the eye of the beholder (reader, in our case). In other words, books that set out to overtly 'give intellectual, moral, and social instruction' usually piss me off, but I have gotten great insight into some of my personal beliefs, and gained greater knowledge and understanding about various topics, from books that weren't really trying to give me either.

As a writer, my personal world view can't help but inhabit what I write, and if that world view gives a reader greater knowledge and understanding of something, or makes him reconsider a personal belief, it's on him/her. I don't set out to do it as part of my work when I write.

I've quoted Sol Stein here before, and now I'll do it again: "The correct intention (of a writer)... is to provide the reader with an experience that is superior to the experiences the reader encounters in everyday life." I agree with him, which means I think I disagree with Bantwal.

Now, we could have a discussion of what 'superior' or 'correct' means, but that could get ugly.

MK
www.minervakoenig.com

[I. J. Parker]

I like the quote. It's sufficiently vague to cover a lot.

[B.R.Stateham]

Here's the deal--I read Clive Cussler, for instance. I don't think his novels as a whole are believable. But he does have one thing going for him--he has a genuine interest in martime history. A subject which interests me. So his interests and my interests converge. He has more background on that subject so when I read his novels I guess you could say I have been 'enlightened and educated.' To a certain degree.

If a writer creates a piece of work on a subject he or she is genuinely interested in--and writes well---all thee E's are automatically grafted into the story. But the INTENT of the writer was to etertain. . . everything else came alone as a kinda freebie insertion.

To deliberately start out writing a novel to educate and enlighten the poor schmuck of a reader smacks me as straight-up arrogance. Christ, I have enough of that in my life. Why would I want to read a book that adds to the BS pile?

[Eric Christopherson]

Take Crichton's Jurassic Park for example: It's entertainment value is as an adventure novel, but it also educated the reader on cutting edge biotechnology and on chaos theory. The philosophical message--the enlightenment part--is the implied message that one day we are going to lose control of what we do technologically and all hell is going to break loose. It's a dystopian vision of the future as dark as Orwell's 1984 and as with Orwell's book its existence militates against what it predicts.

Did Crichton set out to do all that? Possibly because he was a very smart fellow. But perhaps not, and it all sort of evolved via the writing process. I think it might be common for authors to simply start out a book entertaining, perhaps only entertaining themselves, but character is destiny, and who the author is ultimately determines what else the book has to offer in the end.